9 Elements of a Next-Level Project

In Project Management Basics, Part 2 – 6 Core Elements Every Project Needs, we talked about the basics that you should think about when beginning a project to ensure it goes off without a hitch. Things like goals, timelines, deliverables, and support are all non-negotiable considerations for your project. If it were an ice cream cone, you’d have a perfect chocolate-vanilla swirl and cherry on top.

We’re going to take the basics one step further and bring on all the toppings today. I’m talking waffle cones, magic shell dip, sprinkles, nuts, many scoops in many flavors, and a cherry on top. These are the extra considerations that will take your good project and raise it to a level of ultimate efficiency, alignment, and impact.

Sometimes a straight-forward dish of ice cream is all you need — you’ve gotta test the concept and get it out the door so you can build upon it later. When you want to kick it up a notch, this is how you do it. And since you’ve landed here, I know you’re a business owner with big dreams and plans for your business, so you want extra cherries. Let’s dig in!

1. A Defined Strategy

Of course, we’re starting here! (if you know anything about me, you know I’m a “strategy first” kind of gal). Strategy is the foundation of everything you do in your business and will be the compass to which you refer as you project goes along to ensure you’re hitting all the major points.

Anytime a client comes to me and says “I feel like I’m doing all the right things … but my projects just still aren’t hitting the mark for some reason” I always (literally, always) respond with “Well … let’s take a look at your strategy before we do anything else.” 

Your defined strategy for your project takes into consideration your brand strategy (that’s been informed by your audience strategy), your business strategy, your marketing strategy, and your goals. Think about where your project fits within your strategy and how it answers the struggles or provides the desires of your audience.

If you don’t have these core strategic elements defined for your projects, you can have the world’s most detailed and well-built schedule, the most efficient team, the most buttoned-up budget, and all the project management tools in the world … but your projects won’t ever be as powerful or as impactful as they could be because they’re not anchored in a defined strategy. 

So, if you’re ready to take your projects to the next level, always — I repeat, always — double-check your strategy. 

Success Tip: If you feel like you already have a strong, compelling strategy, but something just still isn’t clicking with your projects, pause for a moment and check in with your team. Make sure they know, and fully understand, the strategy behind the project. After all, you can know it like the back of your hand, but if your team doesn’t fully understand your strategy too, there will always be a disconnect that you’ll see, and feel, in your projects. 

Related Reading: The First Step to Defining Your Brand Strategy

2. A Detailed Project Kick-Off

I wrote a full post about what to include in your project kickoff meeting, so I’ll keep this brief. Holding a project kickoff meeting where all the details are laid out will keep your and your team organized, on budget, and on schedule. I know, I know, you’re a busy business owner and the thought of squeezing in one more meeting on your calendar is already giving you chest palpitations.

But trust me, this meeting is well worth the time. Even just 30 minutes at the start of the project to establish clear details and proactive communication will save hours and hours of potential churn and misaligned mishaps if your team isn’t on the same page later in the project! 

During this meeting, share as much detail as possible upfront and invite questions, conversation, and collaboration so everyone walks away with specific action items and understanding of how they support the success of this project.

Related Resource: Project Kickoff Meeting: 7 Essentials for Successful Projects

3. Clear Creative Direction

Creative direction refers to the preferences and guidelines you have for the concepts and visuals of your project. Your team can’t read your mind, so discussing the creative expectations of the project and how you envision it looking and feeling will give your team expectations of what to create. Your creative direction should always be in alignment with your brand guidelines (a document that clearly outlines your brand identity elements — your logo, submarks, fonts, colors, etc.). But also be sure to include specific subjective preferences, creative ideas, design, copy, etc.

It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you want; that’s what your talented team is for. But try your best to avoid the “I’m not sure exactly what I want, but I’ll know what I don’t want when I see it” cycle of endless revisions.

As much input, examples, and instruction that you can provide upfront helps close the gap between what you envision and what your team will interpret.

Success Tip: If you don’t have a brand guidelines document (even if it’s just a simple one-page overview of your brand identity), that’s okay. But I highly encourage you to either DIY it or reach out to a trusted designer to have one created. Having all of your important brand graphics and guidelines consolidated in one page for you and your team to easily reference throughout your project will minimize so much of the guesswork. It’ll also make the design creation (and review) process much more efficient. Not sure where to turn to have a brand guidelines one-pager created? Just let me know and I’ll share a few recommendations for designers I know and trust who are amazing and creating these! 

Related Reading: Project Management Basics, Part 1 – Project Management Glossary

4. An Efficient Project Management Process

If you’ve ever seen The Home Edit’s show on Netflix, you know it’s “A System!” They do the same thing each time in the same way. Talk about an efficient process! You can hone your project management process into a finely tuned system as well; when you do so, your project will graduate from kiddie cup to waffle cone in no time.

But before we go any further on this, you might be sitting there feeling your blood pressure rise and thinking “Koree… I’m just REALLY not a details or a systems person, okay?!” And, that’s okay!

Even if your creative process and leadership style is a bit more fluid, or if you’d rather have time and space to be a visionary and stay out of the weeds, you can still create some structure and systems that your team can implement.

