Be first. Involve the team so they can include their passion projects, plan it out, scope it, and know what you could accomplish within a time period (quarter). Know what you want to accomplish before other people tell you their opinions. This is all said in good faith - you are doing what is best for the business.

Being first means starting 3-4 weeks before the quarter begins. Start reviewing what was accomplished and noting down what items come up in 1-1s. These should direct you towards what you is actually of interest/relevant to the team. You should have business objectives that are clear but in the rare case of desertification, make sure what you are accomplishing ladders up to what your manager hired you to do. Make sure they know that and you’ve written that down. Being first requires you to have everything written down - at least 1-2 paragraphs but preferably is an entire brief that goes into the why (business value), what would be delivered (scope), and sizing (when).

Involving the team starts from 1-1s where you pull ideas out from individuals. It then presents itself in a staff meeting where the team is the first reviewers. For some reason, executives like to “not distract the team” and “create internal alignment first” by owning these types of decisions. Contributors prefer and appreciate influencing what projects they’ll be working on. Will it be the same list that they execute at the start of the quarter? No, but the point is that they are part of the journey and can ask “why” at any step.

Lastly, if you don’t create your own roadmap you are signaling that you don’t know what to do with your team. This invites critique (a separate thing to write about) and encourages someone else to fill up your team’s time with some unknown project. If you don’t like the project or disagree on it’s value what would you replace it with? You now have to do more work to over-qualify any of your team’s passion projects. Being prepared upfront does wonders to empowering you and your team to get important work complete.

I didn’t use AI for this, but did plug it into a word counter/spell checker. I guessed on desertification but wow that is a word