I don’t know about anyone else, but it has felt like an engagement sprint since back to school in September. Now, after Thanksgiving, there is another engagement sprint that will last until the holidays in December. While we are busy in the “doing,” it can be easy to lose track of how we are doing or how we did, losing sight of being reflective in our practice about what worked well, what could have been improved and ways to bring continuous improvement.
Recently, I facilitated three debriefs with three different clients. Some of the insights they identified as needing more awareness for future engagements were:
- The need to be very clear about the internal decision-making process from the beginning. Who has the final sign-off on materials? Who can extend timelines or make changes to the engagement scope? It was clear to the project team that being more intentional about internal processes would help them save time, budget and stress in the future.
- Talking through the engagement objectives so that the whole team would be really clear on the data we would “expect” to collect. This doesn’t mean we can’t be surprised and learn new things in the engagement (we absolutely hope we do), but it does mean that if we ask about “the types of apples you most prefer” we are unlikely to learn about mangos!
- Being creative about internally available resources helps to manage time and budget. Engagement should be a team sport, so it’s important to engage different internal departments with unique resources to achieve the overall engagement program. This requires ongoing internal communications, relationship building and the recognition that when an organization engages, it’s a reflection of the entire organization, not just a department.
To support continuous improvement and engagement debriefs, Engage Delaney has developed a downloadable template for your use. It’s here for you as a free resource to help you celebrate your engagement successes and gain better insights into what could have worked better.