Gândindu-mă cu voce tare la ce fac toată ziua

Pentru că atunci când e greu să explici cu cuvintele tale, e mai util să te uiți la cum vorbesc alții despre ei înșiși ca să construiești o explicație elegantă.

Am devenit ca un fel de intermediar și arbitru între dorințele mai multor părți:

“In any creative endeavor, there is a long list of features and effects that you want to include to nudge it toward greatness—a very long list. At some point, though, you realize it is impossible to do everything on the list. So you set a deadline, which then forces a priority-based reordering of the list, followed by the difficult discussion of what, on this list, is absolutely necessary—or if the project is even feasible at all. You don’t want to have this discussion too soon, because at the outset, you don’t know what you are doing. If you wait too long, however, you run out of time or resources.”

(Ed Catmull – Creativity Inc.)

“There are many different constituencies that all had a voice—not necessarily a vote, but a voice—and my job was to balance everybody’s needs. And at some point, compromises always had to be made.”

(Jony Ive de Leander Kahney)

Am devenit persoana care trebuie să le dea altora un șablon pentru a-și face treaba:

„The new role of management is to provide decision-making frameworks, not decisions.  Decisions need to be made where there is the most information. Framing the problem to be solved out of the myriad of problems and communicating that efficiently is the new role of management.”

(Steven Sinofsky – Learn by Shipping)

„In other words, don’t tell people how to climb the mountain – tell them which mountain to climb”

(Gordon Torr – Managing Creative People)

Am devenit persoana care trebuie să ia decizii, să descopere care sunt ideile care se potrivesc (nu neapărat ce le place oamenilor să facă) și să învețe cum le place oamenilor să lucreze în așa fel încât proiectul să întâmpine cât mai puțină rezistență:

„You get paid to decide. Some people love making decisions on their own. Other people need socialization and iteration to make a choice. Either way can work (or not) as a product manager, but to be great you really do have to decide. Deciding anything important or meaningful at all means some people will disagree. Some might really disagree a huge amount. The bottom line is a decision has to be made. A decision means to not do something, and to achieve clarity in your design.”

(Steven Sinofsky – Some guiding principles for people who build things)

Am devenit persoana care trebuie să încurajeze oamenii să urce muntele menționat mai sus. Să îi facă să vrea să urce muntele. Heirup, heirup, hai că se poate, hai că suntem pe ultima sută de kilometri, cum ar veni.

“As Andrew Stanton says, “There’s a difference between criticism and constructive criticism. With the latter, you’re constructing at the same time that you’re criticizing. You’re building as you’re breaking down, making new pieces to work with out of the stuff you’ve just ripped apart. That’s an art form in itself. I always feel like whatever notes you’re giving should inspire the recipient—like, ‘How do I get that kid to want to redo his homework?’ So, you’ve got to act like a teacher. Sometimes you talk about the problems in fifty different ways until you find that one sentence that you can see makes their eyes pop, as if they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I want to do it.’ Instead of saying, ‘The writing in this scene isn’t good enough,’ you say, ‘Don’t you want people to walk out of the theater and be quoting those lines?’ It’s more of a challenge. ‘Isn’t this what you want? I want that too!”

(Ed Catmull – Creativity Inc.)

Am devenit persoana care trebuie să rezolve problemele…

„When something hasn’t been as beautiful as it can be, the reason is always bigger than the thing,” Lyons tells me afterward. Here, the reason was miscommunication between the stylists and the merchandisers. „At this stage, I’m like a glorified crossing guard,” says Lyons. „It’s like, try to keep people motivated, keep the traffic moving, keep people from getting stumped or stopped by a problem.”

(How Jenna Lyons transformed J.Crew)

…și am descoperit și care e stilul propriu de a explica după ce mi-am dat seama ce îi intimidează pe oameni la mine:

“At one point in this period, I met with Steve and gently asked him how things got resolved when people disagree with him. He seemed unaware that what I was really asking him was how things would get resolved if we worked together and I disagreed with him, for he gave a more general answer. He said, “When I don’t see eye to eye with somebody, I just take the time to explain it better, so they understand the way it should be.”

(Ed Catmull – Creativity Inc.)