How often is it that we design a strategy, or propose a policy, that we know is good, valuable and what our organisation needs? We work hard to persuade others, convince them that this is where we are going, this is what our future must look like, if we are to be a success, survive even.
And then we try to implement it. And people object. Or see it differently. Or ignore it and carry on doing what they think they should do. And all the time the world is spinning, the context we operate in is changing. None of us can foresee how events will turn out next week, let alone over three to five years.
So does this make strategy and policy worthless? No, certainly not. But if we spent a bit less time trying to get those right and a lot more time learning about how we might need to work together in order to reach our objectives we might progress rather further and rather sooner.
It’s the way that you do that gets results.
I’ve been surprised many times by this scenario: A planning meeting where there is unanimous decision that policy X is better than policy Y. Then comes the first implementation of policy X and it leads *everybody* to agree that Y would be better. In my case, this has often happened in a prototyping phase, where such mistakes are relatively cheap/easy to correct, but I’ve also seen projects come to completion/market with similar kinds of flaws.
Nothing quite like the grim determination of a team that knows they are busy putting lipstick on a pig, and just want to get it over with. It’s cold comfort to have had the Cassandra role in the planning phase and then say “I told you so” when it all goes awry.
Certain software development methodologies (e.g. “agile methods”) do seem to offer alternative approaches which ought to transfer to any situation where there are many unknowns (and unknown unknowns). There are still flaws with agile (often cultural and systemic) but I harbour some hope that they offer a way to escape the tyranny of Gantt charts and ‘waterfall’ project management.