Crossposted on GovLoop

The other day I was having lunch with Rich Dougherty, the CEO of Expert Choice, a collaboration software company in Arlington, VA that is a client of mine. We were discussing the trends towards a more transparent and collaborative federal government. I decided to record it with my iPhone and turn it into an interview.

Here it is:

President Obama came into office promising a more transparent, collaborative and participatory government. We’re one year in. Is it?

There are some bright lights, namely in the area of transparency with data.gov and the CIO dashboard.  There are solid examples of where more information is available that was not available before. In a format that’s attractive, meaningful, and accessible. So I do think that progress has been made.

Are we to the levels that were promised? No. Did we ever really expect to get there? Who knows? You’ve got to set the bar high and reach for it knowing that you’re probably going to fall a bit short. We have to realize that this is a massive organization, and change takes time. It will simply never happen in one year or even one term. These organizations are still civil, with a political management structure. Just like any organization of that size, they don’t change on a dime.

From a collaboration standpoint, there has been more collaboration-style interaction. Has it been dramatic improvement? No. But I think there’s the intent.

Is it spotty? Are there pockets of forward movement or do you see all of the agencies trying to get there?

I’ll break it down this way. For it to actually play out – to meet the goals of transparency and collaboration – several pieces of the puzzle need to come together. There needs to be the will, the desire to be so. There needs to be policy that helps to guide and direct that effort. And there needs to be the means, the technology. What’s lagging right now is the policy.

I think there’s a general intent and good will. Certainly it’s pocketed in that some are more interested in this than others. There’s a general administrative intent – a desire from the Administration to be more open than in the past. Certainly there are some agencies that have little interest in being more open than before, but there’s genuine desire to be more transparent than in the past.

There are technologies that are making it easier, and some of these technologies that have been around for a while. The Web is making this easier. Social media is making this easier. But there still is the need to allow us to better take advantage of the information. It’s one thing to just collect the information, but we need to use it. We’re seeing a positive dialog trend and there are pockets of success, including efforts at the Bureau of Land Management and NASA’s Goddard Space Center to collaborate around major IT portfolio decisions.

Where we’re short is with policy. What should be shared? What shouldn’t be shared? How should it be shared? It’s not clear who should be sharing information. There are multiple shareholders if you will. Who owns that information? How should it be put forth? What are the security concerns associated with it?

With social media for example, it can be a matter of whose account is it? Is it the agency’s Facebook account or a personal Facebook account? There’s technology that’s making this feasible, but there’s a lag in policy to direct the interaction.

On the technology side, it’s one thing just to banter, have conversations and put data up on the Web. It’s another thing to filter through large bodies of information to make sense of the information and to use it. I don’t think we’ve necessarily gotten to the point we want to be on the participatory side of things. We are more participatory in that we’re engaging and creating more conversations, but I don’t know if those conversations are necessarily yielding any more effective government as a result.

A lot of the progress and action has been on making data and information more available, more transparent. But where do we go from there to use this data in reinventing the process of government and how decisions are made, such as procurement decisions? Is this proving elusive?

The government and its processes are just as elusive as they’ve always been. That’s going to take some time to overcome and it’s a tough nut to crack. These are organizations with embedded processes, stated and unstated. The framework or foundation is in place to enable the use of this information, but I haven’t yet seen it yet other than the occasional one-off examples.

I don’t think the will is there to air dirty laundry, but the will is there to be more open and collaborative.

You brought up dirty laundry. How far do we want to go with transparency? Folks like Larry Lessig have pointed out the Perils of Transparency – sometimes it can be a negative. How do you think agencies are approaching these questions?

Agencies are just starting to figure this out. What is appropriate and what isn’t? I do think there’s a dark side to transparency.  I think there’s room to be more transparent than we have been – that’s not necessarily a pejorative statement. There’s more room for many reasons. The technology is there to make it a more efficient process, but if we demanded levels of transparency that required a tremendous amount of manpower to achieve, we’d be more focused on transparency than the job of governing.

We do have to be careful not to lose sight of the goal, which is to do an effective job of governing. Part of that is being transparent, and the technology is there to make this process more efficient. We’ve been involved in helping federal agencies bring together stakeholders and subject experts to prioritize objectives and bring alignment to funding decisions in a transparent way. They save significant time involved in making these decisions and the participation and transparency involved results in buy-in throughout the agency.

