One of the most important skills in business is COMPLETION. Can you finish what you start?

Do you finish your projects?

Do you know when to stop analyzing and when to start wrapping up?  Or do you get stuck in analysis paralysis and need a bit of nudging, direction or help to close it out?

Do you prioritize and finish the most important projects and leave less important ones for later (or even leave some of these open)?

Do you finish projects on time?

Starting projects is easy.  It’s the fun part!

The middle is fine.  Once you have a direction, it’s easy to work away and make progress.

But finishing.  That’s the tough part.

Are you the type of person who can take a project that’s not perfect (most projects are not perfect) and tidy it up, pull it together and wrap a nice bow on it?

Think about your completion batting average for important projects.  Are you batting over .500?

Or to think about it another way, can you pitch a complete game or do you always need relievers or a closer to help you see it through?

It’s great to be a starter but it’s the rare person who’s also a good closer.  Be a closer.

Let me define “scorched earth” a bit.  It originally comes from a wartime policy of torching the land and buildings as you go so the enemy has no cover or resources.  In business, it refers to those people who join every meeting with guns blazing, who are in your face, who cut every conversation short and say things like, “I hate to be blunt but…” or “I hate to cut you off but…POW!”.  They really don’t try to “make friends and influence people”.  They use their position or the urgency of the situation as a means to justify blasting through topics and people to meet their goals.

Just because times are tough, does not mean you should give up all tact and interest in relationship-building.  Remember, you may need to ask favors of these people in the future.  These people may be your boss some day or be in a position to make or break your project in the future.  As most workers mature in business, they learn various influencing skills, they learn to prioritize, they learn patience and they learn how to structure projects or other work to get the most out of people or teams.  Some people just prefer to short-cut all of that and cut to the essence of “I insist” and “you follow”.  When times are tough, it gives them a free pass but it won’t last.  Ask yourself this question – “are you using scorched earth tactics at your job”?  If so, you may want to another look at your work style if you plan to be there for the long term.

When starting a new project, especially in a new area for you, there are a variety of ways to get started.  Let’s say your project is: “Investigate XYZ segment of the market.  Find out what the trends are in this segment, how our company is playing now and what are some new opportunities for us!”

What to do…

There are many ways to tackle this.  Some better than others in terms of the quality of work that will come out, the speed, and how actionable the resulting analysis and proposal will be. 

Focusing on Research and Reports:

One way would be to do primarily secondary research (looking at reports, blogs, articles, etc.), external to your company, mixed with some internal analysis (revenue figures, strategy documents, internally-generated reports).  Depending on the area you’re researching and how big your company is and how much data you have, this could provide you with reams of data that could take days or weeks to go through.

Talking with Subject Matter Experts:

Another way is to get a name or two and pick up the phone and get the scoop from these Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in your company.  This will quickly get you some information and can lead you to more SMEs and to some interesting data to review.  The problem is that if you’re starting with no information about the topic so these people may be teaching you the basics in the limited time you have with them and you won’t be coming with the most informed questions that will get you further ahead in your project.

How to Compress the Time but get the Best Results:

Here’s a time-tested way to tackle this quickly with high quality results very quickly.  Focusing on interviews in a well-planned way is the best way to get deep insight.  I would highly recommend it over pure secondary research any day.

1 – Start out by spending a day pulling every external and internal report you can find.  Better yet, outsource this to an analyst or researcher if they can do it quickly.  As they come in, start to review the reports, articles and presentations and take notes on items such as key trends, customers, competitor moves, market size, growth rate, etc.

2 – Document the Key questions your research raises for you.  This will help you with your interviews and will move your investigation much further than you’d be with either the research-heavy approach (slow and not that insightful) or the interview-only approach (fast but painful for those you interview and you may need to go back to the well!)

3 – Start to create a Point of View or Hypothesis about the market and how your company should approach it.  You can test this with your interviewees.

4 – Develop a stakeholder map of key contacts who are connected to this area.  Do it in excel and document their name, business group, region, if you’ve interviewed them (Y/N), do you want to interview them (Y/N) and any high level comments (or reminders of how you got their name).

5 – Develop a generic interview guide.  A set of questions that you will probably need to ask everyone.  Add/subtract questions as you learn more or based on their specializiation.

6 – Start working your list by scheduling meetings with your interviewees.  Document each interview for your notes. In addition to the interview, always ask for additional documents that might help you learn more about the topic.  Also, ask for names of other people who might be able to help you learn more. Add the new names to the stakeholder list.

7 – Keep focused on your goal.  Pull together your analysis and your recommendations.  In the back-up you can include who you talked with and any supporting documentation.

Using this approach, you’ll get:

– Deep results – a good interview guide, getting documents to support the interview and getting the next layer of names provides a lot of information.

