Deadlines looms large

Talking to experts, researching fertilizers and learning about farming has been really interesting! However, it was week 4 and I had the final deliverable looming ahead of me. I was starting to feel knowledgable about nitrogen fertilizers, cropping patterns, environmental impacts of nitrogen pollution and had not given a thought to how to translate this information into recommendations that I could pass onto EDF. The biggest difficulty I faced was obtaining enough high quality information that was peer reviewed and published as opposed to internet published data from practioners who may have biased opinions. Furthermore this information was scattered and much of it resided with the experts and academics. How was the average farmer supposed to make any informed decisions on fertilizer choice if the information was this hard to find? This thought spurred a couple of recommendations for EDF and I discussed this difficulty with my boss - could there be a niche that EDF could fill here? He was defnitely interested in hearing more!

The pressure was however definitely building as I was down to my last two weeks. I started to build a ‘strawman deck’ which is consulting speak for a partially completed PowerPoint presentation that defines a detailed outline without providing all the answers. This is crucial to give your client an idea of what to expect and how much work is remaining to be done before the final presentation is ready. There are pros and cons to this approach and although I would highly recommend doing this, one should be prepared to push back against last minute scope additions. In my case, the strawman was very helpful in getting the end deliverable to a quality that was acceptable to EDF, but it also meant additional work and data gathering at the last minute. I was working feverishly to plug the gaps in my analysis so that I could defend my recommendations. Things were starting to come together and I had some clear recommendations for EDF to pursue. I just needed to figure out how best to present it! ...It was going to be a tough week ahead.