We sleep on how complex it is to launch something new. In the midst of the stress eating, best guesses, decision-making and all the other work on our plate we can get caught in the trees and lose the forest. Whether you’re a socially conscious business, charity, social enterprise or just an organizer, how many times have you launched something that wound up being a bit womp womp?
Right now, you might be implementing a new grant, new funding, new partner, or capitalizing on new opportunities. But are you hedging against some of the big mistakes? Not just going through, but doing things that move you closer toward your mission, purpose, and/or impact?
What Can Cause The Big Mistakes
The story of how most new initiatives come to be is pretty similar across the board. Someone has a great idea, and several others say, “We should do that.” For whatever reason, the idea sits for a few months or even years. Funding might be an issue. There might be a really important product launch to get past. Or the grant-cycle may take forever and a day. But eventually, the time comes to pull the idea off the shelf, blow the dust off and get it into action. The only problem is, what sat for forever has to be done like yesterday.
What results, under internal pressure, is skipping a key piece of the launching process. Clarity. Sure, there may be an idea, but it likely needs to be flushed out. Why are we doing this? To what end, and how does it connect with our mission? Who all needs to be involved internally and externally? Where do we find them? What are the stakeholders? What are the potential risk to timeline or budget? Who are the stakeholders? What impact do we want to have, and how do we measure? There’s a number of questions to work through.
Moreover, what non-obvious opportunities does the launch present? Are there marketing opportunities? Community engagement opportunities? Cross-departmental opportunities? It’s important to take a beat and give everything a landscape view, otherwise, you miss out on amazing opportunities to grow, tell stories, evangelize, or fundraise.
When launches don’t have measures (like allocating time and a team) to work through this preliminary stuff, it sets the rest of the launch up for challenges, indecision, confusion, and a loss of momentum.
Taking a moment to flesh out desired outcomes and expectations are essential for a launch. If there’s more than one person involved, there will be several different expectations and outcomes that will need reconciling. Not to mention, in my experience the first outcomes a group decides on are almost never the actual outcomes they want. They’re usually surface and need a little bit of massaging.
When launches don’t have measures (like allocating time and a team) to work through this preliminary stuff, it sets the rest of the launch up for challenges, indecision, confusion, and a loss of momentum. Creating time to strategically think through a launch is one of the best ways to catch potential mistakes sooner.
Other Mistakes In Program, Initiative, or Project Launches
Still, when it comes to impact work the point of planning isn’t to avoid all mistakes but to find what you can and think through how you’ll create space for what you don’t think of. Because it’s not until you get into the work that certain nuances and dynamics become apparent, or assumptions get tested. Knowing this, here are a few other mistakes I see during launches to watch out for:
- Not creating space and time for discovery and exploration. Too often, most of the focus is on do, do, do. But what you’re “doing” may not be getting you where you want to go and it may put the launch in harm’s way. There has to be time built in and respect is given to exploring. Sense-making along the way, and asking more questions.
- Putting in place a legal structure too soon. When you immediately snap into a “do” stage the concern immediately becomes protecting things by putting a fence around risk. Naturally, that translates to creating new legal entities, shifting entities around, or formalizing structures. But, how do you formalize structure when you haven’t really dived into the work? What if the structure is wrong? If you want to put a launch in a cage, structure with no knowledge or learnings under the belt. If you want to make sure your legal structure leads to success, then do some of the preliminary work and research first. Then, form around what you’ve found.
- It’s amazing how many organizations are well into a launch before they think to ask about the scope, legal obligations, restrictions, expectations, outcomes, and needs. The problem is, these are often assumed based off of cobbled together information. Between legal terms a lawyer might have thrown together, oral instructions from an executive, and emails between managers everyone just starts. But, these are things you want to make certain everyone is on the same page about from the start.
