Don't add your 2 cents

Speaking as someone who has been "the technical guy" for 20-odd years, if the president of the company wants to pick nits like variable names and coding style, he's perfectly within his rights to do so. But he can do it without me.

Absolutely terrific advice.

As soon as I read "_specific_ feedback", my eyes lit up.

Another issue with specific feedback is that "...should be red instead of blue" type feedback can derail a designers whole thought process, a thought process which usually doesn't end at the delivery of a draft, which is merely an optional stop along the way in the mind of the designer.

A designer might have ideas for how to address certain kinds of objections to a draft. For example, if boss says, "It doesn't match our brand well enough.", the designer might have some specific ideas that he/she came up with, in case that was a perceived issue. If, instead, the boss says, "It doesn't match our brand well enough, so add more blue.", then the designer's route can no longer be used, and an entirely new route has to be determined.

I use the railway analogy, because I think it actually maps exactly: Imagine you, as a train passenger, told the conductor (the person you've hired to be your railway professional) exactly where to go, and there wasn't a predefined switch for getting there OR the switch for getting to that exact location has already been passed. The only way to achieve this new route is to backtrack or build a new switch track, both of which are more expensive than continuing on the existing route to a location that also solves the passenger's problems.

> You are not presenting a quantitative basis for a change. That "work me out of a design" is as diminishing as direct request.

First, you are still thinking in terms of a top-down decision where the boss has to choose between deciding what is best, or delegating that with no further input, whereas I'm talking about creating a collaborative dialogue which may or may not result in change at all.

> Please, answer to me why are you concerned with such minutiae next to project completion? Is the Statement of Work you have prepared with designer not detailed enough?

I'm describing a generalised approach based on the examples in the article. If you think this is a literal example of what to focus on, then I might as well throw back at you that what you are describing with SOWs sounds a lot like the fixed, rigid waterfall approach where everything is set in stone at the start, which in the words of Winston Royce himself "is doomed to fail".[0]

Which brings me to my second point: for the sake of the example I'm assuming here that this is not a bike-shedding situation where a manager just wants to change something for the sake of feeling like they added something to the conversation (in which case your only hope is to add something so trivial that it functions as a lightning rod - see the Duck story of Battle Chess[1]).

Let's assume that the boss in this scenario has a reason to want to change something better than bike-shedding. Whether it's a good or bad one is to be determined. Instead of assuming either, the best option then is to engage in a (brief) dialogue to figure out said reason. The designer, being the expert, should be the best person to guide the boss and help decide the validity of said input.

So the goal of this conversation is not to propose a change to "blue and huge". The goal is to approach the design from the point of view of the designer; focussing on the points that still somehow feel uneasy is just efficient since that is most relevant. By asking the designer to work us through the design process we get to ignore the first gut-feeling "solutions", letting the designer keep ownership and acknowledging that they know what they are doing.

If you approach the conversation like this, most of the time it will quickly become obvious that that one of the parties forgot to take something into account: maybe the shade of blue would align more with company colours, despite not popping out as nicely; or maybe it's the opposite: the darker shade would look better, but the designer decided being consistent with the overall look of the company was more important. Furthermore, discussions like this are immensely helpful for making it clear to the designer what metters most to the client. In the end the designer can walk away with a better understanding of their client's wishes: "ok, I'll have to figure out a new balance between aligning with the the company colours while still having some pop in the overall look - and I have a bit more leeway than I originally thought."

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCns726nBhQ&t=8m45s

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess#Development

> there's something in their mind that makes them think that if their team gets something done without their involvement, then that makes them redundant

I don't think that's the intent. I think it's more like, "I'm not doing my job if all I do is rubber stamp". If the manager isn't helping the team to get better work done, then they are redundant. Nitpicky comments are probably not the way to help the team, but if I had a manager who just said "sounds good" every time I presented an idea or a piece of work, I wouldn't interpret that as empowering in any sense. I'd interpret it as "this guy doesn't even care".

>I just gave this 1 minutes thought and 30 seconds of feedback, do I want this person to go off and do a few hours more work based on that off-the-cuff remark?

It depends a lot on who the comment is being given to. I've got people on my team that I can make an off the cuff suggestion to, and they'll consider it just as if it came from any other senior person. I've got other people who will take an off the cuff suggestion from me and run with it for a week. I have to be much more cautious with my suggestions to the latter.

Honest question - is this idea of individual ownership conducive to team morale, enough to protect ownership like this? I've seen a lot of examples of how "ownership" backfires when people are protective of their turf or disregard others' valid input. Ownership seems to be commonly used to get people to take personal responsibility as a proxy for motivation, it does help some people set better examples, but does it motivate a team and make it more cohesive on the whole?

I have seen 2-cents backfire a lot a well, but I think it's most often strong personal opinion not backed by good reasons, like evidence or unseen constraints or dependencies, etc.

This article started by the boss asking for "non-obvious advice", and then provided an example of advice that was pure opinion without any reason, and stated as a veiled command rather than offering an alternative option. It can be important to share actually non-obvious insights, even if it's just 2 cents worth, so I won't be asking my team to avoid sharing their 2 cents as a blanket rule, I will ask them to share any important insights they may have, and encourage them to have a good reason.