If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know I love talking about strategy. But just like how project management can’t exist in a vacuum, you also can’t only think about strategy. At some point, there’s gotta be action! Within a team setting, that looks like a steady flow of clearly-defined, cohesive, and efficient marketing projects. But what’s the first step in a well-oiled project flow? A project kickoff meeting! It’s a necessary meeting you must have for successful projects — and no, it can’t just be an email.
Here are seven essential parts of a successful project kickoff meeting (and a bonus pre-meeting step!) that will help you manage your project like a pro from the very beginning. Let’s dig in!
Bonus Pre-Meeting Step: Come Prepared
As the head of your company, you must drive the vision so you can make your kickoff as impactful and efficient as possible — don’t waste your, or your team’s, time because then you really could have just made it an email.
Download my Project Planning Checklist to capture all of the high-level details that you’ll use in your project kickoff meeting to flesh out the details and strategy moving forward.
If you’re working with a project management specialist (ahem, hi there!), this step still applies, even if that team member will be leading the meeting. You are the leader and visionary, after all, so it’s critical to have a system for capturing your vision so your team can execute it properly (without expecting them to read your mind)!
1. Share Clear Details About The Project
What is it, who it’s for, what problem does your audience have that this solves, and how this solves said problem are all things you should know going into your project. Having clear details will help you and your team understand how this project fits within your larger brand strategy and how it supports the message and mission of your business.
During your meeting, write everything down in one central place, like in a Project Kickoff Document, so you can share it with your team and reference it throughout the project.
2. Discuss Strategy
It isn’t enough to just have details. Now you have to put them into action with a defined strategy. Like I said above, you have to understand how this project supports your larger vision and goals. By discussing your strategy, you’ll ensure that everyone is on the same page. Think through how this relates to your target audience, supports your primary message, and how it aligns with your brand strategy for starters.
For a truly actionable project plan, go beyond just discussing it. Make sure your team really understands the strategy. The underlying strategy will impact nearly every nuance of a project — from the copy tone, to the graphics, to the structure of the final deliverable. Create an environment within your project kickoff meeting (and your team vibe overall) that allows your team to speak up. Be ready to answer their questions with deeper details and context so they fully understand the strategy behind what they’re getting ready to create.
Success Tip: Ask your team to poke holes in your strategy. This may sound crazy, but playing devil’s advocate can actually help clarify your strategy and set a strong foundation. It can also help clear up any confusion or misconceptions upfront. Your team has a lot of perspective that you can use to your advantage, so encourage them to say “yeah, but what about …” — and then be willing to dialogue together. This will help your team members feel like valued collaboration partners while also helping to make sure your project foundation is as strong as it should be. It’s a win-win!
Related Reading: 5 Best Project Management Tools for Your Business
3. Discuss the Timeline
Having a schedule is mandatory. If you don’t, you’ll run the risk of crunching a project, burning out your team, half-assing the work, or not leaving enough time to market and sell it.
And for the love of all things Holy, please take the time to account for all steps in your project timeline. (*HINT* This is a really important step, so don’t slack on it!) When you sit down and break down your schedule into individual steps, the overall timeline often ends up being longer than you think. So it’s an important exercise to help create realistic timelines.
Make sure your timeline includes:
- Project milestones
- All the deliverables you need (i.e. copy and graphics)
- Time for marketing (i.e. cart open time for enrollments)
- Each person’s turnaround times
- Review time
- Time for revisions
- Testing and/or final proofing
- Unexpected hiccups (AKA: buffer time)
Then, during your kickoff meeting, walk through your full project timeline with your team to make sure everyone feels confident in their step of the project and the timeframes they each have so they can do their best work. Talk through any time off your team might have to make sure it won’t impact your overall project schedule. And discuss your allocated review times to make sure everyone is clear on the process.
The goal here is to leave the project kickoff meeting with a clear understanding of the timeline and an agreement to stick to it (as best as you can, at least)!
