No Scoffing at the Requesters

Photo by Taylor Smith

When your technology is running as a thriving ecosystem, as it must be, there’s too much to do and too little time.

Requests and ideas are coming in from all sides because everybody is actually using the system and actively depending on it (halleluyah!) And along the way they’re spotting issues and having ideas (halleluyah!)

This is great. This is what you were hoping for all along. You’re throwing a fun party and the guests are showing up. This is the road to thriving technology that’s helping everyone do better and accomplish more and be happier and more effective in their jobs (halleluyah!) This is a great thing.

And yet by nature it means the volume steadily increases to the point where it outstrips capacity and resources and you can’t do everything at once. Choices must be made.

This is why we prioritize. And in fact that responsibility confers a lot of power on the prioritizer. You are becoming the decider.

But with that power, a certain temptation can creep in — and I’m not quite sure why, though intuitively I get it — to scoff the requests coming in from the hoi polloi. Ha, that one clearly isn’t a priority. Tell them they’ll have to wait. We’ve got more important fish to fry right now.

Adopt that attitude at your own peril, because it’s sowing the seeds of the downfall of your hard-won, thriving, technology ecosystem.

Those needs and ideas are coming from someone who believes in the system enough to care. Who has actually made the investment of time and effort and energy to pry themselves away from their shadow spreadsheets and use the central system you set up for them. Who showed up for your party.

Even if they’re not the most important person in the org, or working on the most important project in the org, their work fits into the larger whole. They’re part of your journey towards a holistic unified set of systems with a trustable source of truth. If they’re on the bus, that helps everyone.

But if there’s no room for them on the bus, they’re going to get off the bus and go back to trying to invent their own workarounds and their own separate sources of data and processes that get their near-term need addressed. Those workarounds become small cracks in the great shared mission you’re shepherding, and unseen in the shadows they will grow steadily larger and more damaging over time.

By all means you have to prioritize. You should de-prioritize and sequence this need however is appropriate given your understanding of the landscape.

But don’t scoff at it, and don’t dare communicate dismissiveness to the person who requested it. Respect the need and the gift of an active feedback loop. It’s important to them so it’s important to you. If it can’t happen now for good reason, tell them why and help find a temporary workaround together. Then get something on the future roadmap that addresses their core need. They’ll understand your reasoning for the delay, and you’ll protect the future of what you’re building together.

No scoffing here. You’re on the same team, now and always.