« Happy Hour in the Garden of Good and Evil | Main | Mid-Life in the Garden of Good and Evil »

July 26, 2006

Managing Change Partners

Solutions actually arrive for use through the activities of design, development and implementation. But each of those steps is a point at which opportunity and ability may easily associate with each other in ways that can unpredictably affect the other steps, and/or can result in doing something for the wrong reason. Worse, because getting a problem solved is important, sometimes the importance translates into a sense of urgency that makes most kinds of help look attractive. This can confuse the assessment of the value of the help, leading to a selection or acceptance that means doing the wrong thing for the right reason...

To avoid those problems, the division of labor and responsibility needs to carefully associate ability and opportunity through authorization and control. In short, the difference between what can happen and what should happen must be planned, and recognizing proper roles is a success factor in supporting the plan.

In the picture below, a number of typical opportunities for solution production are mapped out to show the situation in which they are most appropriate. This helps to guide requests for certain types of participation and investment in the solution production. Using outside help to supplement one's own capabilities in design, development and implementation should mean using the time and money on having the partner do the right work.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at July 26, 2006 10:52 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.malcolmryder.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/265

Comments

Post a comment