Yesterday I was given a great piece of advice for projects that we might be working on over a long period of time:
Write an elevator pitch for it every second day
Initially I wasn’t sure what to make of this. It seemed like a pretty repetitive task. I mean, what could possibly change from day to day when the point of an elevator pitch is to articulate a concept in its tightest accuracy?
However, the idea here isn’t so much about what we see in the short term, it’s the evolution over a longer period of time.
While we mighn’t think we’ll see much move in our pitch, it will. Even if the changes we make are as minor as word here or there, they indicate a slight shift. Over time, these changes might become more evident. And just like a game of telephone, in six months time, it’s likely the pitch will resemble nothing of its first iteration.
What this then gives us is a record of development. By reading through the way we have articulated an idea over and over, we will start to see themes cropping up. Depending on how we will remember the past, we might even be able to pair the way the thinking moves to influences we know to have been around at the time.
When we work on projects over an extended period of time, we run the risk of becoming too close to them. It’s hard to find the strategic distance we need to understand how our daily grind is moving the project forward or refining its purpose and reason for exisiting.
Using this technique is one way to help track that. The clarity it can give our thinking along with the conscious effort of refining our thinking it is easily worth the extra fifteen minutes at the end of a day.
