Surrender to process
Joe and I founded FreshBooks, and we learned how to get things done five and a half years ago when it was just two of us talking over the phone working after hours in separate locations. All we had were our ideas and our energy.
Honestly, I did not know a thing about design then – I studied business in school and enjoyed art so everything I did was by intuition. Joe had his doctorate in computer science, but knew little about the technologies and tools available to developers – he just knew how to solve the problem in front of him with his own smarts.
I remember a day – not so long ago in fact – that product design meetings were utterly draining. They were highly emotional events where people (namely Joe and I) were going toe to toe with our points of view. Needless to say things became unproductive.
Recognizing this, I reached out for help. I invited Jon Lax – who I admire as the founder of my favorite Toronto interactive agency – to come observe us and see if he could help us overcome our bad habits.
Jon’s approach was to sit each of us down as individuals (the product team was Joe and me and Levi and Ben and Daniel) to hear our respective points of view. He learned that our dedication to the product was off the charts, and we all fundamentally wanted the same things, but our process was broken.
What he did was encourage us to elect a “Design Dictator” – someone who would be the last word on decisions. He made it clear that the problem was that we were doing design by committee and everyone felt they could make the final decision – especially Joe and I. Neither of us were willing to give on decisions.
In this case, the group agreed that it was me who really was the owner of the product and therefore I ought to be the dictator. For us to be able to proceed, Joe would have to surrender to the new process of decision making and trust I would make good decisions for everyone.
It takes a big person to surrender decisions about their baby, and to Joe’s credit he recognized it was the best thing. The results of this one change in our design process have been transformative.
Over the years building FreshBooks we’ve encountered bottle necks in how we work that have been sources of inefficiency, inconsistency and frustration for us all. Inevitably, these pains are born out of a way of working that we’ve outgrown and we’ve found them in just about every part of the business: design, development, customer service, hiring and onboarding.
Some times it takes an expert outsider to come in and effect change, most other times it gets done internally. Any way you slice it, making those changes demands a surrender to process.
Copyright © 2000-2009
10:05 am
Autonomy is important and is usually offered in every other department of a company, but when it comes to design, a company will generally attempt to utilize a committee styled design approval approach.
Recognizing this is a great revelation for any company!
God Speed FreshBooks!
5:09 pm
I wonder if things would have turned out different had Joe brought in someone HE admired to mediate and provide advice.
Mike, you seemed to have pulled off a power trip by bringing in a “neutral” party to side with you. Perhaps I’m wrong but this does go on quite often in the business world. At times it’s necessary, while other times it’s simply petty power trips.
In this case, it seems to have worked out well no matter what your motivations may have been.
5:40 pm
@ryan – interesting. I sent this to Joe to see if he will drop by and comment, but like I said: “in this case, the group agreed”. What I meant by “the group agreed” is that was Jon had no part in the decision – he just recommended that we (the group) make a decision, so we did.
6:23 pm
Very interesting – I have just read The E-Myth for the second time (should be required reading for every new business) and it addresses this issue exactly. It don’t think it matters so much who sided with who, but that you all decided to create specific roles and systematize your process. This ends up providing the most consistent experience for the customer and the most stable situation for your business. Well done.
11:58 am
Just to add to Mike’s comment…
I suggested that they needed someone who at the end of the day was held accountable for the user experience and design of the site. I refered to this as a design dictator, someone who had a vision and voice for the site.
The team was getting caught up in squabbles about very subjective things where there was no right or wrong. The stress of making collective decisions was just too much.
However, I never said WHO that person should be. I didn’t advise them that it should be Mike. I actually encouraged them to hire a Creative Director for Freshbooks. Someone who could make design decisions and would have to answerable for the decisions they made.
I don’t think my recommendations were that profound. Really all I did was listen to what everyone told me and then tried to give feedback mainly based on what I was hearing.
A good design leader, like any leader, listens to all points of views and makes a decision. They can do it democratically or autocratically both approaches have pros and cons. A good leader knows when to use both judiciously.
6:37 pm
[...] McDerment, founder of Freshbooks, shared the story of how the team surrendered to process and elected a Design Dictator (less scary than it [...]