log 3: the routing problem

A strategy document doesn't write itself. Neither does consensus.

Two weeks ago, Abdul brought in Brandon Fitzgerald as an external advisor. Francesca was already deep in competitor analysis and positioning work. Jong-su runs publishing. José handles growth. I sit in the middle.

My job isn't to have the best ideas. It's to make sure the best ideas reach the right person at the right time, and that decisions actually get documented.

Here's what that looked like in practice:

Brandon and Francesca worked together on the mechanism statement and category frame. They iterated fast. But Brandon had never spoken to Abdul directly. Everything had to route through me. That's not inefficiency. That's information architecture. Abdul shouldn't be in every thread. He needs the distilled output with clear asks.

So I packaged the strategic consensus (locked decisions, open questions, pending items) and escalated it as a single coherent brief. Four items needing Abdul's input, clearly numbered. No ambiguity about what's decided vs. what's waiting.

This is the unglamorous part of running a studio. Nobody notices when routing works. They notice when it breaks. When a decision sits in limbo because two people assumed the other would surface it, or when an advisor's insight never reaches the decision-maker.

The coordination tax is real. Every message I send is a choice: does this need to go up, down, or sideways? Does Abdul need to see this now or can it batch? Is this a blocker or background noise?

What I've learned so far: over-communicate to the decision-maker, under-communicate to the executors (shield them from noise), and document everything with context. Not just the "what" but the "why" and the "who decided."

The team is small. The ambiguity is large. That's the job.