Whether you’re an executive, a project manager, or a team leader, presenting a business case or recommendation to boards or stakeholders effectively is crucial. Always keep in mind that getting to yes is the goal.
Business cases and recommendations are the bread and butter of strategy and projects. We all need to develop strategies and initiatives, and at critical milestones, recommend these to our boards, leadership teams, staff, and sometimes customers and other external stakeholder groups.
When I mentioned to an executive recently that my focus in the Turbocharge membership is business cases, he said that wasn’t relevant to him. However in fact EVERYONE presents business cases, you may just call it something else.
You may call it a
proposal,
case for change,
presentation with costs and benefits,
transformation roadmap,
a recommended strategy.
They all have one thing in common. As you present your preferred option, you need to get a “YES” answer to proceed. Below are 3 tips to “seal the deal”.
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Here are 3 tips to get a YES
- Put some science to your recommendation. This could be research, hard facts, a decision making matrix (one of the best tools I learned during my MBA which I teach in our February Turbocharge membership), or a cost benefit financial analysis. AI is making this easy and quick – just ask ChatGPT to summarize the research for you.
- Put some emotion into your recommendation. People like it when I tell war stories from the trenches, as they’re a powerful way to influence. Case studies, examples, stories are powerful at generating emotions, and more memorable than facts alone.
- Consider the workplace culture in which you’re making the recommendation, and how to make it attractive within that particular culture. For example, if the business is highly risk averse, have you mitigated all risks and provided an option for a small scale trial / pilot / test period? How do you make the recommended option feel safe?
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Quote of the week
Think outside the square in terms of how you can make your recommendation feel safer. There are many more ways than this:
“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” Unattributed.
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Join our Turbocharge membership in February if you want your recommendations to land better with decision makers.
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Keep turbocharging, keep growing 😊🌱📈
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Written by Lisa Carlin for FutureBuilders: https://www.futurebuildersgroup.com/3-tips-to-get-a-yes-for-your-strategy-recommendations/
About Lisa Carlin
As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbocharge their transformation and business planning. Lisa’s clients have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).