Discovery Operations Guide

Getting Buy-In

Use this to get buy-in from your Leadership or even from potential participants.

Your Leadership may already know that you’ve been working on this project: they either gave you the Project Brief, and / or they should have been involved in the early framing of the project itself. Now that you have further refinement to the Project Frame, details as per potential locations, project scope, and solid thoughts on your team, it is the time to check in with them again to validate their support and involvement before proceeding into the active recruiting stage.

This part of the project involves “selling” your project idea. This means putting together a compelling argument for why you and your team should be allowed to proceed with your work. To put together this argument, be sure show the leadership how your work will benefit them and / or their organization. You can frame this as the projected Return on Investment (ROI), if that is helpful. Concentrate on communicating your project frame and reasoning behind it, but also include details like estimates of how many personnel are needed, plus the amount or percentage of their time they’ll spend on the project. In addition, provide a projected timeline, as in, “We expect this work to take 6 - 8 weeks.” Don’t pin yourself down; instead, offer ballparks on all of these details. This will allow Leadership to adjust their expectations for you and your team’s workload on other projects and, also, when to expect updates on this project.

Checklist

Use this checklist to ensure you’re doing all you can to get the buy-in of your Leadership.

  • Put together a persuasive argument (the pitch) for why your project should be allowed to proceed. You can do this through creating a project write up, a project deck, or a spreadsheet showing data that initially drove your project frame.
  • Include your Project Frame and state up front what the project will do for Leadership and / or their organization.
  • Schedule time with Leadership to walk them through your project.
  • Practice your project pitch multiple times before walking into the presentation to Leadership.