Why aren’t my project planning conversations landing?

By: Stephany Medina

Years ago, I was asked to investigate if a new program our nonprofit was considering would be a good investment. I asked different units across our organization high level questions like: What is the community need we’re seeing? Would the proposed program meet that need?  

While I was trying to get answers to my questions, other units were asking questions like: How would we advertise the program? Who would we need to collaborate with? As a planner, I found it frustrating that we were getting “distracted” by these types of questions. My thought was, why get into the details if the answer to our question about meeting community need was “no”? 

Looking back, I realize how silly it was of me to assume that teams focused on operations weren’t going to ask questions about operations. We struggled to find clarity and direction forward in our discussions because we were thinking at different levels of perspective, and that influenced the way we engaged in this discussion. 

The levels of perspective range from looking at the details like through a magnifying glass to looking at how the systems work with one another like at a satellite view.

If I were to do this project again, I would set the stage with this 5-minute video from Chris McGoff at The Primes, who I think explains it best. Check out the video to see how our levels of perspective, while all equally valuable, determine which problems and solutions we see. Being aware of this can help guide discussions in more productive ways. And I can definitely say, this is something I’m still learning about every day!