How to deal with a valuable person going in all directions?
- by JVerstry
I am working with someone producing user content to be included in a software application. He is not a coder, but rather an expert in his field, sharing the knowledge.
His contribution, taken piece by piece is great, but he goes in all directions and has issues producing work sequentially. He works on 25 pieces of content at the same time, and as soon as he reads something 'interesting', he wants to rewrite some of his stuff to improve the quality of it. He does not converge naturally.
He collects tons of informations, produces some valuable stuff, but in a completely unstructured way.
We addressed this issue with him some time ago and in order to try to solve it, we created a document with the 100 items he had to fill. Problem is, it does not seem to work very well.
How to deal with those people and collect information? I was thinking about a new technique: ask him to send his bits, out of order, little by little, as soon as they are ready, and keep a list of what remains to be done, and show him that list to give him direction.
This situation is stressing the hell out of me. If his production was not good, I would not be trying so hard to make this work. If you have experience to share, it is welcome.