Related Reading: Project Timelines: 5 Must-Have Elements to Include
4. Define Team Roles and Responsibilities
You are leading the vision … but don’t forget you’re also leading your team. In your Project Kickoff Call, it’s important to set expectations and specify the “order of operations,” AKA: who is responsible for which tasks and when they’re taking place before other tasks can happen.
This will give your team a sense of ownership and pride in their work — it’ll help them understand how their piece contributes to the overall success of the project.
More importantly, it’ll keep the project on-schedule. Eliminating the confusion of who’s doing what will cut down the “I thought I was waiting on so-and-so” mix ups that could halt your project.
This is also the time to make sure everyone is on the same page for approvals, questions, and so on. Set the expectations at your kickoff. For example: If you want to have your assistant collect all the questions and bring them to your weekly call or if you prefer addressing issues in Slack instead of Voxer as they come up.
5. Establish the Project Goals
It is so important to understand what success looks like before you do any work so you and your team know what you wish to accomplish. Explore your vision and the softer goals you might have for the project — how you want it to make people feel, the impact you want it to have, how you hope the team feels when it’s complete. And, of course, think through measurable, objective goals — the number of leads you want to generate, the total revenue you anticipate, the number of new clients you’d like to get, etc.
By discussing goals, you help bring context to what “good” looks like for the project without leaving it open to everyone’s individual subjective interpretation. And by having measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), you’re able to test and pivot to see how it impacts the results. You’ll also be able to iterate more effectively in future incarnations of this project.
Save time at your next kickoff meeting to clearly state what success would look like in terms of both practical, measurable numbers and “soft data” such as whether you’re being the leader you want to be, how you feel about the project, and so on so everyone is on the same page and knows what to aim at.
Related Reading: 7 Project Planning Mistakes to Avoid
6. Invite Collaboration and Questions
Communication, along with planning, is essential to a successful project. It’s here where I often see things start to break down. During your project kickoff meeting, ask your team to weigh in, collaborate, and voice questions. Like I mentioned when defining responsibilities, showing your team this respect and sense of ownership will help them buy into the success of the project.
Plus, there’s a reason you hired the team members you did — they’re great at what they do and they have a perspective and expertise that you don’t. So don’t be afraid to lean into the collaboration and encourage them to share their insight. The best work often comes from great minds who are focused together in support of a common goal!
It’s also worth mentioning that while collaboration often yields better, more informed, and more thoughtful projects, it can also uncover important gaps and breakdowns. Lean into this, too. Invite the hard questions — even the ones that might cause you to rethink a project, delay it, or table it all together for another time based on the feedback from your team. Some of the most successful projects I’ve been on were finally bringing to fruition ideas that had been shelved for another time because it wasn’t right when the idea first came up.
So, from start to finish in your project kickoff, be open to hearing dialogue among your team, encourage collaboration, and really listen to what they’re bringing to the call.
Related Reading: 6 Simple Steps for Project Management Success
7. Clearly Define the Next Steps
There’s nothing worse than getting off a Zoom call and going “Sooo what am I supposed to be doing?” paired with a shoulder shrug and blank look at your dog as if to say “What just happened for the last hour?”
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT get off your project kickoff call without recapping important details, discussing the next upcoming milestone, and noting important action items for yourself and the rest of your team.
If you take anything from this post, please do this: you, or someone on your team, should literally say “So, now what?” And then you should review the high points of the call and clearly define the next steps (and who owns them) so everyone leaves the meeting with a concrete plan of attack. And be sure to allow time for any final questions from your team during this part of the call!
Related Source: Two-Minute Tip: 3 Things You’re Missing In Your Project Schedules
Follow these tips to boost the productivity, team cohesion, and the overall success of your next Project Kickoff Meeting — and your next project too! (Not to toot my own horn, but…) I’ve led countless successful meetings to launch projects, so trust me on this format! Having this information articulated at the beginning will ensure your project is efficient, aligned, and (most importantly) as impactful as possible.