Lost in the Whistles and Bells

The proposal was slick.

And it was big! I'd spent a week integrating beautiful design assets, meticulously considered wording, and honed-in messaging. It was one of the best documents I've ever helped to create, and it came down to the wire. I was putting the final few glorious touches on it late the night before it shipped.

The client said...

... "that proposal is nice, but you could have just sent me a single page of text, and it would have been enough."

Ouch! There are a lot of lessons that I've learned from that moment in my past. One of them is to better understand the recipient/audience for my work and what serves them best.

Other clients did need the fancy presentation because it matched their situation, their preferred learning styles, and the way that they engaged with that type of content inside their organizations.

But this one didn't. And I didn't have enough knowledge about what served this person best. And I didn't take the time to try to find out. I assumed that what worked for the last person was the same thing that would work this time.

But what if we had a "cheat sheet" that helped us understand for each person we work or partner with: their preferred learning styles, communication patterns, appetite for details vs high-level strategy, and more? And what if it didn't feel like cheating at all, but rather empathetic consideration for uniquely personal needs and styles?

That's what we're building at Crewjoy, and it is changing how collaboration happens!

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