Sell the idea before meeting

When you have a good idea and it might need many people's bandwidth, it is better to approach the people that are related and sell the idea before the meeting. More precisely,

• ask their opinion on the potential issues

• what they would do

• how it will affect their current workflow, etc,

and assure their concerns about some potential suggestions.

By doing that, the proposal in the meeting will be more comprehensive and easier to be done. A meeting is a place to announce some updates, not a good place to argue and come up with solutions, especially when the change is huge and unexpected.

Similarly, it is better to have some preliminary results before selling the idea. For the preliminary results, the goal is to answer the questions or concerns from different parties.