Monday, March 19, 2007

Curry. No, Fish & Chips.

Back from my Think Week (ok, ok, vacation).

Anglophiles who free-associate the title of this post will come up with a single word: Takeaway. In fact, it looks like the title is 2 Different Takeaways.

Sometimes, a meeting will go just swimmingly - we'll have a great idea, figure out how to implement it, and agree to go out there and get cracking. Post-meeting, as the work begins to happen, it becomes clear that different people might have very different visions of what was agreed. 2 different takeaways. A) this wastes a lot of time and efficiency because work is not well coordinated, and B) people end up dissatisfied with the results of the work because they were expecting something else.

It might help to create more detailed specifications that describe how the higher-level business decisions are implemented. Simply being more vigilant about divergent takeaways will also help.

At Judy's Book, we have really smart people doing the business planning - and some other, even smarter people who design and build the site - but somehow we have not been able to retire quite yet. One thing that we (and everyone) can improve is communication and the other processes through which we turn a group of smart people into bags of cash.

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