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| {{Essay|design|Purpose|{{image|59_strat-1_1|jpg|jpg|The epitome of design, yesterday.}}}} | | {{Essay|design|Purpose|{{image|59_strat-1_1|jpg|jpg|The epitome of design, yesterday.}}}} |
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| ''For the Purpose of an [[NDA]], see [[Purpose - Confi Provision]]'' | | ''For the Purpose of an [[NDA]], see [[Purpose - Confi Provision]]'' |
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| A typically derivative essay on the wonderful Fender [[Stratocaster]] got us thinking about how the [[design]] imperatives in a [[process]] may differ at different points in that process.
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| An electric guitar’s overall life-cycle includes its design, manufacture, marketing, use, maintenance and further use in perpetuity to kill fascists.<ref>Hey hey, my my: rock ’n’ roll will never die, of course.</ref> The [[design]] imperatives for the different phases of its life are very different: during manufacture, what’s important is cost of components, speed and ease of assembly. During sale it is distribution channels, marketing, branding, and transport. Once purchased, the design imperatives are different again: a single careful owner cares not how easy the tremolo is to set up, or the pickguard harness is to wire: she cares about only how easy it is to make, as Frank Zappa put it, “the disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar”.
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| How easy it is to ''make'' or ''sell'' a guitar bears no necessary relation to how easy it is to ''play'' or ''fix''. The interests and aspirations of those who interact with the guitar during its ''production'' and ''use'' are very different. [[Leo Fender]]’s real genius was how fabulously his design managed ''all'' these interests, so the same thing delivers for ''all'' its users: It’s easy to machine, easy to build, easy to set up, easy to fix, easy to play, it looks great, gets the girls ''and'' kills fascists. It is probably even quite cool way to be killed, if you happen to be a fascist.
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| Hypothesis, therefore: great [[design]] works for all phases of the life-cycle, and all users, of an artefact throughout its production and use. Nor is there a strict hierarchy of priorities between these users: you might say “it is more important to be easy to play than to build” — but if difficulty of building doubles its production cost — or makes ''fixing'' it more difficult — there will be fewer users. These competing uses exist in some kind of ecosystem in which the artefact will thrive or perish.
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| Ok; that is a long and fiddly [[metaphor]]. Let us now — sigh — tear ourselves away from Leo Fender’s wonderful creation, and apply the metaphor to the process of preparing, executing and performing a commercial contract.
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| Who are the interested constituencies when it comes to the production and use of contracts? It is not just Party A and Party B: it isn’t ''even'' Party A and Party B, if we take the [[Jolly Contrarian|JC]]’s [[Agency problem|cynical line]] that those corporate forms are merely a husk: a host — a static entry in a commercial register somewhere — unless and until animated its ''[[agent]]s''.
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| The constituents who have an interest in a contract being done are those in Sales, Legal, Credit, Docs, Operations, Risk, and Trading — on each side of the table — and their external advisors. Do not underestimate the interests of those advisers.
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| These diverse interests — what each group wants from its intervention in the contracting process — are ''wildly'' different:
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| === '''[[Sales]]''' === | | === '''[[Sales]]''' === |