PART 02: READY? AIM! // INITIATIVE

05 Break Down Complex Initiatives

We know that each communication flow should focus on a single initiative. Overloading a communication flow with multiple initiatives can blur focus and hinder progress. Multiple communication flows aimed at a well-defined, single achievement are better than one broad discussion on various topics with the superset of relevant people. 

The challenge is that what seems to be a single initiative is often too complex or broad and may require many steps (sometimes even with different associates). When we use such an initiative to guide our communication, we might find ourselves in a long series of activities and interactions before we achieve tangible progress. We won’t be able to verify if we are heading in the right direction or investing our time wisely in the right actions. We want to create progress in small increments and with minimum interactions. The way to do that is to break down the initiative into smaller ones. 

Consider the mission “to design a new feature in our product.” Some of the underlying initiatives that come to mind are: 

• Understand the needs of our users. 
• Analyze the offering of competing products. 
• Select two candidate features for mock-up. 
• Pick one feature of the two for implementation. 

Each initiative will help us progress toward our mission and can serve as the target of a communication flow. However, some initiatives might be too broad or require many interactions and activities. To stay focused and achieve meaningful progress quickly, we should further break down such initiatives. Let’s take the first one as an example. 

To understand the needs of our users, we might need to do the following: 

• Define different user profiles. 
• Decide how to collect and analyze the users’ feedback.
• Analyze the collected feedback and generate product-related insights. 

These actionable steps contribute to the initiative “to understand the needs of our users“ and promote the mission “to design a new feature.” Treating each step as a separate initiative will help us assemble the right people, streamline activities, and achieve tangible progress faster.

Defining this set of narrower, more focused initiatives dramatically impacts the following interactions. If you set up a meeting with the goal “to design a new feature,” it will be concluded with no concrete outcomes or poorly supported decisions. The goal is too broad for a single communication flow. If you use one of the original initiatives instead and design a flow to “understand the needs of the users,” you are still facing a challenge that will not be resolved in a single meeting or even a short series of discussions. The initiative is too open-ended and doesn’t give the team meaningful guidance on managing the discussion. There’s a good chance such a communication flow will end with little or no progress. In contrast, when we use the initiative “to define different user profiles to understand the needs of our users,” we can have a meaningful outcome in a short and plain communication flow, with some preparation and no more than a couple of discussions. We clearly define what we expect to have by the end of this flow, and we ensure this target can be achieved in a limited time. 

By now, you may recognize that breaking down initiatives mirrors the planning you would naturally do to achieve a goal, even if you worked alone. This is no coincidence. Generative Communication plays a critical role in achieving goals and ensuring structured and effective collaboration. Any goal we cannot reach alone requires teamwork. When emails, meetings, and chats support our plan, with each interaction tied to a specific step, our interactions are meaningful — they have value. 

Clearly defining initiatives increases our chances of making meaningful progress with every interaction. By breaking down initiatives into fine-grained steps, we can always focus on the next, immediate step without losing sight of our destination and our path. 

Nevertheless, the breakdown of initiatives is often dynamic. The longer our project and the more complex the mission, the harder it is to create a detailed breakdown of initiatives. Goals may change, and the people involved might come and go; new information, constraints, or ideas might affect our path to the mission. Planning every step of the way before even taking the first one is often overkill.

Modern planning methods favor a more agile approach: plan incrementally and “just in time.” First, define the high-level initiatives (the big stones) and then break them down into finer-grained initiatives as you go. In other words, before diving into the next initiative, consider breaking it down if necessary. When encountering an unexpected challenge or opportunity requiring communication, define new initiatives as needed. This way, we can minimize the time invested in planning high-level goals while addressing finer details as they become essential.