How do you get your team excited and motivated to take on a massive new project? Aside from sharing details, goals and steps, do you have a strategy for helping your team feel truly engaged?
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To my mind they want to get excited for one of two reasons
1.) impact - we're going to change the m*f* world
2.) personal impact - this thing sucks, and this project is going to make my job suck less.
The reasons to not get excited are
1.) big projects seldom go as planned (especially from a time perspective)
2.) The things you say I'll get are often part of a sales pitch, not my reality - I've been through this and it's just going to make things harder
3.) I don't understand my role in this / something about this threatens me
So, when I think about getting the team excited. I'd want to focus on super clear outcomes, their gains (immediate, mid-term, career, etc). How this project fits into goals we already agreed to (continuity) and how we're going to ensure that things stay on the rails. Bonus points if you can provide value at milestones so even if the whole project doesn't get seen through they still know tangible progress is made.
Hope that helps!
While there are a lot of technical or planning things you can do that have been mentioned, if you want to get people excited, you have to work with their emotions. The things that drive them. For example in IT, many people are diving by knowledge, they love training, and new things.
You need to provide a sense of Ownership. Put there names on a highly visible project board so that people know they are involved in the new stuff.
You need to provide a sense of accomplishment, celebrate the small wins and have a project launch event even if its small.
Don't underestimate the importance of SWAG. If you get branded mugs, shirt, jackets or whatever you can afford it makes people feel like they belong to an exclusive group and it can be highly effective in motivating them.
For any project, there is always a vision and a roadmap. If the team is aligned with the vision, there is a sense of excitement towards achieving the results.
Data driven strategy always works. The magic is in the details.
Another critical aspect is the user persona for whom the project is getting built and how the team's effort will impact the life of user whether its a B2C consumer or B2B or infact an internal user.
Firstly we include the team to build the charter for the project- get them excited
For massive projects you may have many team members across sites , we start off by having a kickoff by our GM . Each site may have planning sessions and some joint sessions over the web. People getting to know each other across the sites/ remote, is very important for this large team to feel connected.
Setup Milestones - Have demoes ,celebrate each milestone , major achievements by the team. We usually have senior leadership join in a small team event - including even remote employees if possible.
Create a scoreboard that shows a burn up of major tasks for the project so team can see the progress to goal.
“The goal is not to get work done. The goal is to create something unforgettable.”
You don’t get people excited by throwing more slides or checklists at them. You inspire them by showing them the why.
A massive project is not just a set of tasks, it’s a chance to make something that matters, something people will look back on and say, “We did that.” I tell my team that we’re not here to build features, we’re here to build experiences that change the way people live.
The strategy is simple: connect the project to a bigger purpose. Make every person feel like their fingerprints are on the outcome. And then, remove the noise, clear the obstacles and let brilliant people do brilliant work.
Because at the end of the day, people don’t stay up late at night excited about a deadline. They stay up excited about building something awesome.