Successful projects rely upon worthwhile investments. Worthwhile investments require agreement about objectives, how to measure success to know when we’re on the right path, and what the outcome should be worth.
Unfortunately many organizations use projects as a means to produce intermediate results. Intermediate results that don’t have an understood correlation to any particular outcome. Often the result of a “good idea”. In this capacity, a project is not necessarily an investment. If a project merely focuses on effort, then there’s no ability to gauge potential ROI.
Projects therefore can serve as investment vehicles, but not every project is an investment. What if we stopped thinking in terms of projects and instead in terms of investments. Instead of a proposal, what if we produced a prospectus. Could we set the stage for our own success by speaking in terms of an investment decision from the beginning?