Listening to: Gone - Kanye West

I think it is simply human nature that dictates that familiarity leads to ambivalence at best and contempt at worst. This is especially true when you have worked at something (like a company) for a long time. It is easy to forget why you really put it on the line and build a company. A couple of instances over the past 48 hours reminded me why.

When we started Provoke we were adamant that we would employ designers (ideally lots of them). We were sick of the software we were developing (generally because it looked like some one had thrown up ASCII soup all over the screen). We instinctively knew that having lots of designers would ensure that wouldn’t be such a problem. The problem is that EVERYONE thinks they are a designer, even me.

Recently I needed to get some design work done and for the first time in a long time I had final say. I had an image of what I wanted in my mind, but the design options I was presented with were nothing like what I had in mind (we’re talking poles apart). I fought back the desire to voice my ideas and chose from the designs that I had in front of me. On Monday I got the results and put everything together. That process of putting the end result together was exhilarating. It was because it all worked… one every single level and in ways that I couldn’t possibly imagine. But the reason it worked was because it was DESIGNED by a designer. It was in that hour that I realized why we employ so many designers – because they are very good at what they do, and my only job is to specify, ensure they are able to do what they do and then shut the f**k up. My next job is to some how educate clients about what they miss out on when they let their “inner designer” loose at the controls.

The second moment of clarity occurred last night. Every Tuesday the developers get together and talk tech. Last night a particularly interesting presentation evolved into a bunch of us just shooting the shit. Sitting there, listening to the troops, I realized that we have managed to attract some seriously smart people together… When you get hit by an observation like that, it’s kind of humbling.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 4:59 am and is filed under Business, Rant, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.