Being an excellent engineer helps you advance through the ranks to become a Staff Engineer; “quiet influence” keeps you there.
I’ve learned the hard way that my architectural proposals didn’t fail on technical merits (mostly 😅); they failed because of the social strategy (or lack thereof) I had employed behind them. I’d have a vision on how things were going to be improved, but struggled to recruit others to get behind the idea.
After a few painful misses, I started building a toolkit of approaches that actually get big changes through. In this post, I’ll share one of the techniques I use: Nemawashi.
The “Big Reveal” Anti-Pattern#
You’ve spent weeks, maybe even months, creating the perfect technical proposal. You’ve figured out the migration path, built a proof of concept and figured out how to tackle all the pitfalls. Your presentation slides are crafted with perfection.
You schedule a meeting with all the key stakeholders and engineers. You’re ready to blow everyone away with your plan. They are going to be so impressed! You expect to be walking out of that meeting with everyone on board, ready to move forward.
But when you share your plan, you are met with dead silence, or worse, a barrage of hostile questions and concerns. The meeting derails, a decision is deferred, and the brilliant idea you spent weeks on is dead on arrival. 💀 Your idea has been rejected, and you feel deflated.
Why do “Big Reveals” Fail?#
Keep in mind: You’ve been living with your idea for weeks, but for everyone else in that room, it’s brand new. You didn’t give them time to process it, to ask “dumb” questions in private, or to feel like their expertise was valued.
By surprising them with your “Big Reveal”, you’ve unintentionally put them on the defensive. Their automatic reaction is resistance, not because the idea is bad, but because they feel ambushed, overwhelmed or because they feel you are “stepping on their toes”.
A group meeting should never be the place to surprise people with a big idea.
Nemawashi#
Nemawashi (根回し) is an informal Japanese business process of laying the foundation for some proposed change or project by talking to the people concerned and gathering support and feedback before a formal announcement
In Japan, high-ranking people expect to be let in on new proposals before an official meeting. If they find out about something for the first time during the meeting, they will feel that they have been ignored, and they may reject it for that reason alone.
Nemawashi is deeply embedded in Japanese business culture. While it doesn’t fully translate into Western organizations, the principle of pre-alignment is powerful everywhere.
To use the technique, you first need to determine the key stakeholders who may be affected by the change. You should be casting a wide net to recruit people to your idea, for example:
- People who might benefit from the change
- People on teams will be impacted by the change, and may need to do work as part of the change
- The appropriate technical leadership
- Other staff+ engineers
- Anyone who might be a champion for the change, and help you sell it
- Anyone who might be a sceptic or detractor, so you can address their concerns early before they derail the idea
- Security and compliance teams
- Finance if you are saving (or spending!) money
Once your stakeholders are identified, setup 1 on 1 meetings and discuss your ideas and what you are planning. Ensure you are asking good questions, like:
- What are your initial thoughts on the idea?
- What are the risks I’m not seeing?
- How would this impact your team’s roadmap?
- Who else should I be talking to about this?
It’s also good to try to get a picture of the “order” you should be going to people to have these chats. For example, if you go directly to an Engineering Manager first, without talking to a Tech Lead that reports to them, you may get a very different response than if you had talked to the Tech Lead first and gotten their buy-in. Each organization (and person) is different, so you’ll need to figure out the best approach for your own situation.
Crucially, you must actively factor their feedback into your proposal, and adjust your plan accordingly.
Use this pre-alignment phase as not only an opportunity to build consensus for your plan, but to make it better and stronger than it would have been otherwise.
The 6-Pager#
As you gather feedback, you need a living document, not a slide deck. I find the Amazon-style 6-Pager is my preferred format. Writing everything down forces you to clarify your thoughts and allows people to engage with the idea asynchronously.
After each meeting, you should refine the document and make changes based on the feedback you receive.
Sometimes it will be a quick rewording, sometimes you will get feedback that will change the entire direction of the proposal. This is the beautiful thing about Nemawashi: you get to refine and solidify your idea as you go, at the same time as building consensus.
The (Not So Big) Reveal#
You’ve factored in everyone’s feedback, and you’ve refined your idea. Everyone is bought in. Now is the time to schedule a meeting to present your proposal to make the final decision.
The great thing is, you already know the answer to whether or not the proposal is going to be approved. The decision is no longer an “if”, it’s a “when”. 💪
Conclusion#
The most brilliant technical solution is worthless if you can’t get the people around you to adopt it. By practicing Nemawashi, you shift from being a lone engineer revealing your “masterpiece” to a leader guiding a coalition toward a shared goal.