git:20260504.eb1e415 to v2.1.0

+ description: Runs the first weeks of a consulting engagement, from signed contract to a project with real momentum. Covers kickoff design, stakeholder mapping, discovery planning, interview guides, and the operating cadences that hold the work together. Use when launching a new engagement, onboarding a client, designing a kickoff workshop, building a discovery plan or interview guide, standing up workstreams, or resetting a stalled project that never got proper alignment.

+ license: MIT

+ metadata:

+ category: engagement-delivery

+ version: "2.1.0"

+ author: Anot

+ Take an engagement from "we just won this work" to "the project is running." This covers the opening weeks: preparing the kickoff, mapping stakeholders, designing discovery, and setting the operating rhythm. For standalone facilitated sessions later in the engagement (strategy offsites, innovation sprints), see workshop-facilitation.

+ The goal is shared understanding and momentum. Not a stack of templates. Every artifact here earns its place by driving alignment or unblocking work. If it does neither, cut it.

+ Ask the client for real inputs (names, dates, volumes, org data) before filling anything in. Where you sketch an example number to show the shape of an analysis, label it as illustrative and flag it for validation. Never invent stakeholder positions, benchmark figures, or dollar impacts.

+

+ Before anyone gets in a room, do the homework. The quality of the kickoff is set here, not on the day.

+ Build the inventory early. You need it for invitation lists, interview scheduling, and knowing who can actually make a decision versus who only talks like they can.

+ Fill "Current Stance" from evidence, not optimism. If you have not spoken to someone or heard a credible read on them, mark them Unknown and make finding out a discovery task. A map full of "Supporter" guesses is worse than an honest map with gaps.

+

+ Plot everyone on the power-interest grid. The quadrant sets your engagement strategy for that person.

+ Score each stakeholder and name the specific move, not the quadrant label:

+ The high-power, low-interest cell is where engagements die quietly. Those people can veto your work but will not spend attention on it until it threatens them. Give them a light, deliberate touch (a short monthly note, one early 1:1) so their first real look is not an ambush.

+

+ Get a read on where people stand versus where you need them. The gap is the work.

+ For anyone showing resistance, diagnose the type before you plan the response. The fix for each is different, and treating a political objection as if it were a rational one wastes everyone's time:

+ Rational resistance yields to evidence. Emotional resistance (fear of losing status, workload, or identity) yields to reassurance and involvement, and evidence alone will not move it. Political resistance is about who wins and loses, so trace the stake. Cultural resistance is the slowest to shift because it is collective, not individual.

+ Map the influence network. Formal reporting lines are a poor guide to who actually persuades whom:

+

+ Prepare and share 24-48 hours before kickoff so people arrive with context instead of consuming the meeting to catch up:

+ 1. **Agenda** with time blocks and a stated objective for each section

+ 2. **Project charter template** (completed collaboratively in the room, not presented as a done deal)

+ 3. **Stakeholder map** (sanitized for the audience; the raw version never leaves the team)

+ The kickoff is about alignment, not information transfer. If people leave with different understandings of the problem, the scope, or how you will work together, the kickoff failed no matter how polished the slides were.

+ - Introductions: name, role, and the one thing each person cares about most

+ - Problem statement (get explicit agreement before moving on)

+ - Scope boundaries (in-scope and out-of-scope, both stated out loud)

+ - Methodology (how you will work; this is not a sales pitch)

+ - Set a collaborative tone from the first minute. You are working with them, not presenting to them.

+ - Align on the problem before you touch the approach. Skip this and you will re-litigate it later, at a worse time.

+ - Confirm scope boundaries out loud. A verbal assumption becomes a scope dispute the week before delivery.

+ - Trade expectations in both directions. Name what you need from the client (access, decisions, resources, availability) and what they can expect from you.

+ - Establish decision rights explicitly. Who approves scope changes? Who breaks a tie? Get names, not "the team."

+ - Build personal connection. Engagement outcomes track relationship quality more closely than methodology quality.

+ - Surface risks early. The kickoff is the safest moment in the whole engagement to say something uncomfortable.

+ - Get every decision-maker in the room or formally represented. If the sponsor does not show, that is your first finding, not a scheduling detail.

+ Complete this together during the kickoff. It is the contract between everyone on what you are doing and how. Fill each field with a real sentence. A charter of empty cells is a to-do list, not an agreement.

+ Use the fill-in template in [references/project-charter-template.md](references/project-charter-template.md), and complete every field live during the session.

+ Discovery starts immediately after kickoff, often the same week. The goal is to understand the current state deeply enough to form hypotheses worth testing. This is where the real engagement judgment lives, so spend your preparation here.

+ Design the approach around what you need to learn, not around a standard menu of methods. Each method answers a different question:

+ | Data review | Quantitative baseline, trend analysis | Analyst work | Week 1-2 |

+ | Process observation | How work actually happens, versus how people describe it | Operations, front-line staff | Week 2 |

+ | Survey | Broad feedback, validation of interview themes at scale | Organization-wide | Week 2 |

+ Sequence executives first so their framing shapes what you probe lower down, then use working sessions and observation to test whether the story from the top survives contact with the floor. The gap between the two is often the finding.

+

+ Guides are a safety net, not a script. Ask the question, then follow the answer. One real thread pulled hard beats twelve questions read in order.

