The first ten minutes

I have started recording the first call of every project, with permission, and listening to it again at the end. It is an uncomfortable habit and I recommend it. Almost every problem that showed up in week eight is audible in minute four.

Not as a warning. As an aside. Someone says we will probably need to run this past the board and the conversation moves on, and eleven weeks later the board has opinions about the typeface.

The things that get skipped

There is a short list of questions that feel too blunt to ask early, which is exactly why they belong early. Who signs this off. What happens if they hate it. What has already been tried. What are you not allowed to change.

That last one is the most useful question I know. Every organisation has a set of untouchable things, and none of them are written down. The name. A colour someone's predecessor chose. A layout the founder drew. You will find them eventually — the question is whether you find them in week one or in the presentation.

Writing it down changes it

After the call I send back one page: what I think the problem is, what I think success looks like, and what I heard as fixed. Not a proposal. A summary.

About a third of the time someone replies to correct me, and the correction is the most valuable email of the project. The other two thirds reply yes, that is it, and now there is a shared sentence to point at when the work drifts.

The cost of skipping it

Ten minutes of blunt questions at the start, against three weeks of redesign in the middle. I have run it both ways enough times to stop treating it as a preference.