Improving the Conversation Between Strategists & Developers

Getting meaningful conversations between strategists and developers on your team.

Hey, developers and fellow strategists, we need to talk.

I’ve noticed that we think differently about our relationship in the builder community. You get excited over hardware, lines of code and open APIs while I seek to influence consumer behavior with technology. I feel like this divide may push us away.

Let’s fix this.

Helping Developers

I’ve realized my role in the builder community is to be your biggest fan. I may never need to code, but understanding you as a coder is one way we will overcome this. Here are my promises to you:

1. I will minimize as many distractions as possible to keep you focused This includes screening phone calls before they get to you, waiting to ask questions until you have time to actually think about them and keeping those boring project management meetings short.
2. I will make you (and what you work on) look amazing. Remember all that traveling I did last spring talking with techies about our platform? I may have dropped your name a dozen times when talking about it. They were impressed.
3. I will promote your passion to the people who can pay for it. Translating your work into jargon that non-techies will understand is my job; I love teaching people new things. So, if I ask an obvious question about how it works, I can better promote it to folks with dollar bills to spend.

Helping Strategists

Here’s what I ask of you:

1. Bug me when you are working on something that will blow my mind. I love when we can geek over technology but I sometimes get busy with client work. Take the initiative and come by to talk about what you are working on. I assure you, I won’t tell you to go away.
2. Write the technology and hardware used on a Post-It. I know; I’ve asked you the difference between JavaScript and jQuery a hundred times. Let’s keep our sanity and when we are done talking, write down the technology and hardware used so I can Google it later. This will save us both a lot of time (and headaches).
3. Champion my ideas to find better outcomes to problems. The best success we have at selling our capabilities is to team up and think. Ignore the desire to say it’s impossible on the first try. Ask me questions, goals, and outcomes I’m looking for that could help solve the problem. Sometimes, it won’t be the first thing that comes to mind.

Helping Each Other

Making (and keeping) promises like these will help us work smarter when tackling an obstruction across the path. I’ve seen this happen several times in my career. The opportunity to improve this relationship is there every day. You’d be surprised how much of an impact it can have.