A roadmap to a Viking funeral.

This weekend I met with a long-time friend who was looking for direction on a new role. The legacy program they inherited is operating like it's 2005, the company is burning through money and leaving it on the table at the same time, and it's all happening because the entire company doesn't know what they don't know that they can't see. My friend is overwhelmed by the amount of change that should happen to help improve the people, practices, and the company in general.

So, I brought up some work that I did last fall as part of an interview for a leadership role in product design. The hiring manager had come up with a rough plan for what they thought the program needed to do in 12–18 months to get design on par with operational maturity and work quality. They provided a high-level overview and in response I offered to come up with a plan from my perspective with the intent of comparing the details. I thought that would be a great way to immediately assess where we are aligned and where we need to collaborate to get aligned.

We met a few days later and I presented a plan that included a six-quarter roadmap of jobs to be done across the themes of people, practice, and platform. Each quarter contained internal and external objectives and goals. Because the program was to be stood up almost from scratch, I felt it was important to delineate between work inside the design program and work needed to develop partners and relationship management. I then included a high-level plan for the first 90 days, a SWOT analysis of the entire roadmap, notes on roles that I believed would need to be hired for mission success, and a section that mapped my direct experience to the different facets of the roadmap.

I presented everything to the hiring manager who called it a “good plan” and asked if they could review it. I granted permission and never heard from them again. The sound you're now hearing is a flaming arrow arcing gracefully through the air to light the Viking funeral pyre for my career. Maybe I'll try leading again in Valhalla.

Anyway, I'm sharing this work and the story for people out there who might be in the same position as my friend—people who need direction and structure to research and catalog all that needs to be done and prioritize it into a roadmap, a plan. This is what it looks and feels like. It's not the end-all-be-all, and no one should copy what I've done wholesale because what works for me may not work for you, but there are times in my career where it would have been so helpful just to get an idea of what strategy looks like.