It Depends

During my tenure at Razorfish¹ (2014-16), I worked closely with Saneef on many exciting and impactful products for some of the who’s who brands of the world. We came to the realization of one key aspect of working with clients, customers, the team, and other service providers. Almost all of why, how, and what of getting things done comes down to;

“It depends.”

As a testament to the importance of open-mindedness and understanding, a wise individual on the Internet once said, “I have developed a heuristic, which is that people who talk, write being completely convinced that one way of doing things is always wrong and one way of doing things is always right, and that people doing things the other way are just ignorant/stupid/wrong, usually have no idea what they are talking about.”

Most people will not take you seriously if you give one option as the “way it has to be.” Everything has trade-offs. You will be much more effective as a communicator if you list a few options and their trade-offs. Of course, you even have your preferred/recommended option, which, too, has trade-offs.