I’ve edited and published part of an email I sent in reply to a colleague who regularly makes sharp proposals in daily reports.

Email content below

Was it last week? I was talking with Mr. Foo (pseudonym) about the product review feature, and I thought I generally agreed with what you were thinking.

Personally, I think it’s now a matter of “do it” or “don’t do it,” and for things that can be completed within the development team alone, we now have a Hack day system (time like Google’s 20% rule), so I think we should go ahead and do it.

The other part is proposals to other teams. This part is difficult, isn’t it? I often worry about it too. Even if I think I’m making good proposals, if the other party doesn’t accept them, that team’s members won’t easily move.

It might be a bit different, but as an analogy, it’s like “entrepreneurs who have ideas but can’t execute.”

Making proposals is taking one action, so it’s not like doing nothing, but I think it probably won’t be realized unless you have the mindset of “if no one else will do it, I’ll do it myself.”

Finally, I think the boomerang of “You say all these things, but are you doing your own job properly?” will definitely come back. I think you need to do your own job so well that you can’t say a word against it, and use that as a base to stick your nose into other teams’ work or make proposals, otherwise your statements won’t have persuasive power.

Mr. Foo, you wouldn’t particularly refer to what people without track records say, right? I think that’s what it is.

Let’s both do our best.

That’s all from the Gemba.