Sunday, July 22, 2007

Taking care of business


You’ve just flown in and already the deliverables you’re enhancing are hung on a skyhook or outright left in the parking lot. You’ve got to ramp this baby up! You’ve got to get these offerings on the freeway! You’ve got plenty to envisage going forward, and all you want is some takeup of the best-of-breed product set. Let’s call a meeting!

The only thing cooler than a guy in a suit, sitting in a hotel bar, yelling on a cell phone, is eight guys in suits, sitting in a hotel bar, all simultaneously yelling on cell phones. Don’t you want to be one of those guys who flies into town to give a PowerPoint presentation? Well, don’t you?

Synchronise watches. You and your friends are going to put on your best suits (don’t have one? Try an op shop) and hit some downtown hotel for a breakfast meeting. The more upscale the hotel, the better: a Hilton or a Hyatt is just the ticket. Don’t forget your props: laptops if you have them, some kind of portable whiteboard, and your cell phones (extra points if you have a Bluetooth headset). If your own importance isn’t inspiration enough to get you diagramming, scoping future directions and visioning, then try giving yourselves a few tasks. You could have a prize for the first person who uses a sentence including functionality, user-defined, straw man, leading provider, monetise, robust and scalable, or give an award for best use of a noun as a verb, or verb as a noun (‘how are we matrixing this, Jeff?’ 'Well, Leon, that depends on how you action the learnings you've been tasked with').

Whatever you do, don’t forget: you are a Master of the Universe.

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