Has this happened to you?
You put your case multiple times to the decision-making team. They like your proposal but aren't ready to commit.
Yet, they all know your proposal is important. Nobody disagrees with that but even after multiple presentations to answer their questions they still won't sign.
What is going on here? How do you handle that?
While there are many strategies you could employ, I offer one today that I have used successfully and which was the focus of discussion in one of this week's calls.
I encourage you to dig deeply so you can get develop a small proposal that will intrigue your stakeholders enough to make them want more.
My three thoughts are to make it matter, make easy and make it a win for them. Let me unpack this using Ravi’s example from today’s working session.
First: Make it matter. Identify a current pain point that your recommendation will solve for your stakeholders. We discussed this during today’s working session. Ravi brought a challenge that was more complex than it appeared on the surface.
He has an idea for improving math education in his school district and is beginning to engage with the superintendents in it.
The initial challenge here was not just what to say in the email, but what to propose.
What was the best way to hook the school superintendents in the conversation, not just jump to his desired outcome. We needed to understand the barriers he would face in engaging the superintendents. We did this in four steps. We
- Thought about what else the stakeholders might be balancing. We got quite specific about this. What would a typical teacher’s day look like at the moment? How full is it? What is it full of? What unusual stresses might there be at this time?
- Brainstormed the sorts of concerns the stakeholders might have about his recommendation. What tradeoffs would stakeholders need to make to say yes? Does your recommendation require
- Too much time?
- Too much money?
- Other projects to be sacrificed?
- Used those as a stimulus to draw out the key concerns your stakeholders have
- Honed in on how he might overcome those concerns by throwing more ideas around
We realised there was a big opportunity here. Students in his school district were already behind the average before covid appeared. Despite this, teachers were continuing with pre-covid teaching strategies.
We thought Ravi’s approach might help change their strategies so students leapfrog ahead, rather than continuing the previous slow trajectory.
Second: Make it easy. As you can imagine, wherever students have been in covid lockdowns they are behind in their learning. Teachers are struggling to catch them up and looking for ways to do that. They are also overburdened and reluctant to take on anything extra.
We discussed strategies to reduce the initial burden on teachers while still finding a way to pilot the approach in schools.
For example, Ravi might help teachers’ aides learn the www.ProblemSolvingMaps.com methodology. This would reduce the burden on teachers preparing for maths classes.
BTW – if you have school children, you might enjoy looking this up. It looks like a terrific technique for teaching children to build general problem-solving skills.
Third: Make it a win for them. While you will no doubt have a longer-term vision for your recommendation, it may be too big a ‘sell’. Start with something small that will solve a problem for them while also creating an opportunity for you.
Our suggestion here was for Ravi to connect with some local teachers. He could ask them to identify the biggest inflection point in a student’s math journey and to offer to pilot a solution focused on that point.
He could then work with a small group of teachers’ aides who might appreciate their own opportunity to learn and to help their students at the same time.
So, although we only drafted the start of the email, we made substantial progress for Ravi in helping him think through his challenge.
I hope that helps. More next week.
Kind regards,
Davina