“Mastering Commitment for Software Development Teams” started out as a collection of notes I created while driving to and from work on a long commute. I was working at a large gaming company at the time and saw many things I could help with, in teaching and understanding commitment for teams.
Almost every day for the better part of a year, I captured thoughts on ways to improve leadership of large teams. After using voice to text to capture those notes, I compiled all of them into chapters, built around a standard stool metaphor. The stool metaphor is simple and accessible, although it rarely is fully formed by most leaders. I drafted the first book over a series of months, and I began developing a brand strategy around it. My first idea was “Stoolometry”, an attempt to communicate “this is the study of all the pieces you need to drive commitment in a team.” I was also excited about the chance to introduce a new word into the marketplace.
After much editing, I printed proofs of my first worthy draft for early reviews by close friends who I knew would give me honest, tough, feedback. Those friends who will crush your spirit, if you dare produce something the world won’t like, are exactly the types you need to make a great product. I sent out copies along with a product prototype (I’ll write about it in a future blog) and awaited feedback. That book is the first one you see in the photo on this blog. I prefer to develop any product I can all the way to the point of packaging and branding to fully communicate the vision. This allows me and reviewers to focus on the value of what I am offering, instead of spending energy on clearing up a muddy vision.
My friends did an excellent job of telling me the book was not ready for prime time. Some were kind, and some as abrupt as a smack on the jaw.
All their feedback was welcomed and appreciated, and I gratefully absorbed every bit of it. The “Stoolometry” name was offensive, my book was not focused, and it felt like the metaphor was not fully developed. About that time, I was offered the opportunity to take on an executive role at a growing corporation with recent venture funding, and so I put the book aside.
While at the company, I began exercising the metaphor openly with my managers and my fellow leaders. Achieving commitment in software (like other areas) is a tenuous balancing act that needs work every week or so. Over my tenure there, I realized my metaphor was indeed immature and needed fleshing out. So I set about adding more chapters, more legs, more details, more uses and perspectives. I discussed it with my mentors, with people who gave me commitments and people who did not.
I learned a lot about my own perspectives, more about human nature, and that even when applying the most scrutiny you can to a subject like commitment, you simply must put in the time to achieve it. There is no magical formula to create commitment, but I do provide a formula in the book to follow. But as leaders, we still must do our part to facilitate it.
Along the way, I realized I was missing a critical representation of the actual commitment portion. I sketched and built prototypes with ping-pong balls, fish in water bowls, graduated cylinders, etc. I settled on eggs, as their shells represent the fragility of commitment quite well.
About six months ago, I picked the book back up and began adding the additional chapters during my drives home. I have a background in comics, film, and gaming, and I love to tell stories. So I then set about illustrating using cartoon characters to setup each chapter with a couple of heroes to help us follow along.
Over the past few months, I red-lined the old copy, through three additional drafts. I hired an editor to organize the flow, cut out unfocused jibber-jabber, remove any anecdotes that seemed redundant, and of course combed for typos, grammar issues etc. With each new draft, I could see the book gaining focus and literally getting thinner. After what I thought was surely my final draft, I printed the 2nd version that has the photo of a real egg on a dollhouse-sized stool. At this point, I was ready for marketing efforts. This year, I read Daniel Pink’s “Drive” and “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout, both books I highly, highly recommend. Combining their advice and killing my baby on the Stoolometry concept, I created the “Mastering Commitment” branding. It resonated when I discussed it with others, and I revised the book cover with the new branding.
I posted my full cover to LinkedIn and Facebook asking for friends and strangers to give my cover honest feedback in an anonymous survey on SurveyMonkey. The feedback gave me real insights to the things I could not see for myself. Folks were unimpressed with the color scheme, the font choices, the overall feel, the messaging on the back, and frankly even the concept of the book ruffled some real feathers. This kind of feedback is golden.
I took to heart that I did not nail my cover redesign the first time out. I did more cover design research, went back to the drawing board, created two more concepts, and then held another anonymous Survey Monkey vote and comments. The yellow and purple eggs eclipsed the other covers, and again I received insightful feedback that told me I still was not being clear enough. I updated the artwork, adding glasses and pencils to the characters, polished with drop shadows and such and created the final cover, which is #3 above.
Writing a book can be daunting. There is so much to do when it comes to writing your book, then polishing it to make it worthy of your readers’ time, and then marketing it to ensure people even know about it. Has it been worth all the work to this point, and will it be worth all the work to get into reader’s minds? You bet. Thank YOU for taking this journey with me.
I encourage you to buy it, so that you too can Master Commitment.