Regarding the dark side of transparency where security is clearly a big concern, there are going to be times where we shouldn’t make data available, particularly around national security. Ultimately it makes sense to share it, but when the threat is reduced. That’s the easy one to throw out there.

Another is when the data is wrong. Granted, you can make an argument that it’s useful to get information out there to be able to discover when it’s wrong and deal with it. But you can create a lot of stir and lost time around wrong data. Let’s take an example of data.gov around the spending of a given agency or the performance of a given investment. It’s not impossible to report the wrong information and show the investment is way behind or way ahead of its budget when it very well may not be. But I think that at the end of the day you’re better off exposing it.

There are some things like the old sausage analogy. Congress was going through this with the health care debate on what to televise and what not to televise. Your first reaction may be not televising it is “BS”. But we also realize that to get things done you have to compromise. Deals get done through compromise. But quite often when they’re public, you don’t want to be seen compromising because you appear weak. So when you televise it we’ll just fight all day long and nothing gets done. When we really want to get something done, we’ve got to compromise.

So there’s always got to be a balance. There’s a time to be transparent and a time to not be. There should be periods of transparency. Give it time to evolve.

It could be a difference between real time transparency and eventual transparency.

Yes, that’s right.

Do you see a trade-off among decision-makers between positives, such as a CYA effect that comes from a transparent, collaborative decision-making process and losing control or power they may have had?

I think there is a trade-off between the command and control “I’m going to make the call” and a collaborative approach. If you truly have mandate and you need to make rapid decisive calls, sure, to be in the position to just make the call and less collaborative and participatory you do it, then there are time savings.  The classic analogy goes to the battlefield. There’s no time to deliberate whether you’re going to move these troops here or advance there. It’s life or death. There are times that call for quick and decisive action. So that’s the trade off.

The flipside is that when you do take that approach you lose the opportunity for meaningful input and the outcome could be better informed with different perspectives. There’s a time-value trade-off, but it’s disappearing. The processes and technologies exist to quickly capture inputs around decisions, and we’ve worked with a number of agencies to use them internally to increase collaboration and participation while cutting the time-to-decision. The successes and lessons learned are there for others to take.

There’s always the added benefit of the buy-in. Whether it’s the right decision or not, they’re all behind it and you can enjoy the efficiencies that come with having that alignment around a decision.

Are some agencies in a better position to embrace collaboration and transparency than others? The Department of Defense has been a leader in embracing social media and other tools, which may seem counter-intuitive.

You do see some agencies stepping ahead. I can’t speak for the entire government and offer a report card on which agencies are ahead of others, but you do see DoD ahead of the game in certain respects. They’re certainly not blogging about whether or not we should surge in Afghanistan. But they are getting input in “life” type of issues. They’ve got a huge staff and deal with a wide range of issues, so there are a number of areas where they can benefit from that kind of interaction and dialogue. They have the budget, and they’ve always been a technology-advanced organization. They’ve also been able to effectively leverage technology, so it’s not entirely surprising that they tend to be more comfortable with these engagements and the technology. But they’re selective in how they use it.

What are some of the major challenges that an agency faces in this area? Is it the legacy bureaucracies and processes? Human resistance? Technologies?

I’ll answer it two ways. There is generally, from an Administration standpoint, a willingness to be more open. From a human element, you often find a risk aversion mentality among civilian employees. It’s an impediment if people feel the exposure will bring risk.

A much larger impediment than aversion to risk is the lack of policies around how to do this. Who’s responsible for that data? Who communicates that to the public? When and how? How do we deal with the security issues? Who can speak for the agency? Those are the issues that, to date, have been the biggest impediments. I think they’ll get worked out.

When you talk about participatory, then you’re going to another level. It’s one thing for the federal government to say “this is how we’re spending your money, good or bad.” It’s another thing for the federal government to effectively engage stakeholders and the citizenry in making decisions that guide the government. So we’ve got to collect input, triage it, understand it, find common ground, and use it. That’s going to take some time.

Some of the federal government’s efforts in the area of participation have been “give us your comments and ideas and let the community vote them up or down.” Is this a true effort to involve the public or is it designed to make people feel like they’re involved?

There’s always going to be that element of checking the box, but I do think there’s a genuine interest relative to previous Administration to engage the public. In some ways it’s technology and lifestyle driven. Facebook is new on a macro level. There’s a coolness factor, and how it’s used is changing. That gets applied to how we can approach governing.