+

+ - Thank the participant, state the purpose in one sentence

+ - Confirm confidentiality: what will be attributed and what will not

+ 2. What is the single biggest thing standing between you and that?

+ 3. How does this initiative fit your strategic priorities right now?

+ 6. What works well that we should be careful to preserve?

+ 8. What has been tried before, and why did it stick or fail?

+ 9. Who are the key people we have to engage?

+ 10. What organizational changes might this require?

+ 11. What resistance should we anticipate, and from where?

+ 12. What should we be asking that we have not?

+ 13. Who else should we speak with? What should we read?

+ 3. Who touches it at each stage?

+ 4. Where does the most time disappear?

+ 5. Where do errors and rework cluster?

+ 6. What are the real bottlenecks?

+ 8. What is a must-have versus a nice-to-have?

+ 9. Which systems or tools are load-bearing?

+ 11. What are the current cycle times?

+ 12. What gets measured today, and which of those numbers actually changes behavior?

+ Structure the ask precisely. A vague request produces a vague dataset three weeks late.

+ If client data is messy or incomplete, send templates with the exact columns and grain you need. Do not assume they know your format. When you cite an external benchmark, record its source and context and present it as illustrative. A benchmark with no provenance is a liability, not evidence.

+ Turn interviews and data into findings that drive the next phase. A finding needs a claim, the evidence behind it, and the implication. Anything missing one of the three is an observation, not a finding.

+ - [What works and should survive the engagement]

+ Pain Points (root cause, not symptom):

+ - [Pain point: its impact, then the underlying cause]

+ - [Opportunity with an estimated impact; label the estimate as directional if it is not yet grounded in data]

+ | | | Cite the source | |

+ 1. [Hypothesis to test in the analysis phase]

+ Write real prose in the pain-point and finding sections: two or three sentences that connect the symptom to its cause and to the engagement's decision. A finding that reads as one word helps no one.

+

+ Kickoff is done and discovery is underway. Now set the operating rhythm that carries the work. Do this in week one, before "we'll figure out the cadence later" hardens into no cadence at all.

+ For multi-workstream engagements, define each stream so the seams between them are explicit:

+ | | | What this stream covers | What it produces | What it needs from other streams, and when |

+ The Dependencies column is the one that prevents late-stage collisions. Fill it with specific hand-offs and dates, not "coordinate with the tech team."

+

+ Set the recurring rhythms immediately:

+ Capture the operational details that quietly prevent friction:

+ - Escalation: [How, and to whom by name]

+ - Notes responsibility: [Who, stored where]

+ - [System/tool needed, who grants it]

+ With the map built and the kickoff run, set the ongoing approach for each stakeholder who matters:

+ | | What you need from them | Tailored to their actual concern | 1:1 / Meeting / Email | Weekly / Biweekly / Monthly | Team member responsible |

+ Identify your champions and activate them early. Supporters mobilized before a fight are worth more than converts won during one:

+ Plan quick wins that buy credibility:

+ Decide in advance what counts as trouble and what you do about it. Pre-committing to a response removes the hesitation that lets small problems grow:

+ | Sponsor cancels two status meetings in a row | Engagement is losing priority | Request a 1:1 with the sponsor this week | Partner |

+ | Data requests unfulfilled after two weeks | Access or willingness problem | Escalate through the client lead | Engagement manager |

+ | A stakeholder actively undermines in meetings | Political resistance surfacing | 1:1 to understand the real concern | Partner |

+ These are the things that separate engagements that work from ones that stall.

+ - Kickoff is alignment, not information transfer. If you are presenting for 90 minutes, you are doing it wrong.

+ - Agree on the problem before discussing the approach. Skipping this is the most common and most expensive engagement mistake.

+ - State your expectations of the client explicitly: access, decision timelines, team availability. Do not be polite about it.

+ - Document every assumption. An undocumented assumption is a scope dispute you have not had yet.

+ - Schedule the next meeting before the room clears. Momentum dies in the gap.

+ - Discovery is for understanding, not for confirming what you already believe. If your findings perfectly match your opening hypothesis, you were not listening.

+ - Interview more people than feels necessary. Breadth catches what depth misses.

+ - Cross-validate. One person's view is an anecdote. Three independent people on the same theme is a finding.

+ - Follow the thread instead of firing questions. Genuine listening after one good question beats ten read off a guide.

+ - Chase root causes. Keep asking why until you are past the symptom. Recommendations built on symptoms do not stick.

+ - Flag data gaps the moment you see them. Discovering a missing dataset during analysis costs you a week you do not have.

+ - Informal influence usually outweighs formal authority. The org chart lies about who decides.

+ - Positions shift. Revisit the map on a schedule, not when a surprise forces you to.

+ - Build a coalition of supporters before you take on the resistors. Champions manufacture social proof.

+ - A private conversation moves a difficult stakeholder further than any group presentation.

+ - The stakeholder map is confidential. Handle it accordingly and keep the raw version off shared drives.

+ - Listen before you advocate. Understanding a concern is a precondition to answering it.

+ - Early engagement is cheaper than late resistance, every time.

+ - Set cadences in week one. "We'll find the rhythm as we go" means there is no rhythm.

+ - Working arrangements feel bureaucratic right up until the first miscommunication. Then they feel like the smartest hour you spent.

+ - A quick win in the first two weeks buys goodwill that carries you through the hard middle.