One change → smoother projects
Hi Everyone,
The kickoff meeting is the wrong place to get everyone to agree on a project.
The agreement needs to be in place before it starts, and you build that agreement via a short one-on-one call with each person who could stop the project.
Today, we're covering how to run those “pre-wire” calls.
What a pre-wire is
A pre-wire is a 20-minute one-on-one with someone who could stop the project. You tell them what you're planning, and you ask what they'd need to support it. How they react is the point of the call — it tells you whether they'll object at the kickoff meeting or support you in it.
The Project Management Institute studied over 2,000 leaders and found that 47% of failed projects fail because the team was building something nobody had explicitly agreed on.
Most of that could have been caught in a call like this before the project started.
Who to pre-wire
Before you send the kickoff invite, list every person whose work will be affected.
Pre-wire anyone who fits one of these three descriptions:
- Anyone whose approval you need
- Anyone whose team has competing priorities this quarter
- Anyone who already believes they're the decider
That's usually two or three people. Everyone else can be brought up to speed in the kickoff itself.
What to ask them
Ask these four questions in your pre-wire meetings:
What would make you unable to support this? People rarely raise objections on their own, but they'll name them when you ask directly.
What are you focused on this quarter that could get in the way? A team lead who is falling behind on their own targets won't put their team on your project, no matter what they say in the kickoff meeting.
What's the top reason this fails? Asking about the failure as if it has already happened makes people name risks they wouldn't otherwise raise. We covered the pre-mortem in February — this is a smaller version of it.
Whose approval do we absolutely need? They usually know, and their answer tells you who else needs a pre-wire meeting.
After each pre-wire, send them a summary of what you agreed on and what's still open. It becomes your shared record if anyone later remembers the conversation differently.
Try this before your next kickoff
Pick a project you're about to launch. List the people who could most easily block or slow it. Book 20 minutes with each of them before the kickoff invite goes out.
If someone declines the pre-wire, that's information. It usually means they're not aligned with the project or already committed to something that competes with it. Either way, better to know now than after the kickoff meeting.
Ogi Kavazovic was VP of Marketing and Strategy at Opower, the software company later acquired by Oracle. He walked the two-year vision through the leadership team, then the wider company, before development began. The team delivered better than 80% of what they'd planned, within a 20% margin on time and budget.
For a result like that, a few calls before your next kickoff feels like a fair trade.
Go deeper
👉 Bain: Who Has the D? — read this when two teams on your project both think they own the same decision, and you need a way to name it before it becomes a fight.
👉 First Round Review: Dear PMs, It's Time to Rethink Agile at Enterprise Startups — Ogi Kavazovic on why enterprise projects need more pre-alignment than consumer ones, and how Opower did it.
👉 Amazon: An insider look at Amazon's culture and processes — how the PR/FAQ document forces alignment before any code is written, and why most PR/FAQs never turn into products.
Coming up on Monday
On Monday, we'll cover two questions from Warren Buffett and Suzy Welch to run your next hard decision through before you commit.
Have a great weekend, Everyone!
P.S. Projects are kicking off across your company all the time. Forward this around.