Presenting project information and updates to the leadership group can sometimes be a stressful experience. Members of your senior staff often have only small chunks of time available to discuss the details of each project. Keeping them engaged within those narrow calendar windows is the key to maintaining their support for resource requests and ensuring they continue to encourage stakeholder participation.
To take the anxiety out of executive team briefings, we’ve put together 10 things you can bring to the next executive team meeting that will help make your meeting successful and productive.
1. Data. Budget forecasts, timeline variances, resource consumption, risks—you should have quick access to project details once your presentation begins. An on-demand platform that puts project and portfolio data at your fingertips ensures you can speak intelligently with the leadership team and showcase the project’s state at each point in the lifecycle.
2. Visuals. Even simple visual elements—a one-page infographic, traditional pie charts, schematics, photos—can create more interest than numbers or words alone. Visuals also help convey information more clearly and with more context than reading or speaking, giving busy executives a way to quickly turn their focus toward your project.
3. An agenda. Sending a meeting agenda ahead of time helps set expectations, but you should also bring a copy with you, either on paper or within your presentation deck. You can pull it up if the discussion veers off course and redirect everyone back to the agreed-upon talking points.
4. Multiple project views. Prepare a high-level picture of your project to show the leadership team where things stand, then put together some details in case they want to dive to a deeper level. Executives rarely want to get into the weeds on a project, but don’t assume an overall view will satisfy everyone.
5. Answers to the most likely questions. Review your project data and look for elements where senior staff are most likely to have questions or want additional information. By coming prepared with some targeted answers and insights, you can often address most of your sponsors’ concerns.
6. Input from your team. Have group members received questions from the executives? If so, confirm the outcomes of those inquiries and be prepared to either continue the conversation or provide any answers that are still outstanding.
7. Patience. Senior staff members engage with many different parts of the business throughout the day, and they may bring tangentially related discussions into your project meeting. Be flexible if the conversation briefly goes in a different direction but be ready to return everyone’s attention to the main topic if things go on too long.
8. Confidence. You know your project inside and out. Between your memory and the data available to you on demand, you’ll be well positioned to answer most of the questions the leadership team might throw at you. For everything else, it’s okay to tell them you’ll get back to them soon with the information they want.
9. A plan for following up. Your team will probably have some data points to track down or additional details to share with the executives and other senior stakeholders. Add a master follow-up task to your list now and block out some post-meeting time to take care of any action items.
10. An estimated date for the next executive briefing. It’s important for sponsors to see progress on the horizon, and that includes knowing when they’ll receive an updated status report. Even tentatively flagging a specific week for the next meeting helps set expectations and gives everyone a mental anchor for future discussions.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.