66g: Don't Publish The RFC and Forget; Follow Up

If you publish an RFC and announce it only once, you practically fail.

If there is one thing I learned in organizational leadership, it’s this: if you want something, you have to repeat it. If you want to collect feedback for an RFC, you have to remind people constantly that you’re looking for feedback.

Give people signs regularly on when you’ll close it for feedback. Be proactive. To be honest, be annoying if needed. When you close an RFC for feedback, you should feel comfortable that you got enough feedback. Nobody should be able to complain about the solution when the time comes for implementation. And if they still complain, you should be able to say, “Well, we collected feedback and announced it everywhere, pinged many times. Sorry, we’re following the decided strategy.”

• Related Note(s):
  • 32a: Continually and consistently repeat the message;
  • 3b: Joining A Team As A New Manager;
  • 20b: Sharing knowledge is not a noise;
  • 20c: Share pros and cons in announcements;
  • 37: Setting Organizational Goals and Processes;
• Resourced: How and Why RFCs Fail;