Getting a pet project off the ground - Part 3

Getting pet projects off the ground - Part 1
Getting pet projects off the ground - Part 2

Conduct a successful pilot

I can imagine what you are thinking. “Conduct a successful pilot? What kind of advice is that? How am I supposed to know if a pilot is going to be successful? That is why I am running a pilot!” Obviously, you can’t ensure that your pilot is successful, but you can (and should) do everything you can to make sure that the execution of the pilot is high quality. In my case, all I did was facilitate and try to ensure that as the business ran the pilot, that I could help them make good decisions. I went to the planning meetings, I kept abreast of the decisions the business made (but really just advised, they did all the work).

I also paid a lot of attention to the results. In my company’s case, the pilot wave had a good result. I put together a one pager with the results and am now using it to show other business units the impact that site testing could have.

Be patient

The last step is not really a step, it is more of an approach. I would counsel to be patient in all parts of the process. Rushing these things turns folks off. You really need to build support and get buy-in. It took probably 9 months from when I had my first discussion with the vendor and our first test. Let folks see the value and want to make the pet project their own. On that note, don’t hold onto the project too tightly. Let other folks take ownership. In my case, the first business unit, the one who piloted site testing is off and running. I am evangelizing site testing with other parts of the business.

Getting a pet project off the ground - Part 2

Link to Step 1.
Step 2
I don’t control the web properties for any of my company’s web sites, so if I wanted to introduce the organization to the benefits of site testing, I would need partners. So, the next step was to start evangelizing site-testing though the organization (BTW, the vendor was Optimost). This step has multiple sub-stages; create a sound-bite, chat the project up, and educate senior business leaders and others.

Sound Bite
I think that a common mistake with junior folks who want their organization to try a new technology, software, whatever, is to lead discussions with the technology. “Look at how cool this is!”

The problem is that a business leader is not going to care about the technology. They care about the problem. You need to make the problem come to life. So, I gave a lot of thought to being able to quickly explain the business problem I was trying to solve using as little jargon as possible...

You are going to use this sound bite in front of senior execs, so it is worth getting it tight and getting it right. Once I had someone interested in the problem, I could get them interested in the solution. In my case, my problem statement is: “We make site design decisions based on opinion, and not fact. In order to know the facts, we need to be able to rapidly test our site designs. We can use a “site testing” vendor to test billions of site design combinations in a matter of weeks. This will let us build a web page that optimizes for the things we care about, like generating page views, increasing the number of unique visitors, or contribution value.” We can argue metrics later, at this point; I was just trying to get some folks interested.

Chat it up!
So I had my sound bite, my next step was to start using it incessantly; in my meetings with my manager, her manager, my colleagues, you get the idea. I wanted as many people as possible to have heard the sound bite. This is really about laying the groundwork, getting people familiar with your problem and agreeing that this is a problem that needs to be solved. The reality is that big companies have any number of big problems needing to be solved. I was trying to get agreement that site design was an important one, one worthy of solving.

Over the course of the next month, I had a couple of meeting with Very Senior folks (regarding other projects) and worked my problem statement into the discussions (I really was shameless). Both of them agreed that our site design process did not take business needs into account, and that the organization really had no way ensuring that the site of gathering those facts; facts that we needed to optimize our page design. I suggested to both of them that I bring in a vendor and invite each of their senior staffs to learn of the benefits of site testing.

This was an easy sell. Most Very Senior folks want their staff to be more innovative and are happy to give a little push. If you try to go from the bottom of the organization up, well, I have tried that method and have had little success. I am sure it is possible, but in my very big company, people are busy doing their regular jobs and need that push to take on additional responsibilities. I had actually tried to get the organization interested in site testing about 6 months previously. One of my colleagues and I invited a number of junior staff to an information session and nothing came of it. While they appreciated the session, no one felt empowered to kick off a pilot.

One last piece here, you better have become an expert in step 1. One of the business leaders had used site testing in a previous organization and knew his stuff. So, I needed to be able to have a pretty detailed conversation with him in order for him to be confident that I was the right guy to push this project forward. Almost home!

Educate senior business leaders and others

As mentioned above, I asked the Very Senior folks who should be invited to the educational sessions and they both suggested inviting all of their direct reports. I then put together an email that invited the directs to a meeting. The email explained site testing and offered to have a second session for their direct reports. This is a critical point. We actually had 2 meetings. One for folks who could reasonably sponsor a pilot and one for the folks who would be responsible for pulling it off. The types of discussions are different in those meetings and I wanted the leadership to be excited by the potential while I wanted their staff to be interested in the execution. I actually had at least 3 execution level meetings for various groups in the organization, but one Very Senior meeting.

It worked out well, though truthfully, I was trying to generate as much support as I could. If one of the more junior folks would have expressed interest in implementing site testing, I am sure we could have worked something out. Once again, I don’t know if my approach would work in every situation, but I was trying to plant 100 flowers and watched to see which one would bloom. The nice thing about having the Very Senior folks engaged was that their influence could help break log jams.

Next step: Conduct a successful pilot

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.