Follow your nose, you coward.

How do you know a nappy is brimming with the brown stuff?

You don’t need to be a paediatrician. You don’t need to be a carer.

Hell, you don’t even need to be a parent.

You just need a nose.

Get within a few yards, take a deep breath, and sniff up that shit.

But when it comes to business, we don’t use our nose enough.

What do I mean by using your nose?

When you can’t necessarily see it, when you can’t thoroughly explain it, when you’ve no manual to refer to, but the whole thing just smells like bullshit — that’s using your nose.

And I don’t mean bullshit as in lies.

More “Bullshit if you think that’s the best we can do!”

Use your nose when there’s nothing wrong with the writing, but very little right with it either.

Use you nose when the design you’re reviewing is aesthetically pleasing, but not visually arresting.

Use your nose when the numbers add up, but nothing else does.

Use your nose when the code looks complicated but the task was relatively simple.

So why don’t we use our nose enough?

Because we’re imposters. Or worse: cowards.

The fear makes us feel we’re faking it sometimes.

I feel like I’m faking it most of time.

After all, we’re stupid enough to be in the business of trying to predict what our customers really want. And we’re smart enough to know we’ll probably get it wrong more than we get it right.

So we doubt ourselves. If only temporarily. Adrian and I call it Imposter Syndrome. It follows us around every day — no matter how positive the meeting, no matter how big the customer. There is always doubt.

Imposter Syndrome also makes us willingly ignore things that smell. We give pathetic feedback like “this is definitely on the right track” because we feel unqualified to say “this needs a massive fucking rethink”.

Our nose tells us something is not right. So why don’t we follow it?

Cowardice. For now we must do something about the smell.

All parents know the rule: you smell the shit first — you have to change the nappy.

Changing the nappy is not fun. There is little that can go right. And much that can go wrong. But you don’t have a choice — you need to change it.

Same goes for when you sniff out something bad in business. If it stinks, you need to change it.

I’m not saying you need to put it right yourself. But you do need to be able to articulate what’s wrong. You need to have the courage and the words to tell somebody why it’s not good enough.

You need to have the audacity to tell somebody else (who does this stuff for a living day-in day-out) that you don’t think it smells too good.

That’s fucking hard. Really hard. But the worst thing you can do is succumb to imposter syndrome and shut up.

Easier to stay quiet. To let it pass. To avoid upsetting the apple cart.

Easier to not follow your nose anymore.

But follow it you must.