Know your place

I've been spending a very happy weekend watching Glastonbury on the TV.  I've decided two things..:

1) Lily Allen can't sing and really is annoying

2) I'm going next time despite the mud

However, in between embarassing the kids by asking the name of every second artist on the telly I have been working quite hard (well I did get out on the bike as well - you've got to get the miles in...)

One of the good things about the work that Sue and I do is that it actually makes me keep reading – something I know I’d be lax about if it weren’t for the real deadlines that come with a promised development programme for a client.

Right now, I’m working on a unit on consulting skills for IC managers because we keep being asked what people need to know if they want to expand from implementers to advisors (it’s all part of the competency model)…

And as part of the process you have to look around to see what new is being said on the subject or track down data and case studies.

One of my real finds is a book by Alan Weiss called “Organizational consulting – how to be an effective internal change agent”.  And what I like is the fact that it underlines the point that was drummed into me when I worked for a project management consultancy – be clear about the roles of the different players in any given situation.

In project management they make a big deal about knowing the difference between a client and an end user.  When projects go wrong it’s often because these roles have been confused or left ill-defined.

And in consulting you have to be very clear about who is the client and who is merely an interested party.  Weiss talks about defining your “Economic Buyer” – the person who holds the budget, who specifies the required results and who will take ultimate accountability for the project not working.

He says you shouldn’t confuse an Economic Buyer with general stakeholders – people with something to gain or lose but no final accountability for the success of the project.

In a workshop the other day one of the team I was working with bemoaned the fact that in his organisation there seems to be an endless round of approvals and authorisations for the tiniest thing – a problem that is pretty familiar to most of us!  We’ve all suffered from our plan being tinkered with by every Tom, Dick and Harriet – but it never seems to become a better plan in the process for some reason.

Weiss has some thoughts on that and our unit will need to explore when you try different styles when dealing with different situations.

However I also think the good old fashioned RACI is a solid discipline to be applied in these situations.  At the start of a project identify the steps involved and for each stem decide who is ultimately Accountable (i.e. where the buck will ultimately stop is the task fails to happen or is poorly performed), who is Responsible (i.e. will be expected to help make it all happen), who needs to be Consulted and who simply needs to be Informed. (The acronym therefore stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed – I guess that although you’d naturally start you list with accountable, the resulting acronym isn’t that charming!).

So, now I’m off to Amazon to buy the novels of someone who was at the workshop this week!

Liam

And on the subject of knowing your place...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU

Comments

[Alan Weiss]

Thank you for the kind mention of my book.

Alan Weiss