Now just four months after launch, more than 200,000 people have taken more than 500,000 actions on AddUp. Particularly impressive is the engagement rate: 50% of visitors to AddUp are doing something, from advocating for a campaign to sharing with friends.
So how did they get here? We caught up with Arielle Kilroy, Senior Director of Digital Products at the Sierra Club, about what she learned in getting the organization to adopt this new platform. Whether you’re at an organization that’s large or small, for or non-profit, there are universal lessons here on getting shit done. Enjoy:
Tailor the buy-in process.
The first thing I learned was that for people to buy in they had to understand what they were buying into. Most people don’t want to admit in front of a large group when they don’t know something, so sometimes lack of questions is a show of a lack of understanding. In order to mitigate the fear of the unknown, I always had real world examples that people could relate to (Kickstarter, Amazon, etc.). Don’t get into the code level, just conceptually explain it. Even if they don’t need to understand, feeling like they do at a high level will go a long way. You probably won't have a one size fits all presentation or memo, but one that answers the question “what does this mean for me?” for a variety of audiences and levels.
Frequent communication is critical.
What would I have done differently? More frequent two-way communication. As a product manager, it’s easy to get so in the day-to-day that you forget other people need to know what the latest is. Remember that if stakeholders haven’t heard from you, they assume nothing is happening (or worse, that it’s going poorly).
Be prepared to do the legwork especially if your organization is on the larger side. A project management best practice defines stakeholders as a person or team that is affected by your project. Since the stakeholders’ acceptance of your project affects its success, informing them early and often will help them mitigate risk and build momentum.
Transparency is key. Be as clear and forthcoming as you can with deadlines/reasons for delays and failures; try to get ahead of it. Things will happen. Frequent communication keeps molehills from becoming mountains. Also, not all communications need to be administrative or negative. Share learnings and tips. So future projects can benefit all and everyone feels informed along the way.
Plan and stick to the plan.
It helps you achieve your end goal, manage expectations, mitigate scope creep, and build faith by delivering incrementally and often. This doesn’t have to mean you tell your ED (or CEO) “no” but it does mean you might say “not now.” Adding to the scope of a project without assessing the effect on schedule/budget is one of the biggest reasons projects fail. As they say in startup world, deliver early, and often.
Listen first. Act second.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Having a diverse stakeholder group that is deeply involved was essential to the product and our internal communications success. At the Sierra Club, they’re called the User Reference Group (URG) and representatives from field, digital, chapter organizations, and volunteer leadership participated. These coworkers will make or break the success of the product both from a strategic sense, but also as advocates within their peer groups.
Which leads to: open yourself up to ideas.
You also never know where the next aha moment or big idea will come from. Very recently I was in a team call and one of our Outings Leaders asked if we were going to build a certain feature and my reaction was “Damn, that’s a good idea, I wish I had thought of that.”
Take the time to recognize a good idea. It is also fine to acknowledge one that’s not plausible now, but could be done later (and make sure you report back).
When you invest in taking the time to bring people along, they won’t only support, but they’ll add to it in ways that you couldn’t imagine.
