Something I’ve learned and relearned, and lately it has been drilled into my head, is that, as business partner to IT, when I am giving my vision for a project, I need to only be concerned with what I want to happen, not how it will get done. This is hard for me because I like the IT part of our company as well and I love to know how things work. But truly we need to leave the work of figuring out how things get done to those who have degrees and advanced understanding of how the technology should be implemented.
But this isn’t all. Once you have the the vision and you give a brain dump, and everyone can see what you are thinking, you have to write it down. If it’s not written down it didn’t happen. You have your vision, you collaborate with your team and then you write down, from your perspective, what you want to happen.
This document is not meant to be the end all but it should be in a place where everyone can reference it at any time and where everyone will be able to contribute and make the document better. This is when true collaboration happens. Give it a try, I know I am going to be better at it.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Neil – love the blog! One comment I might add is that not only should we write these things down – we should be able to draw a picture of that experience to help our virtual team members get behind the grand vision. Hope you are well!
Jen
Reply
Neil Minetto Reply:
July 6th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Great advice. We all do well with pictures. More and more we have virtual team members and they need to know what is going on as well. Thanks Jen, great to hear from you.
Reply