Teamwork Makes the Dream Work...If You Can Describe the Dream

When I want something meaningful done, chances are that I need someone else's help. Whether it's multiple teams or someone I'm managing, I must have their buy-in. I've tried a multitude of approaches over the years, both creative and practical.

When I first began leading projects, my inexperience was thinly veiled. I'd schedule a meeting with my colleagues and clumsily explain the goal, metrics, and deliverables...all verbally. I quickly learned that I had to practice my pitch and even write down exactly what I wanted to say beforehand. Then the projects necessitated formally written proposals and documentation. This is where everything changed.

Writing is thinking. When you write down your ideas, goals, key performance indicators, suddenly all the wonderful logical and tactical holes in your thinking begin to pop up. This is where you can sharpen your idea into something worth sharing. Finally, you're ready to walk someone through your proposal. This is when one of the most critical steps. If someone else has to make assumptions or brings up issues you already have answers to, then your proposal is not thorough enough.

Do the thinking for them. Write out potential problems and solutions explicitly.

Once I had done enough revs on writing the proposal and incorporating peer feedback, it became easy to create a slide deck to present to leadership. The trickiest features of the test deserved more presentation time. Other points, while I found them fascinating, were easily understood and thus required less emphasis.

You're the storyteller. If you're truly the one for the job, then every part of the product you're vying to ship is enthralling. But if you lose yourself in the design and stray away from the impact for users, then you've lost your audience.