In my first corporate job, I felt like everyone had their own project. They maybe called it “Initiative X,” but what I interpreted was “Essi’s Personal Vanity Project That She Can List in Her CV When She Looks for a Promotion” (how the world has made my soul callous). One of the problems with every employee, or even just every middle/senior manager (usually the case), having their own pet project is that resources are split and everyone fights for their own cause, leading to slow progress across the board and little to show for every dime spent. Having fewer cross-company initiatives would allow for better use of resources, a better success rate for the initiative’s implementation, and more shared experiences for colleagues. For an individual, I’ve always thought it’s more valuable to be part of executing something successful and have your claim to it than to lead a project that led (ha!) nowhere.
In this blog post, I suggest my approach to introducing a new initiative to an organization. As an example, I use bringing in an Analyst Relations (AR) program into a company. If you don’t know what Analyst Relations is, don’t worry – I give a brief account of it below.
Step 0: Do We REALLY Need It? Always Assess the Necessity
If it’s problematic to have one new project per person, it’s equally pointless to try usher in unnecessary initiatives. Most companies have poorly-evaluated initiatives circling the drain at any given moment, and I reckon the key reason is that leadership is simply too busy or otherwise preoccupied to take a solid minute to ask the right questions. What do we aim for with this project? Is that goal necessary in this moment? How much time, money, and working hours will this likely require (include a hefty upwards margin for your assessment)?
In my current company, analyst relations had been tended to for years by several people. Up until a year ago, no one had the bandwidth to take ownership over developing a systematic approach.
Make a Fact-based Claim: Do Your Research
“We need this!” That’s often the only thing needed to introduce a new project or initiative. “Everyone is doing it!” may accompany it. Unless you can provide data or other facts to support your claim, maybe you shouldn’t give green light to it. The fluffier the goal, the more difficult it is – most culture-related projects fall in this category. Culture, even if not easily measurable, is real and must be nurtured, but oftentimes the solution offered doesn’t correlate with an existing problem.
As to analyst relations: imagine you run a business that needs to buy a project management software. You start by googling solutions and see ads from obviously biased vendors who claim theirs is the best fit for you. Maybe you’ll find a blog post or two where different vendors are evaluated. That’s sort of what analyst companies do, except on a more regular and thorough basis. They often run annual reports listing vendors in a specific industry or offering a specific solutions and evaluate them based on the same set of criteria (instead of many bloggers who may list pros and cons as “nice colours” or “didn’t like the colour scheme” – not entirely insignificant but not entirely scientific, either). Analyst companies, especially the most established ones, have easy access to vendors who want to showcase their capabilities in briefings (where vendors try convince analysts of their superiority by demoing their product and/or focusing on their product roadmap or a specific set of solutions), and also to clients to seek their unbiased opinion on the vendors out there.
The two biggest analyst companies are Gartner and Forrester, whose flagship reports are called Magic Quadrants and Waves, respectively. Both reports categorize companies in two-dimensional charts, giving the well-placed vendors a boost in their credibility. There are many other big and boutique analyst companies, and the overall purpose of Analyst Relations is to establish and maintain a good working relationship with analysts relevant to your business, regularly update them on your capabilities and to seek their insight through inquiries, and to make sure your top-of-mind for them when their clients ask them to suggest good vendors. And if you’re questioning whether a business actually does that much research into which software to buy, there’s two ways of looking at it: either the company buys whatever vendor makes the quickest and/or loudest claim, or they’ll do a long request-for-proposal (RFP) process and spend their employees’ time in meeting with vendors. It’s certainly quicker and cheaper to outsource that to an analyst company that can provide a shortlist to further engage with. That said, I think AR is a good example of a fact-based, not necessarily a data-based, initiative. You may not find solid numbers and reports on how much AR matters, but it’s nevertheless important to at least certain operators.
Step 1: Build Your Base
You’ve done your research, you’ve found that your initiative does offer a solution to an existing (or to-exist) problem. Now, you need to convince the leadership AND the whole staff of its necessity. How do you do that, and in which order?
There’s many projects that start from the ground up. Maybe the employees were unhappy with the lack of diversity in the company and that led to a DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) program. Perhaps employees felt that promotion practices were unclear, and the company established a clear framework for it. Either way, you should have the ear of a few people first to test out the waters, and if calm, get them involved in the program in some way. I think that the purpose of the program determines to a large extent which group of people you should try to get on board first. For Analyst Relations, it’s the most senior leadership because it has a big impact on the business, not so much on any individual employee; AR activities have little bearing on the average employee unless they are involved with the product that needs to be introduced to the analysts.
An AR program needs at least two people: one who coordinates the activities and one who can speak about the product. For bigger operators, you’ll likely have many business and product units and each needs at least one contact person to introduce the product (imagine introducing Microsoft Office: you’ll have one expert for PowerPoint, another for Excel, and so on – perhaps you’ll have several experts who know different parts of Excel each!).
Why do you need a coordinator? I started off in AR by assuming that role and was skeptical at first. But even scheduling briefings and inquiries takes a lot of time. You won’t have access to analysts’ calendars and need to suggest some slots; your colleagues will have changes to their schedules and the back-and-forth is on. Once you’ve managed to schedule a call, you’ll need to prepare your colleagues. What are they going to focus on in the briefing? What was discussed last with this specific analyst? What are they like? Do they prefer slides, demos, or a free-flowing conversation? The best AR experts will have the details down to individual level, but even a generic brief will take time to put together. Many product specialists are also not all that comfortable presenting, not to mention natural and engaging performers, and a good coordinator will coach the subject-matter experts to have confidence in interacting with the analysts.
