![]() Here’s the thing, it’s not quite so simple. I’ve been speaking and writing about this idea of Group Improvisation, with the hope that people will let go of their rigid process and start to trust their people. I started letting the evolution of learning carry the project forward, always focusing on the actual deliverable.īecause I tend to be a guy with a fairly extreme personality, I took this pretty far pretty fast. Instead, I embraced the idea that I would know more about the project tomorrow than I do today. So different that, eventually, I stopped trying to force my 15-pager onto innocent, unsuspecting clients. What I learned, very quickly, is that each new project I tackled required changes to this “perfect process.” Each project was different. My customers loved it - I was very proud. Each step had specific deliverables that my client would approve, and each step moved us a little closer to the end goal. There was a time when I spent a solid three weeks writing a 15-page explanation of my web design and development process. Here are some concepts that have stuck with me as I push to make our environment more collaborative. It also requires an environment where teams are encouraged and expected to find a better way. Truly timeless work can only be created when individuals relinquish their egos and are willing to put the good of the group above themselves. ![]() Who doesn’t want that? A Collaborative Environment Thinking in this way has allowed my team to build better products, spread critical knowledge throughout our team, and encourage great increases in individual skill and confidence. ![]() In order to build great stuff in an ever-changing environment, we need to start investing in our people instead of our process. Trust me when I tell you that there is no one way to do this stuff. Why Collaboration?Įvery project, every timeline, every budget, every client, every team member, every unforeseen factor combine to create a unique set of constraints within which you are expected to do amazing work. In this piece, I hope to share a glimpse of how we encourage these ideals at Sparkbox. It requires approaching everything with an eye toward collaboration, inviting others into the conversation and demonstrating that the sum of the parts is truly greater than the whole. Over the past few years, this thinking has infiltrated almost every part of how I work in my role as President of Sparkbox - from writing estimates to writing code. We need to inspire our people to prove this idea in their everyday work with each other and with our clients. In order to do this, we need to start building collaboration into our culture. Our workflows should be as flexible as the stuff we’re trying to build. While most of us have accepted this as truth for a while now, we haven’t really figured out how to embrace this flexibility in the way we work. In case you haven’t heard, the web is not fixed width.
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