http://disqus.com/by/iaconsultants/enTue, 18 Aug 2009 10:19:34 -0000http://bradsramblings.com/blog/2009/08/how-do-you-learn-from-failing/#comment-15009914<p>Hey Brad,</p><p>I think in order to learn from mistakes, you need to start by being open to others ideas. We all fail; which in and of itself has been given such a negative connotation that we end up losing out on a wonderful opportunity to make wiser decisions in the future.</p><p>When a project "falls off the rails", I take time to look back at where the communication broke down. Fundamentally, from my experience, when we fail at accomplishing a specific task we do so because we (note I'm not saying the client or myself), but the collective team fails to communicate / illustrate the end state clearly; and subsequently the steps along the way.</p><p>Did we question for clarity? Did we use the terms and vocabulary that everyone understood? Did we gather all the necessary decision makers who needed buy-in from the start? Did we clearly illustrate the goals of the project before we started working?</p><p>If we start to look at the opportunity that failure provides, we can all become better designers and more importantly, improve our capacity to both educate and learn from our clients and the projects themselves.</p>jeffparksTue, 18 Aug 2009 10:19:34 -0000http://www.deanwhitney.com/2008/05/29/agencies-lack-web-20-technology-expertise/#comment-562655<p>As Andrew Hinton discussed at the IA Summit "Conversation is king!" Agencies can only better integrate technology when they begin to spend more time listening openly to each other and their customers for how technology can support employees and customers.</p><p>Technology is but a tool to aid in the conversation - and in many cases a poor choice depending on what people want / need to communicate.</p><p>30 years ago, less than a generation, we had very little reliance on technology and in my opinion, people were much better at communicating.</p><p>I've argued several times over the past couple of years that technical skills will become less important than soft skills - and I think we've been seeing that play out since the dot com bubble burst.</p><p>Listen carefully. Question for clarity. Build Accordingly.</p>jeffparksSat, 31 May 2008 08:31:35 -0000