At Chromatic our compelling saga is Saving the world from bad websites. This embodies much of what we do in our day-to-day and week-to-week. We have the unique ability to make things better for our clients and their end users. Even when we can’t implement everything we think a project needs, we know that our process and best practices are removing one more element of the bad website, or system, from the world.
What is a compelling saga?
I came across the concept of a compelling saga in a book titled “High Altitude Leadership” by Chris Warner and Don Schmincke. The subtitle of the book explains it well “What the world’s most forbidding peaks teach us about success.” The authors use mountaineering experiences and stories to illustrate leadership principles, and do a great job relating those lessons to other teams, business, and life situations.
Paraphrasing from the introduction of the book, they cover what they have learned about the dangers encountered when going to higher altitudes, why they appear, how to survive them, and/or how to prevent them. In chapter two, which covers the dangers of selfishness, the authors introduce the idea of a compelling saga.
Humans need a compelling saga: A story or drama that inspires passion for a strategic result, a passion that overwhelms the selfishness common in humans.
As someone that loves the outdoors, is motivated by challenge, and strives to live out the concepts of leadership and self-sacrifice, this idea of a compelling saga as well as the many other principles outlined in this book resonated deeply with me. As Chris, Mark and I discussed and processed the idea of a compelling saga for Chromatic, we looked at our core values, our manifesto, and came up with the compelling saga of “Saving the world from bad websites.”
We are still working on implementing this in the day to day ethos of the company. And it can apply broadly to the work that we do, from designing a site that performs well and is accessible to all, to writing and delivering clean code that is testable and maintainable, to delighting our clients with unique and creative strategies, or by levelling up their internal teams, or solving their toughest problems.
Come to my DrupalCon talk for more.
I’m going to be speaking on this topic at DrupalCon Seattle. Please come join me for more about our compelling saga, why we felt it was important, and how to come up with yours!
Session: Saving the World from Bad Websites
Time: 04/10/2019 - 13:00 to 04/10/2019 - 13:30 (1PM - 1:30PM)
Room: 606 | Level 6
I’ll also be around for the whole week in Seattle if you want to find time to connect, have some coffee, and discuss more!
Other places to connect with the Chromatic team at DrupalCon.
