In most projects, you need to get a handful of people involved to get their input. The more you can front-load that input, the more smoothly things will go.
As shared by Seth Godin in his book “Linchpin“:
“The point of getting everyone involved early is simple: thrash late and you won’t ship. Thrash late and you introduce bugs. Professional creators thrash early. The closer the project gets to completion, the fewer people see it and the fewer changes are permitted.”
We’ve all been part of a project that gets way too many people involved at the end, and the final 5% of the project takes as long as the first 95% did.
Instead, invite everyone in early for ideas and perspectives. This gives all stakeholders a chance to give their input, and can help push the project in the right direction. Then, as things go on, you can reduce the amount of input in the subsequent steps.
It’s similar to what I tell clients about our website design process; when we show off the initial design concept it’s intentionally a bit anticlimactic. There’s no big “wow”, but rather a confident “yes”. Our designer is amazingly good, but there shouldn’t be surprises at that point. We’ve thrashed early, working through messaging and personas, then visual branding, into content strategy and wireframes, and the design is simply the culmination of that work. The early thrashing leads to smooth results down the road, and ultimately leads to a project that launches on time.
By the end of a project there should be no thrashing left to be done, and all parties are better off for it.