– Speed – Skimming the reports and vetting your point of view and getting your questions answered by Subject Matter Experts will quickly get you to a conclusion.

– Built in Relationships (and hopefully buy-in) from a broad set of Stakeholders.  By meeting so many key people, you’ll have established relationships with the people you’ll probably need help from to roll out the project your proposing.

– A Broad Set of Input – By mapping key stakeholders and interviewing a variety of people in various functions, businesses and regions, you’ll have a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities that you wouldn’t get in other ways.

You can use basically the same approach about topics outside of work.  You just need to find some people who know about the topic to interview. Give it a try!

If you work for a company, big or small, there are several things you can do to be a top-rated employee. This will help you get higher raises, advance more quickly and potentially avoid layoffs (in this tight economy!). Here are 10 tips based on my work experience and by being top-rated at several companies, with a variety of managers and in different industries and functions.

#1 – Bring Solutions. Go to your superior with solutions, not issues. It’s great to identify issues. It can be okay to complain about them too. But if you’re serious about getting something done or having an impact on the problem, develop a solution or list of potential solutions. Flesh them out and consider the pros and cons. Sometimes you’ll realize why they won’t work but in other cases, you may have an idea worth talking about. Consider the practical realities, the resources required, organizational implications etc. If you think you have something or even if you just feel like complaining, at least you’ll be armed with an answer to: “Okay, what would you do differently?” Remember this – don’t be seen as a whiner, be seen as a PROBLEM SOLVER.

#2 – Proactively design or re-design your job. Make sure your position helps address the biggest issues your boss faces (even as they change). Suggest taking on new items or changing how your job is done to add as much value as possible. There’s a bit of flexibility in every job – keep yours as relevant as possible, focus on the bigger impact items more and add/subtract as needed (with your manager’s buy-in of course).

#3 – Be Zero-based. Be as proactive about ending projects or stopping low value tasks as you are about adding projects/responsibilities. A) Make sure projects you launch have a defined end point or hand-off plan so they don’t drag on forever. B) For ongoing projects or tasks you or your team does, periodically do your own internal “zero-based” analysis of your responsibilities. For those things that are necessary or that provide a high return on the effort, consider those important. For those that have low return on effort, build a case for killing it, changing how it’s done or moving it to another owner. (Note: Zero-based means that you assess everything an organization is doing whether it’s in flight or not. Items that are deemed to be low ROI are killed, even if there has already been investment or work done).

#4 – Keep your ear to the ground. Constantly stay aware of how your role fits with the overall strategy of the organization. In addition, stay very attuned to the needs of your key stakeholders. These can include the most senior people in your organization (listen to their internal and external statements, watch what they do, talk to them, if possible), your boss (ask him/her, understand their priorities) and those you work with (customers, users of your work, sponsors, coworkers, etc.). If you understand the needs of these key stakeholders, you can make sure you’re working on the right things and that the results you’re delivering are appreciated.

#5 – Follow-up quickly. Within reason, follow-up quickly to requests, to getting out meeting notes, to questions or to issues that arise. You don’t always have to have an answer – but let the right people know that you’re working on it and follow-through on your commitment to deliver the required item.

#6 – Treat almost everything as “client ready”. At the big consulting firms, there’s definitely an emphasis on quality. I won’t argue whether the thinking is always right on or not but everything from the ideas, the flow, the underlying numbers, to the grammar, punctuation and look and feel of the materials is scrutinized to be client ready. If you raise your expectations for your own work, do your own proof-reading (or have others help), use industry-relevant business cases or metrics as a guide for your materials and learn to be better at using the available tools (i.e. MS Powerpoint, Excel, etc.) your work quality will improve and it will be noticed. If you want to just show a concept without spending too much time on it, that’s fine. Just make sure even that is logical, looks decent and that you explain that this is just a concept for feedback.

#7 – No surprises. Make sure you warn your boss early and often (enough) about issues, major changes or significant proposals (get their buy-in first) you plan to discuss with key stakeholders. As far as the issues are concerned, you should include what you’re doing to reduce the risk of this issue occurring as well as contingency planning (what you’ll do if it happens). Most bosses ask for “no surprises” – if they don’t, they probably should.

#8 – Be factual, not emotional. Base your arguments, recommendations or opinions on facts. Look at the numbers or other relevant information from an unbiased perspective and use these to support your case.

