During school, most have seen and enjoyed the three-legged race...some of us would have actually experienced the fun as well. While for some, its a nightmare to even take a few steps, there are a few others who are running as fast as they would have run individually! Arms over shoulders, steps in synchronization and off they go towards the 'Finish' line to win the prize!
A complex puzzle for those who can't...and nothing so simple for those who can!
Organizational projects are no less of a three-legged race themselves, where:
Leg 1 = Customer
Leg 2 = Solution Provider
Leg 3 = The actual solution and the project itself where the Customer and the Solution Provider are tied together
Some of these project engagements struggle to identify the Leg 3 itself, while some others run off to finish the race in record time and reap immense business benefits. A clear understanding of dependencies of Leg 1, Leg 2 and Leg 3 followed with precise, continuous coordination between the three legs is perhaps all that's needed to solve the puzzle of the three-legged race!
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
When It's Not OK...
In an organization, multiple stakeholder teams contribute to the many facets of organizational activity. Modern management principles require that each stakeholder group be responsible for the area it contributes to and controls this contribution through well laid out Key Result Areas (KRAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The key assumption made in this type of framework is that each stakeholder is aware of not only its own, but also the roles, responsibilities and dependencies across other stakeholders. The decision makers have their task cut out to orchestrate the activities of individual stakeholders towards realization of organizational goals, both short term and long term. Implicit here is that along with the activities of each stakeholder, the benefits to each stakeholder also have to be balanced by the decision makers.
Invariably, however, balancing individual activities with organizational goals and stakeholder benefits is seldom a simple task. Rather than walking a straight-line tightrope, we usually find decisions and activities oscillating across the ideal balanced state of operations. The end result is that the organization's operations are rarely on the ideal, optimized path. Lack of appropriate and complete information, and uncontrollable external factors could be driving such situations. But sometimes differing importance assigned to each type stakeholders could be playing a sustained role in influencing the direction of these oscillations.
If we look at principle task of balancing the basic short term organizational survival with the long term stakeholder enrichment and growth, we do observe certain decisions that are sometimes taken to ensure short term continuity, and a long term strategic interest of some stakeholder is either sacrificed or foregone. Situations having short term focus would typically drive such decisions. In situations with longer term visibility, decisions can tend to forego overall short term benefits to ensure long term sustainability.
But in today's world of shortening business process lifecycles and dynamic situations, we do see an increased tendency towards short term rather than long term, with the result that some stakeholder interests are sacrificed over others. The impacted stakeholders need to bring this to the notice of the decision makers and good practices of management require that such imbalance be set right. Most of the times, even the stakeholders are fairly agreeable to such short term variations and its OK with them.
But there are times when there could be a deliberate, sustained sacrifice of some stakeholder benefits over some other stakeholder group benefits. Such situations, not only can strike at the very root of long term sustainability, but also at the immediate survival of the organization...then things are definitely not OK!
Though there is no definite solution to such problems, a willingness to take the raging bull by its horns is very often the best way out.
The key assumption made in this type of framework is that each stakeholder is aware of not only its own, but also the roles, responsibilities and dependencies across other stakeholders. The decision makers have their task cut out to orchestrate the activities of individual stakeholders towards realization of organizational goals, both short term and long term. Implicit here is that along with the activities of each stakeholder, the benefits to each stakeholder also have to be balanced by the decision makers.
Invariably, however, balancing individual activities with organizational goals and stakeholder benefits is seldom a simple task. Rather than walking a straight-line tightrope, we usually find decisions and activities oscillating across the ideal balanced state of operations. The end result is that the organization's operations are rarely on the ideal, optimized path. Lack of appropriate and complete information, and uncontrollable external factors could be driving such situations. But sometimes differing importance assigned to each type stakeholders could be playing a sustained role in influencing the direction of these oscillations.
If we look at principle task of balancing the basic short term organizational survival with the long term stakeholder enrichment and growth, we do observe certain decisions that are sometimes taken to ensure short term continuity, and a long term strategic interest of some stakeholder is either sacrificed or foregone. Situations having short term focus would typically drive such decisions. In situations with longer term visibility, decisions can tend to forego overall short term benefits to ensure long term sustainability.
But in today's world of shortening business process lifecycles and dynamic situations, we do see an increased tendency towards short term rather than long term, with the result that some stakeholder interests are sacrificed over others. The impacted stakeholders need to bring this to the notice of the decision makers and good practices of management require that such imbalance be set right. Most of the times, even the stakeholders are fairly agreeable to such short term variations and its OK with them.
But there are times when there could be a deliberate, sustained sacrifice of some stakeholder benefits over some other stakeholder group benefits. Such situations, not only can strike at the very root of long term sustainability, but also at the immediate survival of the organization...then things are definitely not OK!
Though there is no definite solution to such problems, a willingness to take the raging bull by its horns is very often the best way out.
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