The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The Importance of the Elevator Pitch | Foundations Friday #104

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Being able to describe our processes succinctly is critical. Summarizing our elevator pitch is also very important as well. Often we don't get a lot of time with our executive leaders, so we have to maximize the face time we do get. This is where we can deliver the "bottom line up front" approach to queuing up leadership decisions.In 2 minutes or less, be able to:Summarize the thing you need a decision onState the decision the team needs the leader to makeDescribe the impact on scope, schedule, cost, or qualityShare the team's recommendationMore at kevtalkspod.com

Thank you for coming to the KevTalks podcast. If you're ready to hear people's compelling stories, learn industry-leading best practice processes, and make progress in your personal and professional life, let's get logged in, let's get locked on, and let's get going in this episode of the KevTalks podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Foundations Friday 104, the importance of the elevator pitch. I posted on LinkedIn earlier this week about being able to describe your process and quoted Edward Deming that said, if you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. And then he gave some examples that was on LinkedIn, so check that out, about at different

levels. So the boots on the ground, managers, the C-suite, there's chief executives. But also, do you have your elevator pitch ready to be able to explain the good work that your team is doing, the challenges that your team is facing, the ask that you have for your leaders? Because sometimes you have a minute, two minutes, if you're lucky, five minutes, maybe with high-level leaders if you need them to make a policy-level decision to give you more money or more time or approve more people and all those kind of things, and you have to practice summarizing your ask. And so you don't want to read paragraphs of information just to get to the point. Now, that doesn't mean don't have background information ready to go. That's always very helpful.

But maybe not on the slide or not in your initial ask, right? It's kind of be brief and be to the point and be gone of here's the thing that I'm asking you about. Here is the question and the decision I need from you. Here's some considerations. Here's recommendations from the team. That's always good to include because your team's doing all this work. What do they recommend? What's going to be the best to keep us on budget, in scope, on schedule, and with high quality, and then let the leaders make the decision. But for us as project managers, program managers, or maybe you're a public safety person in charge of renovating stations, or maybe you're in construction and you have to ask to extend the contract because the build's taking longer.

Whatever industry you're in, be able to summarize your ask and your need and what your team is up to in a short period of time. Let's say two minutes or less. So that's good homework. If you have questions about project management, let me know. You can get in touch with me at Kevin at KevTalksPod.com. Go to KevTalksPod.com to follow, subscribe, buy some jiu-jitsu shirts. Those are pretty cool that are on there. The Breathe, Frame, Survive stuff.

I've been practicing jiu-jitsu now coming up on five years, which is pretty awesome. Got a nice kick to the nose this morning. A little welcome to the day, to the end of the weekend. Thank you all. I hope you feel welcome here on the KevTalks Podcast. Go listen to that promo I put out yesterday. Pretty cool to feature some of the folks that helped me get started in podcasting and then in project and program management and some key points there, right, that are as we're summarizing and figuring out what we're doing that we have to work together in public safety. If we're making things better, then that's good enough at times.

And we need to focus on providing a service to our team, to our organizations, and to ourselves. Take care of yourselves. Get some rest. Get some exercise. Thank you, everybody. Remember, hope is not a plan, and there should be no egos and no silos. When you're working with folks from outside your organization or from other teams within your organization. Godspeed, y'all.