#9 – Underpromise and Overdeliver. This may be obvious but so many people I work with are overly optimistic about what they can get done, when they can finish and the resources needed to accomplish the goals (in a project setting). In terms of commitments of growth or cost savings, the same applies. The point is – be realistic and if you have some leeway, be conservative until you get more data to convince you otherwise. Then, make every effort to come in ahead of schedule or beat revenue, cost or growth estimates. Remember, we’re always dependent on others and you can’t assume everyone will be as motivated as you to get make progress…

#10 – Make the Case. For any major proposal or serious issue you are raising, pull together a case which should include the following in a few pages (e.g. 5-10 slides with appendices for detailed facts):
– Situation – What has changed? What are the high level issues we have or may be facing? Use relevant data for support (highlight it here and include details in appendices)
– Implications – What does this mean for us? How severe will it be or what opportunity do we have now?
– Recommendations – What should we do? What are the resources required? How long will it take? Be specific enough (highlights here, details in appendices)
– Benefits – What do we get by doing the recommendation? When do these benefits start?
– Risks and Mitigation Plan – What are the risks with the plan? How do we minimize them?
– Next Steps/”the Ask” – What are you proposing we do immediately? What are you asking for specifically? What else needs to be understood (if anything) before we make a decision?

10 Keys to Running Good Meetings:

#1 Know how this fits in terms of the overall project, the importance of the meeting and the desired goals/outcomes. Is this a critical meeting? If not, maybe you can achieve your goals a different way. Do you know the goals and desired outcomes of the meeting? If so, put that clearly at the top of the invite.

#2 Make sure you know who the critical attendees are and get their commitment to attend. Often in my meeting notices (for the more important meetings) I say, “This is a critical session to determine XYZ – if you can’t attend, please let me know ASAP so I can reschedule”. Have a back-up plan for what you’ll do if one or more critical attendees doesn’t show up.

#3 Send an agenda with the meeting invite (or in a separate email or both). This serves multiple purposes:
– people know what to expect, can complain (early), add topics or suggest other attendees
– you’re clear on what you’ll be covering. sometimes you schedule these meetings a month out and you’re running the call at 4am. It helps to be able to move right through the agenda you prepared earlier so you won’t forget something and so you can stay focused on the content of the meeting.
– people know if they’re expected to present or if they have pre-work to complete

#4 Communicate clearly regarding pre-work or presentations that others are expected to give (with deadlines). I always ask that people send me their presentations and pre-work in advance. This helps me know if they understood the instructions, allows me to do a quality check, to suggest which materials might work best for the audience and to make sure they’ll help us meet the meeting goals. It also guarantees that we’ll have materials and allows me to pull everything together for smooth execution on the day of the meeting. Also, I always set a deadline a couple of days (or more) before the meeting and send out reminders if I don’t see anything come in.

#5 Edit in real-time where it can help move things faster and get better buy-in. If your skills at working on the documents you’re reviewing are strong, you can use this technique to move faster in your project. For things that need to be co-created (a short text document, a design, a couple of slides, a list of top issues or key clients), I always edit in real time. This allows people to get an idea of the outcome and that helps you get better buy-in. If you take notes on your notebook and try to create something after the meeting, you run several risks. It may take a long time to get buy-in through email back and forth. You may miss a key point or have misunderstood some input. You can’t test buy-in via email as well as you can in a meeting by saying “does everyone agree with this direction?”.

Similar to the above, I often take a lot of my notes directly on powerpoint slides or excel spreadsheets so people see that I’m hearing them.

#6 Don’t bully your way through the meeting, rush key decisions or ignore feedback. It’s important to get the right decision, not a fast decision.

#7 Unless there’s a logical flow that needs to be followed, put critical items on the agenda first. Leave “nice to have” topics for last (you can always inform them of some minor point via your follow-up notes). Most people have a hard time fitting everything into a meeting and sometimes there are wild cards that blow your agenda.

#8 Keep to the time you scheduled. Learn to manage time, follow tip #7 above and don’t overload the agenda. Also, learn to table rat-hole discussions to be dealt with in other venues or 1 on 1 with the rat-holer…For good ideas that are out of scope for this meeting, you can schedule a separate meeting, have the suggestor flesh it out offline or get quick agreement on the idea and move on.

#9 Focus on facts and let the logic of your argument sell itself. Don’t push your agenda with a lot of emotion or opinion. You’ll have a much better time discussing facts than you will arguing opinions. This helps reduce the number of people that will try to “take you on” with a different world view than you.

#10 Follow-up with meeting notes. I’m not big on tons of meeting notes just for the sake of meeting notes. I base the type of meeting note and follow-up communications on the importance of the project, the criticality of getting alignment on the outcomes, the need to for details to be shared, who else will be getting these and why, etc. For some meetings, I let the presentation materials speak for themselves and I send them out with actions (and who will do and by what date!). For others, especially where it was contentious, I will send out more detailed notes and highlight the agreements/disagreements and actions/next steps. To get closure, I always ask for people to send feedback or proposed changes (in case I missed something or had a different understanding).

Hopefully these will help. Feel free to add your tips or questions in the comments section.

By the way, I’m not into wall-to-wall meetings so if you can eliminate a big meeting by dealing with the matter another way, more power to you!

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