The VOLTS Dispatch
Two minutes.
One thing to try.
Short, blunt tactics for product and delivery leaders who are done with meetings that produce activity but no decisions. Every issue ends with one thing to try this week.
I don't remember agreeing to that.
Someone senior says they don't remember agreeing. Nobody's lying. The fix is a six-field decision log and two minutes at the end of the meeting.
The question nobody asks about a paused project
Three weeks ago the ebook went out and the paperback was politely postponed by a broken printing machine. I promised I'd use that.
Just F*cking Ship It is published today.
The ebook is live. The paperback is a couple of weeks behind, because the printer's machine broke and the covers slipped. Which means the book about getting…
The window just opened. Again.
Two pieces in the press, one book three weeks out, and a question about Torbay. Twice in my working life the ground has moved under big companies. The first…
Busy, not stuck? AI just changed the maths.
I gave a talk in Torquay last month with a question in the title that annoyed at least one person in the room: Busy, Not Stuck?
Most projects don't fail. They just never ship.
I've spent twenty years watching good work not happen. Not fail — failure is loud, and loud gets fixed. This is quieter. The meeting ends with nods. The…
The meeting after the meeting
You know this one. The meeting ends. Decisions made, actions agreed, everyone nods. Then four people stay on the call, or drift to the kitchen, or open a…
The scope that never got said out loud
Most scope problems aren't discovered in the work. They're discovered in the review. Three weeks in. First demo. And everyone in the room realises they were…
Free. Five templates. One stuck meeting.
One hour. No decision. Repeat until morale improves. Your meeting has been rescheduled three times. Not because anyone is busy. Because nobody is quite sure…
£50k offsite. Zero decisions.
Your offsite was a waste of money. I know. You had a facilitator. You had breakout groups. You had a photographer who took seventeen shots of the sticky…