There’s two pieces of the puzzle. There’s the government and the citizenry, and let’s lump industry in with the citizenry. The government publishes information and asks for input, but the citizenry has to want to engage. One of the things I’m hearing anecdotally – one client is a CIO and FOIA officer for a Federal agency – is that there’s been a spike in FOIA requests, hundreds of percent increase. Maybe citizens feel that the government is more open to their requests. Maybe they’ll listen, so maybe I’ll ask.

Do you think we’re closer to changing the processes of how decisions are made in government and understanding why they were made?

A little bit but not much. We’re better at sharing information, but that doesn’t say anything about how we made a decision and the data that was used. We’re better at putting a dashboard out and showing investments, risk levels, budget schedules. But that doesn’t inform on how or why the decision was made to fund it in the first place. It may become more apparent on why we kill a program because it’s always been in the red.

It’s one thing to publish data… it’s another thing to act on it. Right now we’re seeing more transparency around the outcomes, the facts and data.

Are you seeing a push to transform the collaboration and decision-making processes?

I think they’re still trying to work out how to get data out there, but that won’t take forever. They haven’t transcended that first step. Whether the will to continue to the next steps will depend on A) if the Administration continues to demand it, and B) if there have been positive benefits from phase one. If we feel we’re better off at governing making data and information more transparent, then I think we’ll be making progress.

There’s a movement in the private sector around encouraging people to fail early and fail often. Is this changing?

You’re hearing from the top that we want people to feel like they can take risks. The message is there, but the question is has the organization caught up? If HR procedures and incentive structures haven’t caught up, nothing’s going to change. If a performance review doesn’t include these incentives and performance structures to include taking risks, the system won’t change. I haven’t been close enough to the OPM performance review process to know if these changes are coming, but that’s what it will take.

What do all these changes mean for government contractors? What opportunities are there? Challenges? Implications for small business contractors?

I think transparency helps contractors because they can become more aware of what’s going on. You can have better conversations with clients and prospects, and put forward better proposals. It certainly levels the playing field by reducing the importance of chummy relationships and insider information.

So I had secured the need, budget, authority and timing, the all important NBAT, but still the sale stalled. The customer loved our solution as it addressed the lack of executive alignment that he was facing, he had plenty of budget, and he didn’t need anyone else to “sign off” on the purchase. So what was the problem?  I was baffled for months on end until I can across Sharon Drew Morgen and her book Dirty Little Secrets, Why Buyers Can’t Buy and Sellers Can’t Sell and What You Can Do About it http://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/. 

What I failed to realize was that the decision that the buyer was making involved much more than the NBAT.  There were other objectives at play for the buyer that I was not aware of.  In addition to getting an executive alignment solution at a good price, the buyer also had to sort out the tangled web of people, policies and politics that impacted this purchase decision.  There was a whole system inside the company that I wasn’t privy to and until it is addressed, this sale would never happen. 

I must say that as the CEO of a decision making company that prides itself on helping people make decisions in large part by helping our customers to expose the range of objectives involved in a decision, that I was a bit embarrassed by my oversight on this sale. Even more embarrassing was that I didn’t know how to fix the problem and bring the customer around on the sale.  It wasn’t until I learned to start listening for the “system” instead of the “need” that I began to crack the case and lead the customer through the buying process and ultimate closure of the sale.  Check out http://dirtylittlesecretsbook.com/ to learn how to start thinking about the purchase decision as a system and how to facilitate your clients, partners, colleagues through the purchase process. 

Decision Science Roles in Medical Decision Making

Medical decisions are difficult for several reasons:

·         They involve multiple objectives, such as alleviating pain and suffering, quality of life, long term health impacts, cost, and so on.  

·         They involve numerous participants:  the patient, doctors, insurance companies, family, employers, and yes, even the government.  

·         More and more data (both good and not so good), is becoming available.  What information is more reliable and what treatments do the more reliable information support?

The question of who makes a medical decision is paramount.  Ideally, for most of us, it would be the patient, and ideally it would be a decision to select that alternative which best satisfies the patients objectives.  (A decreasing minority of people would like nothing to do making with the decision but just leave it up to the doctor).  Determining which alternative is ‘best’ is usually difficult because it requires a synthesis of tradeoffs among conflicting objectives, interpretation of opinions of more than one physician, and an understanding of the complex and often competing data and research results. 

