Dear Steerco, let’s talk.
The conversations your project keeps avoiding are often the ones that matter most.
I was on the phone this week with the CEO of one of the organisations we work with. It was a conversation that needed to happen. We needed clarity on what great project ownership could look like, and the risks to adoption across the organisation if we didn’t get it right. It was the kind of conversation that lots of project teams spend time avoiding. The hardest question of all: ‘What will real ownership cost you?'
Earlier in the week I had spent time with a Steering Committee from a different project, asking hard questions around alignment. Each Steerco member had their own agenda and outcomes they were looking for. We needed to agree, verbally, on exactly what mattered most right now. Someone afterwards described the meeting as ‘robust’. We deliberately steered the ship into the thing that every other steerco meeting had felt like it was desperately (awkwardly sometimes) steering away from.
These conversations weren’t part of any SOW. But they will end up being the most important moments in the change project.
We start every project with what we call a ‘Change Canvas’ - like a plan on a page with some pointed questions around what’s changing, what’s the priority, and why now. It looks like a simple deliverable, but it’s actually a device to get Steering Committees to steer into the tricky waters of disagreement on the details.
‘I know that the telephony component of this project is going to have a huge impact on your customer service team… but can you agree that the biggest priority right now is data? Do you feel comfortable taking that back to your team? What does that priority cost you right now?’
I don’t just want agreement in the room. We need to ask the question that makes agreement cost something. Because that’s the only way we’ll get real alignment.
Hard conversations are the lifeblood of a change project.
Because hard conversations give teeth to a goal.
And a clear goal gives a clear path to change.
You already know what the hard conversations are. They are the ones you play out with your colleagues after the meeting on Slack or Teams. It’s much safer to say to someone else ‘I wish I’d said… I wish they would just realise… I’m really worried about…’ than say it out loud in the room and invite conflict.
But nine times out of ten, that avoided conversation is the one that’s going to haunt the project in 6 months’ time.
Why would a steering committee steer away from that? Steer in.
If you’re sitting on a steerco and you don’t feel uncomfortable yet…
SFVedas has a great article for any Steering Committee of a Salesforce Project. Most of the principles carry for any project steerco, no matter the software.
HBR ran an article in July on the dangers of false alignment. I found it super timely for lots of the projects we are working on.
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