When you’ve got an approach, initiative, or offering you know will bring much-needed change, you also know you can’t do it alone. You need people to become invested emotionally and intellectually so they’ll invest the time, energy, and money to bring about the impact you imagine.

No one starts a change expecting it to fail. Whether you’re a leader of an organization that needs to change the way you do business or an innovator that wants to change how business gets done, you want—and maybe even need—that change to succeed.

Three years ago, when I was mired in the midst of not-writing my last book, I asked my friend Ann Handley for advice. After all, she wrote a book called Everybody Writes.

If you’re trying to figure out the best place to start or anchor your message of change, the answer is always, “start with the question you exist to answer.”

When you’ve got a big change to make—in your organization, in the market, in the world—one question comes up over and over again: Where should you start?

It’s new worksheet time! I love me a good worksheet, don’t you? They can make a complicated process clear or get all your ideas together where you can see them—both of which are particularly important when you’re designing a new message or building a new idea.