Common practice today consists of a series of medical examinations, tests, and consultations, followed by a haphazard search for additional information.  The patient is often left weighing pros and cons that result from physician recommendations that are: conflicting, biased (naturally so since each understands their specialty best) , and constrained by cost/insurance considerations.  The patient must make a gut feeling choice after sleeping on an overload of information.  Moreover, the decision alternatives may be limited to a set of alternatives that have been pared down because of what some bureaucrat (does it matter if the bureaucrat works at an insurance company or the government?) has decided.

Newer techniques for helping patients decide are evolving.  These typically involve a more systematic way of gather information and presenting it to the patient (see “Weighty Choices, in Patients’ Hands”, Wall Street Journal, Aug 4, 2009 <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203674704574328570637446770.html>.  

However, even if the patient has the latest and best information, the decision is not likely to be one that best meets the patients objectives for at least two reasons.

First, and perhaps at the center of today’s debate on health care, is that patient  alternative choices need to be broadened by reducing restrictions imposed by insurance companies, government, and the ability to pay.  Vested interests are making it difficult to change from what is obviously a poorly functioning system where a patient is rarely even aware of the cost of alternative treatments, and  is sometimes even prevented from choosing  specific alternatives  which are deemed inappropriate by a third party.   Decision science has much too offer in this debate, but has contributed little thus far.

Second, in order for patients to make decisions that best meet their objectives, they must be able to synthesize data and information (much of which is very technical), physician opinions (sometimes from physicians in different fields, each only superciliously knowledgeable about fields outside their own), and most importantly, their own objectives (which are often conflicting).  

Medical decisions, are, by their very nature, subjective.  This is because the relative importance of the patients objectives differ from patient to patient.  But subjective doesn’t mean casual, sloppy, or inconsequential . Subjective simply means that the decision will differ from patient to patient.  There is, in fact, a single best choice for each patient.  Theoretically sound and practical techniques in the decision sciences, such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process,  have been shown to be able to help patients determine the alternative treatment best suited to their individual circumstances and objectives. (A Novel Computer Based Expert Decision-Making Model for Prostate Cancer Disease Management”, Journal of Urology 2005 Dec; 174(6) 2310-2318) http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022534705009626.  Not only can such techniques help patients make decisions that best meet their objectives,  reassure patients that they are making the ‘best’ decision for them, are convincing to attending professionals and third parties who may be footing part or all of the bill, but the decisions can actually be less costly to the patient, insurance companies and the government alike.  The use of such techniques is likely to become widespread in the not to distant future.

Kudos to OMB and Federal agencies for completing the ratings of 100% of their major IT investments, which by the way was no small undertaking .  So we now have a complete and well presented view via the Federal IT Dashboard (http://it.usaspending.gov/) of how well our “major” Federal IT investments are adhering to cost, schedule and various risk (via the Evaluation Factors) metrics.  Assuming the data is and remains accurate and current (and sure, why not , we have a pretty good picture of the Investment side of the ROI equation.  

As OMB seeks to continually improve reporting via the IT Dashboard and facilitate effective management of our Federal IT systems, I’m hopeful that OMB’s next step will be to focus on the Return side of the equation.  After all, we don’t create and manage projects simply to have them completed on time and budget.  While some investments are still under initial development and thus have not yet had the opportunity to produce a return, many of the “majors” are in the Operations and Maintenance phase where they should be delivering value (return) to their end users.    

Measuring return, especially in the Federal government where not all benefits can be monetized, can be difficult, but there are ways that this can be achieved.  For starters, a simple measure of customer satisfaction might be an informative addition to the Federal IT Dashboard.  

Eileen Federic wrote an interesting article in Baseline which addresses “getting the right information” for a decision. There are many important ideas in this article, and no one will argue that getting the ‘right’ information is necessary, but it is not necessarily the ‘key’ to making the best decision. In today’s world, we often have more information than we can process effectively, especially when it comes to ‘crucial’ decisions that can result in the success or failure of a project or business.

Just as important as having ‘good’ information, and sometimes more important, is the ability to synthesize the information to make a decision. This is no easy task, given that all important decisions have multiple, conflicting objectives, and most important decisions have multiple decision makers who, if left to their proverbial ‘gut feel’, as you put it, would not necessarily come to the same conclusion. Hence, arguments, hurt feelings and loss of time are too common.

