If you’re in digital marketing, communications, IT, or are a leader in your organization, navigating the human side of work can often be the hardest part of our jobs.
The road to innovation, unified data, or often something super simple is full of complainers, meetings upon meetings, and sub-par compromises.
In my experience of working through these roadblocks, I’ve discovered two ways to manage this:
1) Become customer-first
Shifting stakeholders to be consumer-first. Use personas, user scenarios written out in narrative form, and other similar work products to reinforce *what* you’re doing.
2) Create a non-emotional way to manage your backlog
Math is a great way to maek things non emotional.
Put all your epic (big to-do’s) and/or tactics in a roadmap spreadsheet. Rank each one on a scale of 1-5. I usually start with a variation of these columns:
- Visibility Impact
- Value to Target Audience
- Value to Business
- Revenue Impact
- Effort
- Cost
Do a basic calculation, giving each item a non-emotional score, and rank them accordingly.
Every idea gets on the roadmap (even if it’s terrible) so everyone feels that their voice is heard. Then use this roadmap to facilitate priority discussions, letting the math drive decisions instead of emotions.
To help you take the first step in this journey, we’ve put together a simple Excel spreadsheet template that can be used to help guide the transition.
Fill in your upcoming initiatives and start ranking them. You’d be surprised how quickly you have clarity on what is important, what is a good idea but needs to come later, and what won’t bring much value to your organization OR your customers.
