A Proven Process for Strengthening Stakeholder Relationships
Sort the Chaos. It’s a term I use to describe my research and design process.
This process happens at the beginning of a project, in the Discovery Phase. At this time, I don’t know much about the project, other than the goal. I start by collecting All the Things. Interview notes, old designs, existing components and pieces, articles, code snippets… all existing artifacts that will help me understand the problem.
I have been told that I become a different person during this phase. I’m not the lively, self-assured person people know me to be. I’m overwhelmed by a dizzying array of data, becoming a quiet shadow of self-doubt —adrift and uncertain of how to find my way out. If you ask me about the task at this time, you’ll get cries of hopeless confusion:
“I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“What did I get myself into?”
Some people interpret it as I am suffering and unhappy. And justifiably so, but, to their surprise, I am not in misery. It’s just part of the process. I’m deep in a sea of data and in the middle of swimming my way through it. It’s overwhelming, yet I am intent on sorting it.
Sort the chaos. It’s my catchy-catchphrase for ‘the process of applying logic to the problem.’ It describes my arduous approach to analyzing the artifacts, identifying patterns and relationships, and drawing insights from the data.
I have to apply some logical organization to the disorder and bring order to the madness. To work the problem, I use spreadsheets. For my process, spreadsheets are an excellent, low barrier tool for synthesizing large amounts of data.
With a spreadsheet, I can easily gather all of the data quickly into one place, break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, and then analyze the data to identify relationships and interdependencies.
From here, patterns emerge, and I can breathe a sign of relief. I let out a preemptive “AHA!” because the patterns are beginning to point to solutions.
But before I can explore solutions, there is one critical step I have built into my process that I do not skip.
Show your Work
Before I begin to explore and test solutions, I share my findings with my stakeholders. In short, I show my work.
I share the preliminary findings with my systems engineering stakeholders. I present a slide deck with the research findings I’ve gathered so far, along with analysis from my spreadsheets.
Since my stakeholders at JPL use spreadsheets, they can easily understand the rationale when I present my spreadsheets to them. NASA Aerospace systems engineers have a long history of working in spreadsheets. It’s their preferred tool. I wrote about this in a previous blog post, and spoke about it in my Config talk.
My stakeholders are so impressed with my mastery of spreadsheets that when I show them my work, I often get a lot of ‘OOOHs’ and ‘AAAHs.’
By using my stakeholders’ preferred tool, I win brownie points, and I’m aligning with their way of thinking. I am meeting my stakeholders where they are and connecting with them in a way that’s natural for them. I spend less time translating and explaining my work. To put simply, by using spreadsheets, I am speaking their love language.
Spreadsheets are so ubiquitous at JPL, that they are an ongoing and fun reference. A fellow designer and co-worker made this amazing sticker that reflects the JPL-love-of-spreadsheets culture:
Showing my spreadsheet-work-in-progress gives my stakeholders transparency into my research and design process. It allows them to see the applied logic to the data, that begins to point toward the solution. And the best part: I get stakeholder buy-in faster.
Build Trust
This logical process of working–sort the chaos, then show your work–has benefits. Showing work early (and often) adds transparency to my research and design process. By presenting my work before reaching a solution, I get buy-in more quickly, as it guides my stakeholders to the predicted outcomes and helps them arrive at the solution. And the best benefit of all: it builds trust.
Go forth: Sort the chaos, show your work, and build that trust.
