What if you paid $3 million to tell the world about your project

For Super Bowl XLV, the price of a 30-second commercial was $3 million.  Now, that’s a lot of folding money.  Just imagine paying $100,000 for every second your ad runs!  While 163 million of my closest friends and I watched the game, I thought about that price tag…and the opportunity.  What if my company ran a Super Bowl ad?  What would we say?  How would we make use of those prized 30 seconds?  Could we clearly communicate who we are and what we do?

Ok…here comes the transition: What if your project team had a Super Bowl-Ad-Like Opportunity?  Let’s say you’re invited to give a brief presentation at an executive board meeting, a shareholder’s meeting, a leadership summit, or some other high-exposure event.  What would you say?  Could you list your goals, your major deliverables, and your milestones?

Your team should be able to effortlessly rattle off key talking points about the project.  Make sure everyone on the team can complete these 5 statements:

1. This project will accomplish or produce the following…
2. These project results are important because…
3. To produce these results, we plan to use the following… (resources, schedule, & budget)
4. The project has senior-level support from…
5. To the sponsor, project success looks like this…

Now, you may be laughing and thinking… “You’ve never met that guy on our team named Wally.  He should NOT be talking about this stuff to executives!” Good point.  Maybe Wally is not the ideal spokesperson.  But, the point is all team members should be committed to the project.  To be committed, everyone needs to buy into the project goals, requirements, and delivery milestones – those key talking points.

My advice – make these project highlights visible to the team.  Talk about them often.  Be prepared in case your Super-Bowl-Ad Opportunity comes along!