Getting a pet project off the ground - Part 1

Part 1

My staff tells me that one of my core skills is getting large organizations to try complicated things. What I think they really mean is that I am good at getting the organization to try things senior folks don’t fully understand. For more junior folks, the folks who are closest to the technologies and the line, who understand the “thing,” it is very frustrating to try to get an organization to try something new and complicated. It does not have to be frustrating. Most recently, I got my employer, a multi-billion dollar web portal company, to start experimenting around with multi-variate site testing. I have a pretty standard plan of attack for these kinds of things and followed the same strategy for getting site testing moving in the organization: I try to know more, built support, conduct a successful pilot, and be very patient.

Know more
I like taking on pet projects. Even if they don’t go anywhere, I learn a lot. In the case of site testing, I spent about 4 weeks becoming the company expert. I started out by Googling like crazy, identifying vendors who offer site testing, read their white papers, etc. I then called the vendors and set up informational discussions. My advice is “don’t be shy.” Most vendors are happy to take these calls. They love in-bound sales leads and they know most don’t go anywhere. I did 2 calls with my first vendor, both an initial discussion of the technology and then a follow-up where we focused on implementation. I then spoke with 3 other vendors and explicitly asked them how their product differed from my first vendor. At the end of the 4 weeks, I had gotten a great education in the technology and what differentiated each company. I even put together a little one pager for myself to make sure I could articulate those differences.

Next part, we’ll talk about building support and evangelizing. Should be up in a couple of days.