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Marc Holmes

The Unauthorised Autobiography of Marc Holmes

Microsoftie thinking about dialogue with developers. Brit in Seattle. Windswept and Interesting.


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Filed under: work

Big Review: And The Rest (Part 3 of 3)

Besides Ideation and Information, you need some other stuff too.
To maintain the alliteration, but stretch the semantic, then I’d say this is:
  • Itinerary. What are you seeking to accomplish with the review?
  • Implementation. If the idea is good, and the information is valid, what’s the “cost” (in a resource, time, trade-off etc. sense) for approving the itinerary?
  • Indication. How do you know what success looks like? Measures, answered questions etc. all form the scope of success.
So there we have Marc’s 5 Is for the development of exec review material... Ideation, Information, Itinerary, Implementation and Indication.

Big Review: High-Res (Part 2 of 3)

The second source was from some of the things Tufte said at a recent seminar I attended. (Generally I was disappointed with the session – it felt a bit tired: taking an obvious pop at poor use of PowerPoint, whilst not a word on the awfulness of Infauxgraphics... needs a bit of revision I think.)

Anyway, in describing the provenance of Sparklines, he made the point that when an exec says they want simplicity they mean simplicity of the final message, not the underlying data and equally, they don’t want to walk through or wallow in the data in the actual review... In fact, providing the highest resolution data possible (preferably pre-review) is the best thing to do: delivering transparency, improving credibility, enabling focused Q&A and other more efficient activities in the valuable 1:1 review time.

Net: there’s a need to find time for “low resolution” Ideation reviews and to find time for “high resolution” Information reviews. They’re very different animals.

Big Review: Low-Res (Part 1 of 3)

My shotgun-mind saw a pattern from a couple of different sources which I’ll relate to “big review” cycles with exec stakeholders or negotiation or selling your project or whatever.

The first is this excellent article on “Iterationitis” on HBR. Provocative title aside, the point here is that as a leader it’s important to find the space for “low resolution” reviews – raw ideas that haven’t been refined to the point of formal review and probably without the trappings that go with those formal reviews: fixed agendas, slides, fully-sourced data.

Simple article, great points.

Modus Operandi

Sometimes I disagree with him but sometimes it feels like Seth is under my table. Very similar to that feeling you get when Dilbert mirrors your life for a few strips in a row, but the opposite emotion (I should hope).

3 great posts this week on excuses, offensive strategy and building reputation. I’d probably say it more clumsily, but this is pretty much my MO (or at least my aspire-to MO):
  • When someone asks you a question, they get an answer bigger than they ever expected.
  • When someone gives you a project, they get a plan scarier than they hoped for.
  • When you take on a project, you finish it.
The last point made me laugh as I’d just had a canteen conversation with a colleague which lead to a similar statement – we were talking about people’s propensity to “strategise their career”: Here’s a thing... forget career strategy... How about if someone asks you to do something, you do it. Stretch target... you do it on time. That’s a really great start.

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