Comment by crispyambulance
6 years ago
> what model there might exist for moving quickly with a multi-stakeholder process.
There is no model for that.
The OP's list of "fast" was more of a compilation of cherry-picked projects that, with the right context and in the right hands, achieved an impressive outcome.
Moreover, each of them AFAIK had long prerequisites to get to the point where they could reach their endpoints. The path to great things invariably includes many failures, false starts, and uncertainty.
The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph. It doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers.
> The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph.
In fairness, the author co-founded Stripe when he was 21. So, perhaps it's fair that his views are colored by the fact that at a very young age he built the highest valued company in the history of the world's most successful startup incubator, but saying "it doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers" is, well, I'll just say a bit funny given who the author is.
To the high performance operator, inefficient bureaucracy has been a recognized thing for millennia.
The associated deadlines, proven over millennia to never be realistic.
Regardless, this is the mainstream, and this is how institutional projects are built and at institutional speed, i.e. sluggish. You know, like a snail without a shell.
Alternatively, for an equally long time now, in a certain way nature has favored those few individuals who have the instinctual need for non-sluggish, dare I say "fast" myself.
These are so hard to find that most time-sensitive projects simply start without them and substitute traditional deadlines and bureaucracy in order to measure long-term progress which would otherwise not be apparent.
When what is really needed is leadership from the top down building the team exclusively hand-picked for the very instinct which has always outperformed mainstream operation. But it takes one to know one.
When everybody on the job has always had the knack for outperforming anything deadlines have to offer, you don't have to remind them you needed everything "the day before yesterday".
No need for (lack of) progress reports either, when the goal is moving visibly closer continuously and it's turning out not to be a long-term project after all.
Outliers will be outliers.
I’m curious about your last statement. You wrote “the author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph.” Then you made an even more disparaging comparison to wet dreams that is too distasteful to quote.
How many billion dollar companies have you started?