The blank page — it’s a source of fear and anxiety for all of us. That unrelenting, white-hot stare, whispering writer’s block into our ears. Starting from scratch can suck — and although templates and public agreements (the best examples from around the Murmur community) can help, it takes a mindset shift to truly slay this dragon. A mindset that embraces progress over perfection.
One of the questions we get most frequently when onboarding and coaching new Murmur customers is: “How do you write a great proposal?” Many people come in with well-worn preconceptions, unfurling a laundry list of “required” elements that add unnecessary length and complication. Others don’t have a clue what good looks like, they’re just pretty sure it doesn’t look anything like what they just wrote.
These beliefs and (frequently artificial) standards stall progress. They sneak up on us, these feelings of inadequacy, uncertainty, and doubt, resulting in a pile of abandoned drafts that we never felt were good enough to propose.
So (!) — now that we’ve thoroughly bummed you out, here’s the good news: Your drafts are better than you think 🤗(really).
Here are a few quick tips to make your proposals great:
- Keep it brief. It can be tempting to include as much detail as possible when drafting a proposal. Participants will be able to make better decisions if they’re given more information, right? Turns out, not so much. Excessive specificity generally does more to confuse than clarify. It can cause participants to fixate on minutiae vs. focusing on substance. Try keeping your proposals as brief as possible, homing in on the information that helps participants determine if a decision is safe-to-try for them.
- Focus on the here and now. This is a great place to start if you’re looking for ways to reduce your proposals down to their most critical components. As proposers, we can sometimes place an elevated level of importance on the past (and even the future) — particularly for topics that we care about deeply. Try removing unnecessary context, over-engineered justifications, and complicated plans for how to mitigate unlikely future risks. This can help focus your proposals on making decisions that will improve the team’s current reality.
- Build collective wisdom. Proposals aren’t just a list of rules that everyone has to follow (or at least they shouldn't be, in our not-so-humble opinion). Proposals should focus on the constraints, or guardrails, that give team members the freedom and confidence to make well-reasoned, autonomous decisions. Try writing as if your audience is only made up of smart, well-intentioned people who you trust. What’s the smallest amount that you could reasonably write down in order for this group to make good decisions on their own? You may be surprised by how much you cut out — and just how smart and well-intentioned most people turn out to be.
Note: You can apply these tips to new proposals, or existing decisions that your organization already has in place (which just happens to be a great way to get started with Murmur)!