Want A Result, Offered A Process

I try to deal in real, tactical issues. Strategy becomes an explanation of what happened the last time.

However, I have been working with a client who made a make or buy decision to purchase some business services. Maybe we were asking the wrong people, but what came back were all these offers to run a process, as if the result was incidental.

Maybe it’s our litigious environment, or changing economy, but we couldn’t seem to find anyone who was as interested in the desired result as we are.

Several years ago I was selling a software company that had lost its technical staff. We had a software product we had to hold together through sale, so we brought in some outsourcing gurus. They would be oh so happy to make us so happy, but first they had to run their process. Pay now, please.

A week later, we had a catastrophic failure of the product and were swamped by irate customer calls. We called our new guys and were told it would be a couple of months before they would be able to complete their process and then address fixing our problem. Oh, and we certainly hope you’re still around to pay our fees.

I went into complete BSC mode to posse up a team to fix the software. I don’t deal well with uncertainty.

The owners took steps to get their deposit back.

Technically we had a happy ending, because the catastrophic failure was fixed in two days, but the gut dropping horror of not knowing stays with me. Businesswise, it was a draw, which I would categorize as a disaster to our former gurus.

If somebody needs to buy a result, sell them that result or sit down.

Consider your Focus.

Infinite Meetings

There are good reasons for scheduled, repeating meetings. However, without a clear understanding of how to use them, I have seen repeating meetings get mired in processes that go nowhere, I guess expecting that donuts are infinite.

There are as many processes for describing work as there are serial numbers on dollar bills. However, there are far fewer options that achieve a planned result.

Here is a process that increases throughput.

Intake, Process, Execute, Repeat on a different subject.

What if we need more or better intake? Replace whoever is making the case. If we don’t assume unlimited time, intake becomes making the best case in the time allowed.

In a time of scarcer resources, making a virtue, hell making a career, of attending meetings can’t be supported.

Finish something!

(First post on Natty Narwhal)