Minions at Work
The larger the organization, the more difficult it is to reach everyone and get them to remember what you’re all about. The more junior an employee you are (read: essentially anyone below the C-suite), the less people take your word as law, and the less they pay attention to messages arriving in your name, bar some exceptions. And even if you’ve got solid name recognition, people are flooded with information and lack the ability to retain everything. Not only is success about repetition, but about committed spokespeople. Often referred to as ambassadors, I think it’s fun to think of them as Minions. Not subservient to you as your colleagues and even your superiors, but people who will do your dirty work of spreading the message for you across the organization. You should identify a few people who have influence in their function or location, ensure they’re on board with your initiative, and equip them with means to sing the gospel.
For AR, it’s crucial to be aligned with the product and product strategy colleagues, as well as with sales. Briefings, inquiries, and other analyst activities like surveys and report submissions take time, so you should have clear agreement on how’s going to be involved and that they can prioritize AR activities. Of course, a skilled coordinator will have a schedule prepared a few months ahead to make sure everyone can anticipate busier times.
Train Your Crew
You know what’s hard? Something you’ve never done before. You know what’s harder? Doing it with no help. Many new projects fail because the project manager never introduced the concept to the audience. As said, people aren’t capable of retaining every piece of information they receive, certainly not without repetition, and if served piecemeal, it’s even more difficult to see the whole picture. In fact, doing a puzzle is a good analogy. I tend to start with the edges, for the frame. Once you’ve got it in place, it’s easier to see where each element should roughly go, and then zoom in to detail.
Always give the people involved enough time to understand what you’re trying to achieve, why, how you’re going to attempt it, and what to expect. Always give people enough to go on. “It’s easy, you’ll get the hang of it” as a stand-alone ‘advice’ isn’t enough; or at least you’ll lose plenty of efficient working time when you leave people to figure it out for themselves.
Step 2: Working On It
So you’ve secured senior support and your base. You’ve got a plan in place (I won’t go into project planning details in this post). Are you in the clear?
Give Easy Access And Report Regularly
Transparency is the name of the game. You don’t need to reveal everything, depending on the nature of the initiative, but you shouldn’t mislead people. I remember one change made to a company policy that caused a lot of dissatisfaction, particularly because the initial communication claimed that it was done for reason A, when in fact it had little (if anything) to do with it. The person nominally in charge was forced to reveal that the real reason was something different, and people were disappointed – yes, the policy change itself grated some, but more people were annoyed that they were misled (or even lied to), and made to feel like they’re not rational enough to understand the real reason. Treating your employees and colleagues like children or idiots is rarely a good approach.
When introducing a new initiative or project, it’s important to give stakeholders regular updates. Stakeholder management is not always easy, and many projects fail to do stakeholder mapping and maintenance. Some stakeholders, especially senior leads with little impact or involvement, are simply happy to be included in one-way updates, so a regular reminder of “we’re on track and we’ve got this” is often sufficient.
With Analyst Relations, it’s sometimes difficult to measure impact, but at a minimum, you can track the efforts. I started a simple spreadsheet where I listed every single briefing and inquiry held, scheduled, and planned, and linking all materials used. We also started an internal quarterly update newsletter that can be freely disseminated across the organization. One thing I’d improve on is the aftercare of each interaction. How did the SMEs feel about it? Have they connected with the analyst on LinkedIn? What were their impressions of them? What would they do differently, and how can I support them better?
Constant Improvement Mindset
Many projects follow this arch: intense planning phase, hyped introduction, a long lull in the execution, and a spike in activity when stakeholders demand updates. All four of these phases are problematic. You shouldn’t usher in a new project with too much pressure to get it rolled out yesterday and exhaust the project members before the official launch; you shouldn’t come out guns ablaze only to set yourself up for exceedingly high expectations; and you shouldn’t only assess the ongoing work when externally pressed to do so. The ‘lull’ is where you should inject more energy. What are the initial results indicating? What small tweaks should you make right away that don’t set the project in the wrong course?
If It Doesn’t Work – Let It Go, Let It Go
I remember once seeing a DEI initiative fall completely flat. My brief assessment of it, not having been involved at all, was that it came out of nowhere to the majority of the people (who were supposed to engage); it didn’t have broad enough a support and activist base (no Minions!); it wasn’t clear why it was needed; senior leadership didn’t (appear to) support it in any way; the means chosen were not ideal (asking for an open dialogue on a sensitive topic wasn’t the best approach); and the end result, as disappointing as it was, wasn’t shared or analyzed with the general audience.
Many initiatives and projects fail because the project managers don’t have a clear plan and stick to it. Sometimes it’s because the people above them didn’t think things through and there’s not much a PM can do about it. In either case, I’ve always wondered why there isn’t a post-mortem or a retro on it. What happened? Did we have a clear plan? What did we miss? What did we learn? Finally, I think you should communicate the outcome. I’ve written about the lack of apologizing and admitting to mistakes before, and I still think that acknowledging failure or shortcomings isn’t a sign of weakness or incompetence but of strength and ability to learn. After all, would you want people working for or with you who cannot learn, whether from successes or failures?
Are you familiar with Analyst Relations? I’d love to connect with you and exchange thoughts! Find me on LinkedIn.
Sidetracked 