I’m forming a landing party and going to Mars. Will you come?

Full disclosure: I’m not actually going to Mars (shocker). But let’s play out this thought experiment as if I were.

Before making a decision you’d ask me a lot of questions, some would probably be these:

• Are you serious?

• Why are we going to Mars?

• Are we coming back?

• How are we going to make the journey safely?

• Why are you asking me, and what would be my role in the mission?

• Why should I trust you to make this happen?

• When are we going and coming back?

• If I agree to this, what do you need me to do now?

In organizations and community we ask others to go to Mars all the time. We just call them new “projects” or new “programs.”

Those new projects we want to start are not as audacious as actually going to Mars. But to those we want and need to bring along, it might feel as if it were.

And because it feels like going to Mars for them, we need to answer those questions and build up their trust in us before we ask them to enlist. If we don’t, we should expect them to say no, and they honestly ought to.