[TIPS] Stakeholder Alignment & Financial Support: The Two-Meeting Approach

[MUSIC] Okay, welcome back to Simply Trade Tips with Hammer and Heels. I'm Renee Cucurelli and I'm here with Julie Parks. Hey, Jules. Hey, Renee. As always, we're going to leave you with a call to action to help you FIO figure it out in 10 minutes or less. [LAUGH] So Julie, what should we cover today? All right, so we covered kind of identifying the project and we talked a little bit about the business case. I think now we're at the point where we're going to socialize. So I think we need to talk about a little bit stakeholder alignment and a little bit about how do you get your financial support? >> Awesome, so episode three, stakeholder alignment and financial support. We talked a lot about stakeholder alignment and support in our episode one and two. But we just want to make sure here that you have their formal agreement. >> Right. >> In the first couple episodes we talked about, how do you make sure they're keen? How do they get value, right? So I think here we're going to talk about how do we formalize it? >> Right, and I think we're going to come up with it as we do a few steps to kind of walk through here. But I think the first thing is really identifying those stakeholders. And I think that when you identify, you need to kind of use a walk through the process to identify who you're touching on your project point. Generally, sometimes you'll need people that actually need to change as a result. Like if you're installing a new system and you need data from a department to send to you, they're going to change. You're going to want them in on the front end. So just sitting down and jotting down who are the stakeholders, they could be IT, finance. And some of it is informed, like it's an awareness that they need to have that this is going on. And that they can make some comments. But then there's also those stakeholders that you really need to kind of get consult with them and actually get them to do something different. So I think we want to identify our stakeholders. Any thoughts, Renee, how they should do this on like a smaller project? So I mean, I remember a couple projects we had, like you said, a process walk through. We literally had the whiteboard. We would outline the full process, you know, from front to back, cradle to grave. And which teams, visually, were part of this cradle to grave process. So same thing on a small project. You know, where does the, when we're talking about classification, where does it start? Well, it might start with engineering, right? You might need a drawing. Where do you get the drawing? You know, how quickly can you get it? And then who do you need to engage when you're, you know, what resources do you engage? And do you have external providers that are giving you information so that you can classify? So I think to your point, Julie, we need to flow out the process, cradle to grave. And then right now, what, you know, what part departments internal and external are involved? Right. And I think one more point before we get to our next thing here is to make sure that you're not just engaging the people that are doing the work, but you have to make sure that you're engaging leadership. And on larger projects, those leadership folks may be a part of a steering committee that you might stand up, for example, so that they are informed. But sometimes what you'll do is you'll get the buy-in or the pushback either way from the folks that are doing the work. And it's just nice to have both stakeholders kind of identified the managers and the people that actually need to change. Because you really do need both. So I think then this is, let's move into kind of the next step, which is it's something that I've used and kind of shared with folks. It was taught to me by a representative from the shared service that I worked with. But it really works. And here's the tip. It is a two meeting approach. When you actually have your business case, generally, might not be all flushed out. Don't worry about that. But you're going to take a proposal to someone, either leadership or they're in the department, the other ones that need to change. And you're going to have a discussion with them about, hey, we want to get your feedback on this proposal. So meeting one is just that. Getting their feedback. Do not try to get them to change their mind on their feedback. Just jot it down. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Renee. I met with you today and you shared with me a few great tips. And I think that's really kind of the first step is start with each kind of boss stakeholder and group that needs to change stakeholder. And just have that dialogue and say, I just want your feedback. What do you think will work and what do you think won't work? I'm going to use artificial intelligence to redesign our shipping process. Hey, shipping team, how do you think this would work? What are the things that you think could be a problem? You just write them down. Any thoughts for me and right and stuff down and yeah, I think that's great. So basically we're calling it the feedback meeting. And we're not going to try to solve any problems. We're just going to take data, get the concerns. I think a lot of it, Raytheon, we used likes concerns, suggestions. So that was it, right? Yes. We're doing in this feedback meeting is getting, hey, what do you like? What are you concerned about? What do you suggest? Okay. So then you leave the meeting and you think about the feedback that you received. You might put it in a chart. You might however you want to do it, but you really do want to put something in writing. It doesn't need to certainly need to be in a chart, but it's like here's your feedback that I heard. Now this is how you prep for meeting two. So meeting two is a resolution to the feedback meeting. Hey, Ray, we met on project 44 and you had a couple concerns. I just wanted to chat with you a little bit about how to move the project forward and what my proposed mitigations to the concerns might be. So what you're doing is you're saying you gave me feedback that said that, I don't know, Sally might be on PTO for an extended period of time. Well, my suggestion is that maybe Sally isn't the prime on the contract. We've provided someone else as a solution. So you're coming back in meeting two with the risk mitigators, whatever was said in that feedback meeting. And you're trying your best to put it in writing. It can be a loose document, but it's just really, it does two things. Number one, it lets the person that you're talking to know that you heard them. And number two, it kind of says in a very polite way, I'm still moving forward. And I think the way that we can mitigate it is this way. Do you agree? So the other part that's very important is they end up agreeing or disagreeing with the mitigations. But the project, y'all still moves forward