Prepare for Your Initiative Conversation:
Who-Where-How
Before taking your initiative on the road, consider Who needs to hear the message, Where the resources are, and How the work might get done. You do not need definitive answers or a full-blown detailed plan at this point, but you do need to look at each of these Who-Where-How elements to set up your Initiative Conversation.
Who Needs to Participate?
Identify all the different individuals and groups you believe will be needed to accomplish the initiative. Who could do the work? Who could provide the resources? Who will receive the benefits? Who needs to authorize, approve, or regulate some aspect of the initiative? This is your first guess, which you will probably continue to revise as you go forward.
Kate said, “Once we were committed to taking action, we started planning who would play a part in our joint initiative. The first step was to see who would help implement this change or provide the resources to get it done. We made a list of all the important people in the company we needed to have on our team. At one point, we realized that each of us also had access to vendors who could support us in different ways, so we added them to our circle.”
When in doubt about whether to include certain individuals or groups, it is usually best to err on the side of bringing them into the conversation. Bosses, for example, prefer to know about initiatives before they happen instead of being surprised when they are announced. The more people talking about an initiative, the more energy and attention it gets. When people feel included, they perceive the process to be fair, and are more willing to support it.
Where Will Resources Come From?
The process of taking an idea through an implementation process to its fulfillment requires resources. Before launching your initiative, consider what resources are likely to be required and where they might come from. Where could you get the money, the people, and the tools? Looking at an initiative’s resource needs can be as simple as making a list of what you think will be needed to reach the objective.
We know one manager who always makes a “Likely Resource List” when he initiates a project or program. “Every resource has to come from somewhere,” he tells us. “I have found that sketching out what I think will be needed, and where I can get it, sets me up for more effective Initiative Conversations. In the process, I get a better sense of what I am proposing. Knowing where the resources might be gives people a starting point for considering the initiative.”
Kate and Mitch said their resources were obvious. “They’re the people,” they agreed. The technical people are resources who will learn to use the system. The technical vendors are a resource because they provide the tools. The HR people are a resource for learning supports—we have a good WOS training program and the technical staff will help us make it better as the staff members learn how to become WOS users and not just WOS fixers.”
They identified other resources that would be necessary, including the WOS training sessions, mobile computing resources, and other communication supports. “Our list of resources, including where they will come from, is pretty simple,” Kate said. “We’ve done the WOS implementation before with other groups, so we can borrow from our previous plans.”
As they progressed, they saw even more resources to obtain or confirm: staff time off for training, management support in the form of a directive that WOS would be a companywide mandate, and clerical support to keep track of work orders during the transition. Thinking about the resources and where they would come from helped them have more confidence in their initiative and its likelihood of success.
How Might the Work Get Done?
Even though you do not need a fully detailed work plan at the initiative stage, it is helpful to think through what might be involved in accomplishing what you are proposing. Are there steps or stages? Are there some complex jobs that should be broken into subtasks? Can some things be done simultaneously, while others must happen in sequence? Is there a schedule that might work, and are there some possible measures of success?
The objective is to begin sketching out what you think will be required to take you from idea to implementation to accomplishment. These are your initial thoughts and are meant to be suggestive rather than definitive. The prime benefit of doing this task now is that it lets you see where you need input and ideas from others and sets you up for Understanding Conversations.