Communicate Value of Your Project Early

 

One problem that you as a project manager have to deal with early in the project is aligning workers to the objective of the project. This is not aligning to any specific deliverables, mind you. It's deeper than that. It's getting the agreement or consent to participate in the project as a whole.                           

You can't expect everyone to be doing their utmost for your project from the very start. Some people may work with you grudgingly and not believe in the purpose of your project. Some may not participate fully because they have a lot of conflicts even though they want to participate with you because they believe your project is so important to the company. There are many other possibilities.

So how do you get people to see your project as a priority? As an important project in the company? As a significant effort that they want to be seen participating in? As an activity that they may even want to spend a little extra effort making sure it is successful?

You can link your project to corporate strategy and business benefits in a powerful way. Who does not want to be part of meeting the business strategy and attaining business benefits?

First, connect your project to corporate strategy. Chris Cancialosi, PhD suggests a strategic narrative to communicate the corporate strategy. Your leaders may not be using the strategic narrative technique, but you can use ideas from that to build a better presentation of the link between your project and the business strategy.
    • Explain "what was", "what is" (just before and during the project), and "what will be" after the project and how your project makes that future happen. Make sense out of the change. Emphasize what will be better.
    • Link to values. There may be one or two that sync up nicely with your project
    • Link to profitability. Everyone wants more money coming in so they have more money for their teams. Profits come from reducing costs or increasing revenue, so pick the one that most closely represents your project
    
The second area is business benefits that are being sought. Again, this is a part of your conversations with stakeholders.   You should be able to identify something specific related to stakeholder interests, such operational efficiency, new capabilities, marketplace advantage, and so on.

This might seem a little too time- and energy-consuming . Is it worth the effort?
I think it is. Linkages to either of these areas will help build "employee engagement," that critical factor that gets workers to work hard and give a little extra when needed. ("Employee engagement" is a topic covered in this blog all the time.) You will also benefit from fewer conflicts from other projects because you will have established your project as a higher priority.

Still, your time is limited, how could you do this to make is less time consuming and fit into project activities?
    • Create a slide for your kickoff meeting or improve the one you already have for strategy link or business benefits from your project.
    • Get with your sponsor to confirm your understanding of connection to business strategy is correct. Have the "what was, what is, what is to be" narrative style in your mind as you confirm.
    • Get with stakeholders to find benefits or impacts in advance that fit into the mold of your connection to the strategy.
    • For business benefits, use the same tactics. Talk to the same people if those have not already been specified in the Charter or other project documentation.

The point is to have a powerful, succinct presentation that you use early in your project. This can put you ahead in the game to capture the time, attention and commitment of those who will make your project successful.