With Ready Fire Aim Avoid Intractable

This was a rerun weekend for food. I ate some of my favorite dishes; a cheese burger, nachos, and Cioppino. Although, have shared elements of these foods before, I really never do things the same way twice. For example the nachos had three kinds of meat, adobe and achiote seasoned pulled chicken, smoked pulled pork with Tapatío hot sauce and taco seasoned ground beef. I served a salsa made from kumato tomatoes and red onion with Serrano chilies. I fried the chips using fresh corn tortillas cut into thirds because I prefer a stronger chip for nachos than the ones used for dipping salsas. Even though it may not sound like much of a Sunday dinner, it was most satisfying. The Cioppino was the star on Saturday with Dungeness crab, shrimp, clams and crawfish. I made a sensational tomato broth from a fish stock made from the head and bones of the flounder we had a few weeks ago. I didn’t have mussels, so I substituted the crawfish for an additional fish related element. Cooking for me is a ready aim fire sort of exercise. I use my knowledge of foods to create something from the familiar into something that is usually even more interesting. The recipe of the week is Cioppino. Enjoy!

Speed to Decision Making

A few years ago ready fire aim seemed to be a methodology to accelerate the decision process. I was always a little concerned as it seemed to eliminate an analysis period. So I wanted something else. Anyway, I was reading an article in InformationWeek this morning by John McGreavy as he faces the same hurdle of building a consensus prior to executing. I am sure many of us use one of his mechanisms to bypass the buy-in process, skunk works. I have two skunk works projects underway and as they proceed to completion, I will continue to work on building a consensus with the internal stakeholders. John writes of the need to accelerate the decision process because technology is changing so rapidly that we risk losing opportunities to innovate. However, my favorite line form the article comes from the suggestion that perhaps he should proceed with innovative projects and ignore the consensus building process. Seeing the potential failure of that idea he states “While I am not afraid of failure, I also don’t want to my title changed to VP Of New Ideas That Turned Out Stupid”. And that is exactly my point as well. Businesses need to avoid analysis paralysis and they should be leery of leaping before they look. At Broadvox and Cypress decision making is streamlined with the management team having the autonomy and authority to execute without constant oversight or buy-in. Furthermore, we have a strong CEO who is willing to make hard decisions and change them if necessary. It is our avoidance of an intractable position that serves us well. To succeed requires some risk taking. We can’t know everything before we begin and we should be open to altering the plan if necessary.