I jokingly referred to “Rule #2 of the outreach team” in a meeting last week to which someone aptly responded, “So what are the other rules?” That’s a good question. We like to stay flexible on my team (it’s necessary when most of your work is collaboration-based), so there are rarely hard and fast rules. But here are a few maxims we live by.

• Rule 1: Make something people want
• Rule 2: Save everything to Box
• Rule 3: Invite more people to the table
• Rule 4: Dirty hands make it right
• Rule 5: “Yes and”

Of course, rules are meant to be broken so here are the notable exceptions:

• Rule 5 (with caveat): Yes and… but we can’t say yes to everything.
• Rule 4 (with caveat): Dirty hands make it right… but don’t be a hero.
• Rule 3 (with caveat): Invite more people to the table… but always be clear who will make the call.
• Rule 2 (with caveat): Save everything to Box… [actually, there’s no exception to this rule]
• Rule 1 (with caveat): Make something people want… but sometimes you have to make them want to want it first.