Teams know things leaders never hear about

When projects are forming and working out what outcomes they will be targeting, it’s often done with a senior audience. The sponsor, an exec or two, the business owner, the senior stakeholders.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach.

This is the same group of people who are accountable for producing the benefit, so it makes sense that they contribute to the outcomes.

Once the outcomes are set, the next level down in the hierarchy is to work out what solutions are going to be implemented to deliver on the targeted outcomes.

This is where more project teams go wrong.

Senior solutions often suck

When devising solutions, in my experience, it is better to do this at the team level, not the senior level. Solutions developed by people who run or support the systems, solutions developed by people who are intricately versed in the nuances and complexities of life at the system level, simply provide better solutions.

Teams know things that leaders never hear about. This is not a criticism of leaders.

Leaders need to be selective

Leaders have a broad range of things to know and understand. They can’t go as deep on every subject as people working in the system. People who go deep know things about the systems that leaders don’t know. This is how it should be.

But that means if you’re developing solutions, involve the people working in the solution. Not necessarily exclusively, but make sure they have a voice.

• Give the system people a chance to have an input into solutions without the leaders being present. This will given them confidence to talk about problems and challenges with their peers. They might be less likely to do this is the leaders are present.

• If your organisation is such that leaders make the solution calls, take those solutions to the systems teams as quickly as you can and get them validated. It’s easier and cheaper to change a decision before implementation has started.

• If you’re working in an environment where the systems teams make recommendations and the leaders have the final choice, have the systems teams present to the leaders. They will have the stories and the data to better answer questions and arrive at a better decision.

Don’t spend months making decisions that won’t work

I still see project teams develop solutions at too high a level in their organisational hierarchy. This often takes longer as they need to learn about the system they are designing for. It almost always produces a lower quality outcome because they don’t know the nuances like those teams working in the systems.

I still see projects spending 3 months making solution decisions, only to have it knocked back by the systems teams within 5 minutes. It’s an easy one to solve. Top down for outcomes; bottom up for solutions.