And here’s the great news — you don’t always have to be the one to create and manage the systems. If you have a solid team (and maybe even a solid project manager as part of that team!) who knows your business and creation style, and knows how to create and implement systems that can honor both, then you’re golden! You don’t need to be the keeper or the creator of the systems, but you do need to understand how valuable and impactful they can be for your team, your marketing projects, and your business as a whole. 

From a project perspective, having an efficient project management system makes sure things don’t slip through the cracks. Trust me, something always happens—projects evolve, team members change, and life always has a way of throwing us curveballs when we least expect it—but if you have a solid project management system, you’ll be glad you’ve got backups, templates, and details stored in a system (like Asana) that you and your team can easily find and use

This process not only makes it easier for your team to find a flow, it’s also an easy way for your project manager to track statuses, schedule tasks, update project details, share files, and all the other things you need to keep track of through each stage of the project life cycle. In a glance, you can see the status of just about anything, which is a major stress relief when managing a complex project.

Related Reading: 5 Best Project Management Tools for Your Business

5. A Simple Way To Measure

At the end of your project, you should always measure your marketing! It’s the best thing you can do to make sure you’re maximizing everything you can learn from this project so you do it better in your next one.

If you don’t have standard data that you already track, or a system to capture that data, I’d highly recommend spending a little time to think through your measurement and analytics process (and software) sooner rather than later (i.e. before your next project kickoff). 

Think through things like:

• What metrics will you track?
• Where will you store the data? 
• At what checkpoints will you measure?
• Who is responsible for capturing and reporting the data? 
• How often (and where/how) will you share this data with the rest of your team? 

You’ll also want to measure:

• How your project aligns to your brand strategy
• How this project aligns with your brand identity
• How the project performs against your goals

Related Reading: Two-Minute Tip: 2 Things To Do After Your Project Is Finished

6. Open and Proactive Communication

Team communication is paramount to the success of a project. I know that sounds pretty basic, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a project go sideways because team members who thought they understood each other, the assignment, and their deliverables were actually on completely different pages (or, worse, in completely different books altogether).

So when it comes to the next-level efficiency and success of a project, clear and effective team communication is a must — not only between you, the business owner, and the team, but among your team members themselves, too!

I always recommend using effective communication tools, like Slack or Asana notifications, where you can centralize your team all in one place and make it easy to search for conversation threads. 

Set expectations and establish clear communication protocols at the start of the project during your kickoff meeting so everyone is on the same page of where and to whom to go when questions, feedback, etc. arise. Then, stick to it! If you agree to use Slack to share project feedback, don’t start scattershooting emails and Voxers and carrier pigeons all over and leave your team scrambling to keep up!

Success Tip: In addition to establishing a clear communication process upfront, also be sure to clarify availability for yourself and your team too. That way you’ll not only know how and where to share feedback or updates, but you’ll also know when to share these important details. In other words, don’t bombard your team with feedback at 10 pm and expect them to have everything ready to go first thing the next morning.

7. Strong Leadership

Yep, I’m looking right at you, you amazing business owner, you. As the leader of your business, you have to be the visionary for your business and lead with clarity and confidence. Don’t get stuck in a decision-by-committee cycle — step up and be the leader you know you’re capable of! This will help give your team a clear sense of direction. If you show up with confidence and clarity, they will too! 

That said, don’t shy away from brainstorming and collaboration. I know as a business owner, you have a vision, but you might not always have all the answers. And you have the team members you have for a reason — they’re all experts in their craft! So when you need a little help finessing the details or working through an idea, encourage collaboration among your team and take their opinions into consideration. Just be sure you set clear expectations upfront — if you’re pulling your team together for a brainstorming session, let them know that so they can come prepared and in the right frame of mind. Or if you’re wanting to have a meeting to share your vision for a project, then it’s your turn to come prepared and ready to lead. 

Ultimately, be clear about the direction your business and your marketing project is headed. Your amazing team will pick up on your energy and match you. 

Related Reading: 6 Simple Steps for Project Management Success

8. Collaboration and Encouragement of Ideas

Being a leader doesn’t mean being a dictator. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes projects call for you to make the call and lead everyone towards your vision (especially in times of turbulence or when a quick-turn project is necessary).

But oftentimes, great ideas can come from collaboration. So don’t hesitate to invite your team to share their honest ideas, questions, and feedback. Like I just said, you gathered them for a reason — lean on their expertise!

Encourage your team to “poke holes” in your ideas, and be open and willing to hear their feedback. It’ll make them stronger and more aligned and ensure all of the bases are covered before diving into creation mode. Respect everyone’s unique experience and perspective and give them the space (and the comfort) to share their ideas.

9. Team Alignment

Let’s finish off this waffle cone of project management success with a cherry on top: alignment.

Alignment with the project details.

Alignment with the strategy.

Alignment with the goals.

Alignment with the vision.

Alignment with each other.

When everything — and everyone — works in partnership and support of the big vision strategy, alignment is achieved. This is important because your audience can (and will!) pick up on a disjointed offer. And when your offers are all over the place, your audience is going to be confused, which leads to distrust and slow/no sales.

Alignment, flow, “when it clicks” … whatever you want to call it… you must have this chemistry and buy in from your team for an efficient, successful, next-level project to flourish. 

Related Reading: 4 Reasons to Integrate Brand Strategy and Project Management

Follow these steps and you’ll have the most delicious ice cream cone of project management there ever was.