How to kick off a piece of work
Kick-offs set the tone and create the foundations for the work ahead. They can quickly build momentum, pump prime a great team and fill the sponsors with confidence. It’s worth putting the time and effort into getting them right.
Here’s some tips for how to kick off work effectively.
Tip 1: Understand the sponsor
Understand your sponsor’s motivations and availability. Are they truly committed to this work and supporting the team? Or has this work been forced upon them by a quirk of budget ownership? What outcomes are they really seeking from the work?
Knowing this will help you design the right approach to kick-off and beyond.
Tip 2: Design the kick-off around the people doing the work, not the most senior person in the room
A kick off is usually the first opportunity for a new team to come together and start thinking, collaborating and planning together.
The purpose of a kick-off is:
for the team to learn more about each other
to understand the work and desired outcomes
to agree an approach and where to start
Involve sponsors and senior stakeholders in the kick-off, but don’t make all about them. They have a part to play but it’s for the people doing the work that kick-off is most important.
Tip 3: Create the agenda collaboratively
It works well if the team co-create the plan for kick-off.
Give each member of the team an opportunity to lead on aspects of it which relates to their specialist knowledge or skills.
It gives everyone a stake in its success.
Tip 4: Don’t rush it
Effective kick-off’s take time and effort. Whilst there isn’t a magic length of time and a lot depends on the work that’s about to be kick-off, as a rule of thumb think in day(s) rather than hour(s).
Or, in other words whatever is enough time to:
be clear why you’re doing the work
understand what outcomes you’re working towards
share just-enough knowledge about the problem domain
meet the sponsor (and look them in the eye)
understand who else is involved
get to know your team and learn who does what
do just-enough planning
The more of this that is done together - quickly, as a new team, usually the better.
Tip 5: Don’t skimp on team building
A kick-off is a perfect opportunity for the team to get to know each other and hopefully bond. If you don’t get that right at the start, that usually costs (time, low trust, poor communication). Do some team building exercises as part of the kick-off, no matter how cringeworthy it might feel.
And even though it is usually the thing that the team might inwardly or outwardly sigh about, or you could skip, it is easily the best time investment you can make together. A team that trusts and empathises with each other is worth every moment spent.
Emily Webber has written about an exercise called Team Manual which helps build empathy in teams. Try it.
Tip 6: Create momentum with good enough artefacts and just enough planning
Kick-off should be participatory - more workshop than meeting. Use the time to create the useful artefacts that the team will use in the immediate future (e.g. a plan, a stakeholder map, success measures, things to learn).
It’s good practice to make sure every item on the kick-off agenda produces a useful output.
Nothing needs to be polished. It should be just-good-enough. Version 0.01. Enough to give the team momentum.