The decision on how much time and money to allocate to gathering information is in itself an important decision. But no matter how much time and money are allocated for this purpose, there will always be some missing or ‘untrusted’ information in any important decision. The quality or veracity of information that is at hand, as well as uncertainty and risk due to incomplete information must all be taken into account. Eileen recognizes that there is much more than getting the ‘right’ information, when, at the end of her article, she observes that “Clearly, facts are the foundation of the decision-making process, but facts without an analysis and understanding of consequences aren’t enough to achieve hoped-for results. We need a convergence of accurate information, the right technology and processes to analyze that information and provide business insight”.  However, analysis, (meaning to break things down) is only part of the process. Because all important decisions are multi-objective, synthesizing the parts into a whole is even more of a challenge and needs to be addressed in any effective decision process. This synthesis must include not only factual data; intuition and subjective judgment must play a key role in interpreting the data and synthesizing the information.

There are several decision process that have been developed over the last half century or so that address the difficulties and approaches to making important, multi-objective, decisions. One such process that is both theoretically sound and which has been effectively applied to thousands of decisions is call the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). I have been teaching AHP at The George Washington University School of Business for more than 25 years and it is now being taught at many of the leading Universities in the United States as well as abroad using software I developed with Expert Choice.

Ernest Forman
Professor of Decision Science
The George Washington University

The Total Perspective Vortex is a wonderful thought experiment. It’s also perhaps an important reminder as us in the western part of the world fret over the economic news that is following on the heels of the implosion of the credit markets.  Many are likening the situation to the Great Depression.  That’s as you say hyperbole of the worst kind-at least in the USA.  Sure things are bad an may get much worse still.  But here is a list of things that are unlikely to happen even in the case of a lengthy an deep recession:

A third of the population will not be ill clad, ill nourished, or without a roof over their head.  Prior to the Great Depression there was barely enough housing to house all the people in the country, and barely enough food, or clothing either.  Now we have a ridiculous excess of all three.

Unemployment, even if it were to reach levels of 15% would have much less impact than in the 1930s.  Most people would receive up to 13 months of government unemployment assistance.  The elderly would receive health care, the young would still be fed at school.  No panacea, mind you, but no depression.

I feel for all those who have and will lose their income and homes in these tough economic times.  But let us not give in to the scaremongering of the media, who jerk at our emotions, frighten us with fearytales, and peddle their poornography.  This country, or the western world for that matter, is not about to become some Mad Max movie set.  Unless of course we all want to believe it, in which case I’m sure we could achieve it.

The Financial Redress

Three score and four years ago our fathers brought forth upon this earthen sphere, a new order conceived in economic liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all trade is created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great idea war, testing whether trade, or any human interaction so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great trading floor of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of our future income, as a resting place for those banks who here gave their shares that financial markets might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – liberal trade. The brave institutions, past and present, who traded here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the remaining, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these failed institutions we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these liberal efforts shall not have died in vain; that this world under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this world order of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.

Management is a form of herding.  Sometimes shepherding, sometimes cat-herding, but most of the time it’s much more complicated — like guiding a distrusting group of friends, who’ve grown apart, to regain the vaguely shared glory of some imagined past.  Envision herding a group of lions and lambs, foxes and hens, insects and birds to a meadow where the herder is paid based on how many people mistake this motley crew for a circus.

Leadership is different: leaders are to groups what cowbells are to cows — they provide a signal that others can follow.  A successful leader polishes the bell, tunes it to the sound of success, and convinces all it is the purest note ever struck.  But a false leader cannot sustain the true tone for long.  The inherent challenge of leadership is then to stay true in times of trouble, to appear — and to be — an honest broker among competing interests.  There are not many leadership tools available, other than experience, intellect, and integrity.  Not the type of things they stock at your local Home Depot. 

One constant I have observed in great leaders is that they allow — demand really — that each person they interact with become better than that person really thought they could be.   There is complexity in this.  A great leader in times of war — Churchill comes to mind — may not be so great in times of tranquility, and of course the other way around as well. 

So, are great leaders born?  Yes, of course.  They are just not born great leaders. 

We had a little ‘incident’ in the office this week.  It really started a few weeks ago when we got a super cool automatic espresso coffee maker.  It’s the kind that you just walk up to it and select the shot size, press a button and voila out comes wonderful coffee.  This all worked very well until someone put ground coffee instead of whole coffee beans into the bean container.  The machine clogged up and was ‘rendered inoperable’ as they say. No one came forward and claimed responsibility (probably a smart move if you consider the state my coworkers were in, what with the lack of coffee and all).

