Organization and Storytelling...the critical skills for innovation project management

Executing a successful innovation project stems from the combination of two fundamental skills across the lifespan of the effort. First, a solid organization plan implements everything from the pitch, through the work plan, and ending in the test results or project report. It is doing all the actions required to not just heard the cats, but properly express those plans in written form for others to see and understand. Second, the ability to tell the story of the project to each applicable audience in the right way at the right time is the lynch pin to gaining and carrying forward support to the project over time. These two skills are what holistically grows, supports, and maintains a project over its full lifespan.

Good organizational practices are what starts the project off right, but also more importantly keeps the project on track. It is very easy to start with an idea, and very quickly get lost in the momentum of funding, and lose good organizational practices. One of the most common issues is to lack project plans for efforts that don’t require them as a statutory piece of paperwork for a funding request. Where an Open Topic SBIR will require a work plan, a SIF funded project however usually only has a concept description. Tactical level projects run fast and try new things, but ultimately many of those projects are trying to scale past a local effort, and higher level organizations will require more details and status updates. There is no substitute for good planning practices, and it always catches up to projects that do not implement them. The two most important items that even the smallest projects should have are a project plan and test result or project report. Being able to say at a minimum this is what and how we are going to do something, and at the conclusion this is what we did, are the bookends of baseline information that anyone will want to know about your project. These do not need to be super long or overly detailed. Below you can see an example of both that I created by simply utilizing existing DoD Forms used by the formal testing units in the Air Force. In between the start and conclusion of a project, it is all about the status updates. There are plenty of options for innovation trackers, and it really just depends on which works best or is mandated for your use, but always using any tracker and updating your data consistently is key. Writing down what you are doing, and expressing it in an accessible way with regular updates to others is the underlying goal to organizational practices in your project management.

Test/Project Plan Template

Test/Project Report Template

The lifecycle of an innovation project is an ongoing quest of constantly selling the core idea of your project in ever more creatively applicable ways up the chain of command for support. This fundamentally starts with a simple question, do you know what you are selling? I did not say, do you know what your project is doing, that is something different. There is an important difference between what you are doing and what you are selling. You might be conducting a project to produce a 3d printed dongle to prevent leakage of water from an onboard aircraft dispenser, but what you are selling is the utilization of additive manufacturing to cheaply prevent expensive aircraft damage and downtime for repairs. It’s the difference between action (what the project is doing) and the impact (what you are selling the project as providing). Gaining support and approval of a project is about knowing how to tell the various flavors of that impact story to the applicable audience. If it’s a tactical level commander, it is about keeping that unit's aircraft running. If it’s an operational level commander, it’s about the less aircraft are down for maintenance the more the missions get accomplished. If it’s a strategic level commander, it’s about showing how additive manufacturing can be utilized as a cheaper way to more rapidly provide available repair solutions for increased battlefield success. In short, the tactical level cares about their stuff, the operational level cares about overall mission impacts to planned execution, and the strategic level cares about funding and resource impacts to overall mission priorities. Learning how to craft the story of your project for each of these audiences is what unlocks approvals and funding as you scale your project.