Part of my job is to advise clients on pitfalls that can get in the way of their design project’s success, and I recently stumbled upon a brilliant piece by Dan Mall of SuperFriendly that articulated a common pitfall so well.

Dan says,

“How long does it take to make a nav? A few hours, at most. But not if the content has to be finalized ahead of time, leadership has to buy in, multiple critiques need to happen, and—most importantly—it has to be in “good shape to show.”

“Why do all of those rituals usually exist? Because the team is trying to get all of the pieces right so that they only have to do things once.

“That’s silly. And, paradoxically, inefficient. And sometimes, even detrimental.”

Dan talks about how we’ve all taken part in projects with weeks or even months of planning, wherein the outcomes still weren’t “there yet” at the end.

From my experience, perfecting things ahead of time for key stakeholders backfires more often than not. We work really hard towards Person A’s idea of perfection, but Person B has a different idea. Even if the two are just a step off from one another, the depth of work that we did with Person A all has to be retouched.

The solution is simple, and obvious. Our client teams love it when we share early, and share often. Your leadership will appreciate that too.

Cut the number of formal “ta-da” presentations by getting everyone involved in the working sessions. Not only will you need fewer rounds of iteration, you’ll also have a better experience as a team when you avoid the demoralizing crash of all that hard work “being wrong.”

So today’s advice: Share early and share often inside your organization. Bring those leaders and contributors in early, and let’s do this thing together.

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