So, I had a couple of problems: first where to get some coffee (it’s like a 10 minute walk to the nearest Starbucks), and second how to figure out who did this and why they didn’t take responsibility (the third problem, how to fix the machine was thankfully solved since then, as one of us is a former coffee barista and she fixed the darned thing).

And then I remembered something about framing.  Not people, but problems.  And if the problem is to get people to do something they don’t want to, it’s the Tom Sawyer version of a framing problem.  Normally, when you want to learn something you ask.  So, I could go around asking people if they had put regular grounds into the espresso maker, and broken it.  This would make everyone rather upset that I was accusing them of a) not knowing what they were doing, and b) not owning up to it.

So, I could easily frame this in a way that the only person who would feel upset, was the person who actually broke the machine.  You see, it’s just about how I ask the question.  If I asked everyone who had opportunity a simple question: “I just wanted to ask everyone to confirm that they didn’t break the coffee machine.  Please respond by saying: I did not.”

Now the smart ones reading this will say that the culprit either a) will not answer, or b) simply lie.  Let’s explore that.  If you don’t answer, then I’ll remind you to answer.  Those who have nothing to hide will ultimately answer. Those who have something to hide will be reluctant to, but if only one person remains then I know who to confront.   Now, the lying scenario is if everyone says they didn’t do it, then I know that someone didn’t just ‘forget’ to tell about it, but actually and actively lied about it.  I won’t like that, but I will have learned something very important: a dishonest person is working for me, and probably a stupid one too.  Because if I put energy into it, I can probably figure out roughly when the machine broke, and thus narrow my list.

But, in the end, the framing exercise makes it a lot more likely that I’ll get the result that I want.  But logically the two approaches are equivalent. One is just a more effective way to elicit information from humans–even if the information gained is the same.

Of course, there is a third way of framing the problem: blogging about it, and letting everyone in the office know, and hoping the poor sop comes forward.

When the going get’s tough, the tough have some choices to make.  There are some schools of thought here.  The first is that this is a golden opportunity for most companies to lay off the unproductive bottom 10% of their staff.  A second is to reduce future revenue generating efforts (such as new product development projects).  A third is to ask for an across the board reduction in exempt staff salaries.  A fourth is to reduce bonuses to an absolute minimum (especially since most staff will not quit their jobs with the economy as it is).  A fifth is to shift support staff to sales efforts (hence reducing the non-productive time of sales people).  A sixth is to ask for graduated reductions in pay (those with highest salaries receiving a greater share of the cuts).  A seventh is to slash prices on all items that don’t move, while reducing prices on hot sellers less.  An eight idea I heard was to offer all customers an iPhone with their purchases, since that seems to be the only thing that’s still selling like hot-cakes.

But whatever you choose to do, how will you make the decision?  Alone with a bottle of Jack?  With Jack, and a bottle of Perrier?  Or with Jack and Pierre and Otto and Lakysha and Anil and Sergey and Wang?   Today’s companies operate in 24 time zones (or 24 home offices in one city), have wastly different local customs, regulations, and success levels.  What’s perfect for New York may not work in Tokyo, and what’s right in Berlin can seem foolish in Cape Town.

Here’s an outline of process we are using to help our customers:

Part I – And the problem is…
You have to define the problem before you plan a solution.  Too many companies attempt to make changes to their plans without defining what has changed and how the new plan should address this.

Part II — …we need a process…
You can go without a process… you just won’t be very successful.  Circles are nice for doodling.  But don’t get caught going in circles when times are tough.  Without a process, you are walking with one leg a foot shorter — and will tend to circle the room.

Part III — …that we can buy into…
So you have a process.  Great.  Does anyone buy into it?  If your process is opague and non-inclusive, no one will buy into the results.  Open it up to the relevant people and set expectations for how their input will be used.  Just because people participate, the have to know that companies are not democracies — but why not let them bring good ideas into the mix?

Part IV – … and communicate to the organization
Once the leaders decide on what to do, they have to find a way to have the followers follow.  You have your carrots and your sticks, of course.  But usually there are not a lot of carrots in a recession, so that leaves sticks…  Not a good way to have people follow leadership.  So find new carrots that don’t cost money.  Communicate, provide non-financial benefits, give stock in lieu of cash bonuses.  But whatever you do — just make sure you communicate your sincere intent (unless of course your intent it’s insincere, in which case you are unlikely to be reading this.)

So, that’s the process.  Now get going.

By the way, I make software that helps with this.  www.expertchoice.com.