The concept *is* the execution
Working alongside advertising people, you hear the phrase “oh, that’s executional” a fair bit. Granted, ‘executional’ is a revolting neologism, but that’s not my big problem with the phrase.
There are a number of trigger phrases that people use to try to prevent you focusing on the detail of a project and back to nice, sweeping, high-level thinking, and ‘that’s executional’ is one of them. I think it is supposed to mean that the particular detail you’re focusing on is not central to the service under discussion and is something that can be worked out at a later date.
This attitude frustrates me so much because I think you make great services by obsessing over details. I think one of the ways to make awful services is by developing some pure, abstract concept in isolation from how people will actually use it. To me, the concept is contained in the execution.
I don’t mean to suggest that every detail must be worked out at planning sessions, but I do think that digging into detail is a very good way of examining how sound the service is. The way users interact with services is often in very small transactions, and the detail of those transactions is vital to engaging the user.
I can never shake the feeling that people dislike getting into details because that’s when service design gets hard, as if it’s the concept that is always right and that the details can be massaged and shaped to fit. Coming up with a grandiose plan is relatively easy, but working out how much of the plan can actually work in detail is much harder. I think we could work much more efficiently if we got into detail sooner.
I’d be very surprised to hear Steve Jobs utter the phrase ‘that’s executional’. I can’t imagine him briefing his engineers that he wanted to ‘reinvent the phone’ and then sending them on their way thinking that the rest was ‘executional’. I’ll bet he obsessed over every single detail of the iPhone, and that he’s doing exactly the same over the tablet/slate/unicorn/whatever right now. And I’ll bet he didn’t start obsessing about the details recently; he’ll have been working on the tablet for years.
To me, a great service emerges from a deep understanding of the way that people will interact with it, the way their lives work and the way that it will become part of their lives. From the way it will be useful to them, in other words. If they’re going to have to use a computer to interact with the service, it’s vital to understand what kind of computer they are going to be using, where they will be using it and, crucially, how much time they have to spend.
You cannot design a great service without an obsessional focus on the details. Deny that and I’m likely to get all executional on your ass.