A member of your team has just entered the office, quickly throwing there bag at their desk, omitting their usual morning schedule with their only intent to sit down with you.
They are almost out of breath.
Without skipping a beat, they whip through a new idea to solve a problem or maybe they show you some code they just wrote that could solve a problem the team is having with the latest builds or maybe they wrote a design spec for a new feature that Product Management missed.
And what you focus on…
- How hastily they have prepared for the discussion,
- How their code would not pass the team’s coding standards
- Missed semi-colons and grammar in their spec.
And what you are communicating to them is…
- I don’t really care about your idea because you didn’t conform to everything we do.
- I can’t get past the writing of this spec, it is completely disconnected.
- Your talking too quickly.
And you are missing out on…
- Is someone so passionate and connected to their role could not wait to get to the office and share their thoughts with you.
- Someone that most likely spent all night trying to cobble this solution and example together to show you how it could work.
- Someone that went the extra mile to try and impress you with not only thinking of the idea, building the example but then creating the specification for a wide implementation.
You missed it all, because you couldn’t get past the small stuff.
