All the right people are in the room talking about all the right things, and yet nothing happens.
Why the hell can’t smart people who agree with each other make a decision at work? You’ve seen it — a new project starts, people get into a meeting, each person talks about how their own expertise can contribute, and...no one says anything else.
Or maybe someone says “what are the next steps here?”
And then the group settles on a vague next step like “everyone leave comments in the sheet and we’ll meet again in two weeks.” Two weeks later, 1.5 people have left comments and there’s been no progress. Even if the next step is more specific, no one ever writes it down and no one is surprised when the project stalls. My brain feels like Mugatu from Zoolander, screaming “We only have one meeting for chrissake. Kickoff? Review? Approval? They’re the same conversation! Doesn’t anyone notice this, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!? I invented the piano key necktie. I invented it!”
There’s a quote from historian B.H. Liddell Hart that I think about whenever this happens. In the book Why Don’t We Learn From History, he observed:
“For in any gathering of twenty or thirty men there is likely to be so much diversity and nebulously of views that the consent of the majority can generally be gained for any conclusion that is sufficiently definite, impressively backed by well-considered arguments, and sponsored by a heavy weight member, especially if the presentation is carefully stage-managed.”
Pay attention to “nebulously” and “sufficiently definite.”
At the beginning of any project, most of the room doesn’t actually have a firm perspective on what should happen. Thoughts, sure. But those thoughts are still shifting, like a smoke cloud. You can see the outline of what might be a good idea, but the details are missing. Until people go off and think on their own (and most of the room won’t set aside that time), ideas will stay misty and the next meeting will be the same as the last one.
The fix is to define the cloud of smoke. If you could offer the group — not a finished painting, but the paint-by-numbers with an outline — experts could go off, do the shit they’re expert at, and share the results when you meet again.
What kills me is that the ideas are right there. A room full of experts throws them out in front of everyone, each expert tossing their insight on the pile. But because ideas are still vague and no one wants to risk not having a consensus, they stay there and decompose. Hopefully you compost.
This is where “sufficiently definite” comes in. You don’t have to tell the experts what to do, because they just told you what they should do! What you need to do is get ideas down on paper — with as much detail and as little fluff as possible — and designate exactly which areas need more info.
Here’s what that looks like:
Collect the ideas
Put them in them in the right order
Note where information is missing
Ask the experts to fill in that information
This is a top five “soft skill:” summarize!
Simple, but make this look good. Write in full sentences and use bullets sparingly. Name the doc “Project Plan: [Insert Project Name].” Add a title, break each section off with headings, and insert a table of contents at the top. In Google Docs this takes literally three clicks (insert → table of contents → click), but people go nuts for it and it’s part of the presentation being “carefully stage-managed.”
Viola (typo, but I’m keeping it). You’ve got a project plan.
You did almost no original work, but you saved everyone a few hours of pointless meetings, gave them space to elaborate on ideas, and lit a fire under the people who need to start working first (because everyone else’s effort depends on theirs).
I am constantly astounded by what people try to keep in their heads. When there’s a project plan, you can feel the relief waft off of people. Groups want a consensus, but no one wants to risk hearing a “no” by putting their plan forward. When you give people something to agree on (and they mostly agree, because you’re showing them their own recommendations), ambiguity disappears and everyone can focus on what they’re best at.
If people disagree with what you put down, great! At least you get to talk about that, fix it, and move on.
I’m overselling a little, but not by much.
I did this recently for a project that stretched across design, site, product marketing, revenue marketing, outbound sales, content marketing, SEO, and social media. Content marketing — my area — barely had actual work to contribute. But putting together a 600 word project plan and tagging each expert in their mostly-blank section made the project start moving after a three-week stall.
When I did this for a major campaign — also my-team-adjacent but not mostly on us— my boss used the brief to tell other executives what they could expect. Afterwards she said “nice work,” and added “that was some CMO shit.”
The whole thing took less than 90 minutes.
How to put together a project brief by adding literally zero new information
Most of what you need to do is summarize what everyone else said. But there are a couple of nuances to think through as you build and share the brief.
I don’t have a “project brief template” that I use, since I like to keep briefs flexible based on the project. Still, there are a few pieces of info that just about every brief includes:
A summary for executives
What you are going to do
What order you will do it in
What you need to get it done
The executive summary includes an even briefer...brief...of those bullets, along with a couple sentences describing the reason for the project and the anticipated results.
The info for each section comes from the ideas meeting + elaboration from the experts. Executive summaries are the trickiest because you need to understand what your execs care about. I’m sure I’ll write more about execs eventually, but for now I say learn over time by watching what happens after they see your plans.
“Benyamin, isn’t this just a normal project brief? We already use briefs, workback plans, all kinds of stuff.” One difference between what I’m describing and a normal “project brief” is that this summary you put together isn’t going to have deadlines. The other difference is that this exists outside of whatever processes you already use. This is you personally summarizing the ideas from a meeting. Maybe it later turns into the official brief, maybe it dies in a Google Doc folder — if it moves the conversation forward, it did its job.
Back to the deadlines thing. You are not a project manager (unless you are, in which case more power to you). Your job isn’t to assign people work and give them deadlines, and people will resent being assigned new work — even if they don’t say anything about it.
That’s why summaries are effective. You aren’t assigning work at all, just reiterating work that people already verbally signed up for.
Don’t make a workback plan. But do capture key milestone moments for the project (for example, “for this to work, the website has to be live by November 12th”). These are easy to agree to because they’re not variable — there really is a date where everything needs to be live, so people can agree to the plan without feeling like they’re signing up for something.
How summaries can go wrong
Honestly? That’s sort of everything. Just in case, here are a few steps that can save you from headaches.
1. Share your plan with one member of the group before you share it with the whole group. That will help you get some feedback and make sure you have a friend in the room during the meeting where you share. Having people who agree with you before you start talking is also part of the presentation being “carefully stage-managed.”
2. FULL SENTENCES. Yes, lots of people take notes during meetings. Think about how you respond to those notes — big bulleted lists of varying levels of specificity, not well organized, no clear recommendations. You open them, glance, x-out, and never think about ‘em again. Make the thing look well-considered and people will consider it.
3. Note who you want more information from in each section, but also make sure you email, slack, or verbally tell them that you want their input. That’s what makes this different from “everyone leave your notes in the Google Doc.”
4. Because you made the plan, you might get questions about it and not know the answer to those questions. Good news! The experts can probably answer — and you know the experts in each area, because you’re the one that made the plan. Send question askers their way.
The last time I remember formally learning about “summarizing” was in 12th grade English class. But summarizing experts’ thoughts at the beginning of a project is one of the easiest and fastest ways to make yourself more effective.
If it’s so easy, why does it never happen? My guess is that it seems too simple to matter, and that it’s easier to sit in the meetings than it is to take notes and propose the path forward. Summarizing has been so powerful for me that I’m honestly stunned more people don’t do it anyway.
But hey. There’s your opportunity.