When head office has to sign it off, start here

Plenty of the businesses I speak to are the UK arm of a bigger group, and the conversation tends to reach the same point. The manager can see the problem, likes the idea, and then says some version of: the decision isn't mine, it sits with head office. If that's you, this is what I'd do before anybody writes a proposal.

Ask for the ceiling first

I learned this one the hard way. A UK team loved a discovery and the proposal that came out of it, took it to head office, and was told there was no budget for that. So we had to cut the scope back and give them less of something they were quite happy to have. Nobody enjoys that conversation, least of all the manager who championed it.

Now I'd rather know what head office will tolerate before the scoping starts. It doesn't need to be a commitment. Even a rough idea of the line they won't go past changes the work, because discovery can then look for the best thing that fits inside it. The alternative is finding the best thing overall and trimming it later, in front of the people who liked it.

Answer the question they will ask

Head office will have a question the UK team usually hasn't answered yet, and it's a fair one. If everything already works the way it works, why change, and why start with the UK? Let's say the group has money set aside for automation and wants somebody to try it first. Then the UK is a sensible place for a trial and the case mostly makes itself. If not, the UK needs its own reason, written down, in numbers the manager believes, before anyone books a flight.

Write for the room you won't be in

The most important meeting about my work often happens without me. The manager goes to head office, sometimes in another country and another language, and has to defend a document I wrote. So it has to stand up on its own. The numbers in it should be ones the manager worked out, best case and worst case, and the wording should sound like them. I've told one manager I'd rewrite a whole presentation around the figure they arrived at, so it said things in their words rather than mine.

It also has to deal with lock-in before anyone raises it. A parent company with its own IT team will want to know whether saying yes to a small outside firm ties them in. It shouldn't. What comes out of a discovery should be a standalone piece of work they keep, and if their own people want to build from it, they can.

So, if I were in your shoes, this is what I'd have ready before that meeting.

• A rough ceiling from head office, even an informal one
• One sentence on why the UK should go first
• Numbers you worked out yourself, best case and worst case
• A clear line on what the group keeps if it stops after the first phase

A UK team that arrives with its own numbers, a ceiling it has already asked about and nothing to be locked into is asking head office for very little. That's the easiest kind of yes for a parent company to give.