An Artful Measuring

I see a fair amount of debate on public fora about how and when to manage the "commitment" by the various interested parties to a system design. Somewhat oddly and even counter-intuitively, you run as much risk nailing down the balance too early as you risk by delaying until it's too late.

It helps to identify the champions and get them on board early; if you don't you risk the backlash that folks will feel slighted by being omitted from the initial design decisions. If you get everybody who's invited immediately hyped-up however, you will find that some of the champions burn out before you are ready to release them: you will need their cheerleading later for positioning and they will show up in body only, not in spirit.

A sublime key to the success of a project therefore is to involve all the interested parties early, yet manage the commitment level of user and department champions so as to be able to rely upon them when you will most require their decisionmaking abilities. You need to quietly "measure" your progress and then anticipate when you will be needing their support. If you lose a key champion early, your project may be unrecoverable.

An Artful Outside

It is rather unusual to be directly involved in a design where the interests of your customers are opposed to those of the larger public, primarily because they are a subset of that public. Some system designs however get targeted to a small and distinct enough set of customers that conflicts can arise; the subset may have interests that are notably at odds with regulations.

Who do you design for? How do you balance staying employed with doing the right thing? In this case the owners of your company prefer that you bend toward customer ends, yet provide enough plausible deniability to keep them out of hot water. I like to distance myself further; take a step back from your knowledge and provide a method that feigns ignorance. Essentially you allow the customers to bend the regulations without encouraging it. You allow the customers the freedom to determine their own karma.

The takeback, the saving grace to your own soul from adopting this approach however, is that you must use your private non-work time promoting awareness and supporting the very regulations you fear your customers may violate.

Artistic Balance

When you walk into a place and grab its culture by its cajones you affect a wide range of lives, yet you ultimately live alone with the mental and emotional consequences of your actions. No matter what you change, some folks face the risk of falling out from the short side of the equation. They may have to learn to accept new job responsibilities, or they may even be made redundant by your changes.

Clearly however /somebody/ has a chance to reap benefits from your efforts (besides yourself). The changes that you can actually successfully materialize therefore depend upon how you manage the delicate balance between interest groups. I'll examine how to achieve this in later posts, but first let's look deeper at the power dynamics of employment across all of the interested parties.

Every business exists to serve four groups of people: the owners of the place, the employees, the customers, and society-at-large. Without the support of even one of these components a business gradually disintegrates. Depending on the nature of the business these broad categories may sometimes be further refined to include subsets or agents, such as unions, neighborhoods, tax authorities, shareholders, et cetera.

For the purposes of general interest groups though these independent categories suffice. As an analyst and change promoter you need to consider how the group balance and its dynamics may be affected by your activities.

In the next couple posts I'll examine the interplay between these categories by pair groupings. Before we pair off though let's spin briefly about the seriousness, feigned flexibility, polarization, and positioning of these sides. Although I will discuss them in general as if they are two competing teams on a football gridiron of the corporate battle, in reality they are composed of groups of individuals who are, after all, just people.

They eat breakfast, they have families, they have health and financial issues. They have tastes in food and music, and their lives have had their own joys, curiosities, and sorrows.

When you are negotiating a position between two groups, always remember first and foremost that you are dealing with a collection of individuals. Strive for a general utility for the entire group, but also recognize that even within a single category, say the managers, you will find differences of opinions toward your actions.