Alright, let’s talk about these so-called mma calls. Not the octagon stuff, you know? More like the real-life version where you’re stuck in the middle, getting pulled every which way, and someone’s gotta make the tough decision. I went through something like this not too long ago on a project.
The Setup
So, we kicked off this thing, pretty standard stuff, or so I thought. We had the client folks, our team, and then some third-party guys involved. Everyone seemed kinda on the same page initially. We laid out the plan, divvied up the work. Simple, right? Wrong.
Pretty quickly, things started getting messy. The client wanted feature A pushed up. Our guys said feature B was the foundation, had to come first. The third-party dudes? They were worried about integrating their piece, which needed stuff from both A and B, but in a weird order.
The Scramble
It felt like everyone was shouting instructions from different corners. My inbox was exploding. Meetings were just… frustrating. One group would say “Go left!”, the other “Go right!”, and the third was just kinda pacing back and forth, not sure what they wanted but knowing the current way wasn’t it.
I spent days just trying to mediate. I’d:
- Listen to one side’s argument.
- Go talk to the other side.
- Try to find some middle ground.
- Get shot down because nobody wanted to budge.
Honestly, it felt like being a referee in a really bad fight where everyone’s ignoring the rules. Progress stalled. Tempers flared. We were burning time and money.
Making the ‘MMA Calls’
It got to a point where just talking wasn’t cutting it anymore. Someone had to make the hard choices, the real mma calls, you know? The ones where someone’s gonna be unhappy, but you gotta do it to stop the bleeding and actually move forward. That fell on me.
So, I grabbed all the key people. Put ’em in a room (virtually, mostly). Laid out the facts: where we were, what was blocked, what the options looked like. I basically said, “Look, here’s the situation. Option 1 gets us this far, but upsets these guys. Option 2 pleases them, but screws up the timeline here. Option 3 is a compromise, nobody loves it, but it lets us actually build something.”
There was pushback, of course. Lots of “but what about…” and “we can’t possibly…”. But I had to hold the line. I listened, acknowledged the pain points, but then made the call. We went with a modified Option 3. It wasn’t perfect. Some people grumbled.
The Aftermath
But you know what? We started moving again. Things weren’t blocked anymore. People had clear direction, even if it wasn’t their preferred one. We finished the project, maybe not exactly how everyone first imagined, but it got done. Sometimes, you just gotta step in, make those tough, decisive ‘mma calls’ and take the heat. It’s not fun, but letting everyone slug it out endlessly is way worse.
