Intranet software company and oranges

So last week we had a video shoot in our office. This was fun – we got to meet Lucas and his very expensive camera. We also managed not to break the camera, and Lucas didn’t lose patience with us, and we generally got through the day having had fun and with only a few hundred bungled lines.

My point is that because of the video we actually had things in our office that we don’t normally have, like glasses to go with the champagne we have had in the fridge for 2 years, fresh flowers and a plate of oranges. Depressingly we still didn’t drink the champagne..

So after the video shoot we were in a meeting discussing all the new recruitment for our technical staff – amazingly we are taking on 6 more people – and trying to work out the ideal structure for core and custom development teams.

After much internal debate Mike started writing names on oranges, and then we all started rolling people about. The top row are developers, the second designers, and ‘JS’ is a front end JavaScript developer we haven’t hired yet.

The point of all this is that sometimes interactive visual models really do help solve complex problems. Within a half hour or so of rolling fruit about we all left feeling we were absolutely clear on our plans for each team.

Personally I think in words, and so at the start I was a bit of a prisoner – but by the end I had to admit this really worked. Mike then added post it notes for tasks – of which just a few are in this photo – and this melange of fruit and paper really got results. We were even able to confirm our management structure by drawing stars on two of the oranges.

So I guess my message is that if you are ever stuck in a complex problem that will have impact on your company’s future and the careers of the staff, have faith when people reach for the fruit bowl – they might just surprise you!