Pushing things out when they were almost ready seemed like a good idea:

• I would get my new design out sooner – I always felt the new design was better than the current design after all
• I would produce more content (the important stuff) – not being happy with the current design discouraged me from adding anything new
• I would clean up the loose ends faster – having the site in the public eye would give me motivation to get on with it!

But I was concerned about whether I would realise these benefits, or whether the site would just constantly be a tatty, unfinished mess.

In fact it’s been a great success. I’ve been gradually pushing updates, improving little things here and there. It’s not quite done, as you can see, but I’m comfortable with that. The important thing is it’s moving forward. And I am making more content. Again, not as much as I’d like, but more than before. Three blog posts is a new record, and I’ve been updating and adding to the site’s other content too.

I’ve recently become interested in finding ways of operating, as an individual or as an organisation, which work around how humans work. It is often tempting for scientists and programmers to always seek the perfect method, but these rarely succeed well in practice (It’s the achieved result that counts, not the theoretical result) – a subject you may see a post on soon.

Developing in public is, for me, a more practical, more effective way of using my site.

What went wrong?

There are often many senior people under whose remit my proposal might fall and any one of them has authority to stop me if they see fit. But because it’s rare that a proposal falls entirely within one person’s, or even one working group’s, remit no one has sufficient authority to instruct me to proceed. Even if they think it’s a great idea, no one person is sufficiently empowered to say “Yes, you can!”.

This is compounded by the fact that my request doesn’t need immediate attention. Until I get a response I will, apparently, not do anything so a busy senior manager can afford to wait in case they come up with an objection, rather than rashly let me loose only to regret it later. Of course what then happens is the request sinks out of view in an overflowing inbox and no response is ever sent, leaving the proposal paralysed.

What to do?

What I do now is start my proposals with “I intend to…”.

Now if no response is received, I start working. Now if someone has an objection, they need to act immediately to stop me. Either way, some thing’s going to happen and we’re going to move forward.

And it goes both ways. At a recent seminar I attended on leadership, a senior manager mentioned that he actively encouraged his people to submit their proposals as “I intend to…” so he didn’t have to act in order for good ideas to go forward.

Changing from “I would like…” to “I intend…” is one of those simple little changes we can all make, which can make a real and immediate difference to our and our organisation’s productivity.