Winging it

Tech and culture have enabled a new sort of informality. Not simply the end of suits and ties and heels at work, but the office itself is fading away.

But there’s a difference between being informal and being in such a hurry to get to the next thing that we don’t take this thing seriously.

I recently had a sales call with a software consulting firm. The person who organized the call joined from his car. While driving.

The artifice of sitting at a desk, having good lighting, wearing a smock, writing a memo instead of making stuff up as you go along, looking people in the eye, quoting your sources, measuring twice not once, showing up on time, doing the reading, showing your work… these are signals. Not just signals to the person you’re working with or persuading, but signals to yourself.

It’s easy to misunderstand the idea of agile and the minimum viable product. We shouldn’t forget that the unspoken rule is: Don’t ship junk. We send a message to the market when we’re in such a hurry that we don’t put in the care and focus needed to do great work.

Getting more boxes checked simply leads to having more boxes checked. If we’re here to make a difference, we often get there with better, not with more.

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