Cross-department collaboration sucks.

I am not saying this from theory.

This is my sweaty experience.

I’ve been running an RFP project for one big customer. RFP means Request for Proposal, which sounds harmless until you open the file and realize it is basically a corporate colonoscopy in PDF form.

High stakes.

So “no pressure”.

The easy part was pricing. Run the numbers, add the tariff surcharge, save it, celebrate.

Then I opened the questionnaire.

Legal. Information security. Compliance. HR. Employee screening. Contractor management. Product engineering. Tax residency. Third-party risk management.

And this was not even half of it.

This was only the part where I understood the questions.

The whole thing was 16 pages of fine print. I was intimidated enough not to count how many questions were there.

Some things are better left unknown, like calories in cheesecake.

Cherry on top: we had only a couple of weeks to submit.

So my job, as the accountable project manager for this disaster, was to find the people who might know the answers.

First problem: we are a large remote-first organization. You cannot casually bump into the right person near the coffee machine. The coffee machine is probably in another state.

My manager gave me the first few names. They helped with the obvious questions. Then the obvious questions ran out.

Unfortunately, the RFP did not.

Good start anyway.

I needed another “source of people” who knew what WCAG, VPAT or ABAC means.

This is where Slack became useful.

Their search is weird. I still do not fully understand how it works. But it did help me find old conversations by keywords from the questionnaire. Yes, “WCAG”, “VPAT” and “ABAC”.

So I read the threads, found people who seemed to understand the topic, and started reaching out.

Within a few days, I had my list of victims.

Then the polite interrogation began.

“Hey, quick question.”

The most dangerous sentence in corporate life.

But here was the problem.

This RFP was not their top priority.

Not even top 10.

I would be lucky if it made it into the first 100.

So progress was slow.

Painfully slow.

Everyone was helpful when they could be, but everyone had their own work, their own deadlines, their own fires.

And the deadline was getting closer.

At that pace, we were going to miss it.

Miserably.

Which meant we would be disqualified from the rat race.

But leadership wanted the race.

So I decided to use two things.

People are wired to correct mistakes.

The problem was, I could not even provide wrong answers.

I had no answers.

But AI could.

Especially our internal secure AI, which is connected to internal documentation in Confluence.

Now we had a move.

I spent more than half a day generating draft answers for the missing questions.

One question at a time.

Not because I am patient, but because AI performs better when you do not throw a 16-pages of random words (the way I saw it) at its face..

Then I copied the answers into a shared document.

And instead of asking people, “Can you answer this?” I tagged the right people and asked:

“Can you review if this answer is accurate?”

That changed everything.

There is a huge difference between “give me the answer” and “review this answer.”

And people are much better at reacting than starting from zero.

Especially when something is wrong.

But to my surprise, the AI answers were about 95% accurate.

The remaining 5% were outdated.

Not because AI was being creative. Because our Confluence pages were outdated. I was curious enough to check later.

Am I shocked?

Not really.

That would require a level of innocence I no longer carry.

Till next time.

The Zettelkasten Method in Obsidian: A Practical Setup Guide - 10 min read.

If you use Obsidian but mostly collect notes without returning to them, this is useful. It explains how Zettelkasten helps connect ideas, which is the whole point of taking notes, apparently.

Oliver Sacks on Memory, Originality, and Why Forgetting is Necessary for Creativity - 11 mins read.

If you write or collect notes, this one may make you trust your brain a little less. Sacks explains why we forget where ideas came from, which is awkward, but also part of how the brain mixes old stuff into new stuff.

How To Keep Your Brain Sharp: A Practical Playbook Beyond The Basics - 25 min read.

This is brain maintenance for normal people. Like you and me. Fine, mostly you.

A book about learning to be okay with not having an answer right away (I was hoping for answers!). Simone’s point is that uncertainty is not always the enemy - sometimes it’s just where the better answer is hiding.

This legend managed to squeeze a whiteboard into his tiny office/living room. I am officially out of excuses now. There is a belief that having a whiteboard in your office automatically adds 5 points of IQ!

Treadmill Setlist Test: For the Eras Tour, Swift trained by running on a treadmill while singing the entire setlist out loud, faster for fast songs and slower for slow ones. She did this six months before the tour. That is how New Year resolutions must evolve!

Recovery as a Scheduled Job: After three Eras shows in a row, she said she spends the next day in bed except to get food. That is not laziness - that is maintenance on a very expensive machine with bangs. I will follow this rule once my Curbing Eras is over.

Force-Majeure Standard: Swift said she will perform sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed unless something force majeure stops the show. If the show can happen, the show happens.

Moving Target Rule: Swift said the industry was trying to replace her, so she decided to “replace myself first with a new me.” Her move was to keep launching distinct eras - country songwriter, pop star, indie storyteller, stadium architect - so competitors were always chasing the previous version.

Middleman Test: For the Eras Tour film, she considered studios and streamers, then chose a direct AMC deal after her father questioned why they needed a middleman. The rule was simple: if the project can go direct, do not donate margin.

Value Before Reach: In 2014, Swift pulled her catalog from Spotify because she believed free access made music feel cheaper than it was. She chose a smaller paid audience over a bigger free one. This felt so counterintuitive to me, someone who has heard “scale first, money will follow!” too many times…

Solo Album as Proof: After critics questioned how much of her songwriting was really hers, she wrote Speak Now entirely by herself. Instead of arguing, she made the proof impossible to ignore.

Phone Memo Workflow: For “I Know Places,” Swift recorded a rough piano-and-vocal idea on her phone and sent it to a collaborator with notes on where the melody should go. The tool was not fancy - it was fast enough to catch the idea before it escaped.

Eight-Hour Focus Block: On February 9, 2014, between sold-out O2 Arena shows, Swift arrived at Imogen Heap’s studio around noon with the idea for “Clean.” Eight hours later, the song was written, produced, recorded, and bounced

I clicked expecting a video about weight. Instead, it explains hormones, inflammation, metabolism, and all the weird body stuff happening behind the scenes. Worth watching if you want the science.

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