Taking people on a journey........Or not!
You are all excited about your upcoming project. Or maybe this new product that you are now, the product owner of.
You truly believe that this will make a big difference to your customers.
And you have your first meeting with your key stakeholders.
You had a great presentation ready to share the journey with them.
And this is their response:
- I have daily issues to deal with and there is the upcoming peak period where we have to be ready for a deluge of work.
- We are short staffed, have 25 things to do (all top priority) and by the way, 2 key people within our team left last week.
- We have back to back meetings and I still haven't got my real work.
There goes the journey (From the moon to Antarctica).
If you are experiencing this, you are not first, alone or the last!
So what could you do?
Here's something to try:
- That there are people who are not yet ready to take the journey you want them to.
- If you create a space where people can safely express themselves, they will tell you what's stopping them from taking the journey. No one wants to cross a motorway with speeding cars.
- Refrain from immediately jumping to solutions to their problems immediately. It could prevent you from listening.
Sitting in this space long enough allows you to understand them better and eventually earn the privilege of being able to take them on a journey.
Not enough people do this to a sufficient level and as a result face frustrations.
Wonder what we could achieve with people who are to take the journey?
Keen to hear your thoughts on this and what has worked for you when it comes to taking people on a journey?
#productowner #projectmanagement #stakeholders
Photo by Mario Dobelmann on Unsplash