- We are not entitled to people’s time, talent and input. These are a privilege and they must come with attribution. That includes feedback and thoughts. That’s especially important when working with creatives and the community. Additionally, I try to make it a point to leave people better off than when I found them. If someone has someone particularly relevant or profound to say, why not create a platform for them? Make introductions that might lead to changes? nd platforms. Launches are an opportunity to build bridges and trust. They’re also an opportunity to destroy bridges and trust if you’re not careful.
- Building in “oh, snap” time. This is where things inevitably go wrong. There needs to be time, and people need to know who to go to. Which means folding in flexibility and adaptiveness.
- Things slip through the cracks and opportunities missed because launches are usually forced onto someone with a thousand other things to do. Overwhelmed and undersupported, something has got to give and its usually the things I’ve outlined here. Give launches a fighting chance by having some help drive the train or take charge of the train altogether. Have someone driving the train. This also gives staff an opportunity to come in with fresh eyes, instead of being in the weeds, and redirect a launch when appropriate.
- Launches are rich with learnings, data, information, and engagement. Don’t hoard all of this in one department or with one person. Build-in opportunities to cross-pollinate. Debrief others on what’s been happening, and use this opportunity to crowdsource ideas or feedback from the group. They may have contacts, perspectives, or approaches the project currently doesn’t that are helpful. Don’t hoard all the learnings and data for yourself and don’t leave it with a specific group. This includes any new needs identified that may be attractive for funding. Or, opportunities to enhance the brand and organization’s audience or reach.
- To that end, organizations have to create a space where launch staff feel comfortable asking for help. And launch staff have to be upfront with their asks and needs. I’ve seen launches pitter out simply because the staff didn’t ask for help until too late.
- Tell your story, tell your story, tell your story. Any chance you have to communicate is a chance to tell a story. The story of the organization. Why the organization was founded. Or even, what the program or initiative matters. It’s in story-telling that we create opportunities to find the resources we need; whether people, money, or attention. Also, the more we tell stories the more we can check back in with our why. Creating opportunities to recruit help by allowing others to see the role they play in our stories.
- Summarize the work of the launch and share the value of that work. Seeing real-time and real-world contributions help with team-building, loyalty, and reconnecting staff to why they’re with the organization. But don’t just share the work internally, share it with external stakeholders too. Here’s yet another opportunity to talk about challenges, needs, to educate, and talk a little about how you’re contributing solutions. Possibly even connect the dots with other things you do or larger challenges. Speaking of challenges, talking about challenges or wrong assumptions is a great way to build transparency and trust. Using infographics can be a great way to do this.
- Collect data. But not just to say your collecting data. This is another one of those instances where a little thinking upfront can go a long way. What type of data would be helpful? Data on customer use and expectations? Customer experience? Aggregating beneficiary stories? Consider aggregating data into a short presentation for colleagues or funders.
Myths to Bust Before You Start
I don’t have enough time or money: If there isn’t enough money to resource a project well enough to put together a team and planning, then how is there enough time or money to run an impactful program or initiative? One big shift I make with clients is their expectations around how launches will run or outcome. There may not be the resources to do it the way an organization thought it would, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough resources to do it another way. Then it becomes a matter of distilling down the intention and brainstorming other ways to accomplish that. You have to decide are you just doing the work? Or are you going to have a major positive impact?
We’re just doing something good: Not sure if you’ve noticed but a lot of folks are getting into trouble under well intentions. This isn’t because doing good is a trap, it’s because meaning to do good is not enough. Too many organizations rest on their laurels of what they didn’t have to do, which causes them to short cut on engagement, research, relevancy, and resources. If you’re gonna do an initiative, do it. That means creating the team, actively involving a number of different stakeholders and educating yourself.
Takeaway
That’s probably enough for now. As you can see, there’s so much to launching new programs and initiatives. Don’t just do the work, do the work impactfully. And that means capitalizing on every opportunity you get to have an impact.
If you have any questions about anything I’ve mentioned here, or want help walking through what it would look like for you, don’t hesitate to reach out at emcclartypllc.com.