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Foreign I'm David Henson and I serve as Campus Chief Information Officer with Apogee, a Bolden Networks company. Welcome to Control Alt Lead Looking back over my nearly four decade technology career, I've had the privilege of planning, executing and overseeing a number of IT projects across a vast array of industries and contexts. Every implementation brought its own set of challenges and learning opportunities, not only those that were successful, but more so from those that were not. Now, one of the most crucial lessons I learned, especially from the failures, was the need to prioritize the last mile from the very beginning of any project I undertook. The last mile refers to the final concluding steps of a project that make its successful delivery possible. The details that matter, the ingredients that, when missing, invalidate everything else. I recently worked with a university on a major ERP migration, many months in the planning and making, where we discussed at length the timing, the key players, the timelines and deadlines, and needed to make or break the project. One of the sticking points in agreeing to move forward with the migration in the first place was the existing ERP platform that was no longer being supported. The school needed assurance that their version of the platform would be supported by the vendor until the new platform could be made active. We asked the vendor to establish in writing that the existing platform would be supported until the new platform was activated. The vendor agreed. The customer, being overly cautious, asked many multiple times, and perhaps jaded by past experience, asked yet again for this assurance before signing off on a commitment the next week after agreeing to move on with the project, there was a problem with the existing platform and the client created a ticket. Unsurprisingly, the ticket was immediately closed with the comment that the platform was no longer supported. So many weeks of negotiation, goodwill and trust building now on the cusp of being trashed simply because the vendor support team was not included in the fundamental promises made to the school to get them to the signing table. Perhaps you have had a similar experience with a last mile misfire. Several examples. Perhaps you spent months on a strategy for a campaign only to forget to outline to your team how the strategy would be implemented and by whom. Or maybe you get to a major equipment upgrade in your data center, but you forgot to check whether you had the right kind of power, enough rack space or proper networks connections to get the new equipment actually up and running. Or maybe you've sold a product or a service with a specific brand promise to a client, but you didn't deploy the adequate resources, staff or tools to execute to the level that you promised to your client now, all of these are prime examples of failure to cover the last mile, even when 95% of the heavy lift needed to finish the race is in place. Because that one crucial element needed to tie everything else together is missing, the lack of which causes the entire edifice to fall into a pile at your feet. So how do we bake in guardrails necessary for us to keep that last mile centered in our sights for every project we undertake? Well, first, start by providing every relevant stakeholder your president, provost, cabinet, faculty, operations or staff. Make sure they have a seat at the table. Make sure that you're covering and understanding all the necessary details and perspectives foundational to the project's success. Next, you need to clearly define what is your look of success? How will you know when you finished if you don't know what the finish line looks like? Or to know when you've even crossed it? Communicate up and down your chain of project custody. It's not enough to keep just your stakeholders informed of progress, but also those who are charged with its execution and delivery. Simply because an element of information is to be found within your daily status reports or recorded in the project plan, it doesn't mean that that information has been contextualized and understood by everyone. It's your job as the leader to look around corners, convey meaning and that missing contextualization, providing the why throughout all phases of a project to your team and to its stakeholders. Finally, you need to remember that true buy in doesn't just occur at the start of an engagement, but most importantly, across the finish line. For if what you deliver isn't what was asked for, then it was all for naught. And that's why the last mile matters. Thanks for listening and I hope I'll see you soon.