when you do this process. Right? You generally are getting that, okay. You're mitigating your concerns. Okay. So meeting one and meeting two. So meeting two is the resolution to the feedback. And I like what you said, Julie, sorry about, you know, the project is still going to move forward because you basically said, hey, we already had the meeting. You gave me feedback. I'm now I'm giving you resolutions to your feedback. And to your point, maybe they're not, they're not all going to be, you know, resolved in that specific meeting, I suspect. All right. So y'all use that two meeting approach. Okay. So then once you've met with your stakeholders using that two meeting approach step, again, it's, it's difficult to group people. I really recommend that you do that at one-on-one. because it's, you get better feedback and you get better buy-in. But then you move to step three, which is actually obtaining the sign-offs. So this could be IT purchasing. Renany thoughts on how folks should go about obtaining. And that's kind of like that financial thread that we're pulling on. And again, some things might not have financial, but if it's your time, it certainly is financial. Any thoughts on how folks should be obtaining their sign-offs? I mean, I think that the best way is, is you have a formalized process because there's, especially in a large project, which we've done, you mentioned, there's multiple teams involved. And you want to make sure that each team understands the mitigation from your resolution meeting and they agree with it. So you want a formal process of sign-off. I would get a formalized document. Maybe your company already has that. If not, it's, you know, pretty simple. Project 44, which Julie called it. It's your, yeah. Sally and Project 44. No. So here's our sign-off. I need your sign-off. These are the things that are going to happen. This is the cost. Here's your communication, which rolls into the communication on the project. We talked about in our couple other, you know, in our first two episodes. But you want to make sure that you are going back and highlighting your, you know, your challenges and also your, you know, the things that are producing great work and you're getting maybe a head of schedule. And what your commitments are to the plan. Keep your, everybody informed. Yeah, and I think too, we can think about this as a small project. If you're doing something your official sign-off is going to be in your goals, right? Your goals are in writing generally. If you're going to do something like that, that's how you get the buy-in of your leadership. And maybe you do need to do some extra work there to get buy-in from your colleagues. But, you know, the process is still the same. Big project or small like Renee mentions. Hey, Renee also mentioned our step four. Communicate process on like the way forward on the project. So communication, communication, communication. I've seen steering committees set up for this communication. I've seen just stand-up meetings. But it's not just communicating. Like you have to have almost two sets of meetings. that's talking about the work that's getting done, issue logs, there's ways to manage that. But the other side is to make sure that Anna check point maybe every month or two months or something like that, however long your project is based on your plan, you're communicating to the leadership that says, this is going forward and these are the key things that we've decided to change, whatever those things might be. So it's kind of a two way communication on this, Renee. What, how can folks think about this two way communication or maybe ways to document it? - Julie, that is a great point on the two way communication. So when we did the first step, which was with the issues log, as you called it, I think that's a great terminology, that is a painstaking. (laughing) So you're going through each process that you've mitigated and you're talking about the successes and maybe the challenges. And then obviously, maybe there's another mitigation factor that we need to include, but that needs to happen. I mean, we used to do those weekly. And then to Julie's point, the communication to the leadership, hey, here's overarching our success, here's overarching our challenges. And like you said, maybe that's just a standup verbal meeting with a follow up summary, you know, executive summary document, which you can go into our first episode, we talk about that. So I think those are great ways to communicate the process. - Yeah, and I think Renee, we discussed you a little bit around in our second episode about the risks. This is a great point when you're communicating and you pause and you're like, gosh, I got a leadership discussion in two weeks, I needed to discuss, you're going back to your risks that were identified at the beginning of the part of the seat, if I even came true, right? So if you identified a location that might not be ready or a person or group of people that may have resource constraints, has that come true yet? Do you need to put that on your communications plan? So there's tools that you used in your, in your previous steps, the project that you can pull into best to make it easier. - Yeah, great point. So, Joel, what's our FIO figure it out for today? - Okay, so I am such a fan of this two meeting approach. I think it's a great idea if you use the two meeting approach. I don't care whether you're using that a project or not, it is incredibly valuable to do that two meeting approach with anything that you're trying to do. If you're working with clients, if you're working with service providers or something that having that one discussion that says, hey, I want to do this, this is my dreamy idea. Can you give me some feedback? Get the feedback, jot it down and then go back and talk about, well, I think I mitigated this feedback this way or I have a plan to kind of mitigate the feedback this way. So go ahead and try to use that two meeting approach. And the idea is too, if you're in the middle of a project now that's kind of stalled, sometimes these techniques can work to kind of get that project back on track. So the two meeting approach could be used and hey, I have a dream to set this up. I know we probably didn't chat with you enough in the beginning, but I really value your input on this project going forward. Can you please fill out my importer questionnaire before buyer, before we import, so things like that? So that's what we'd like to do to FIO. You got to use it, everyone. Yeah, to Julie's point, try it for something small. Maybe you want to introduce a new technique in the company to communicate, and you can do it for that. So go to our community, trade geeks, and please tell us where you're able to do FIO for episode three, stakeholder alignment, financial support, and the two meeting approach. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Jules. Thanks, Renee.