No Commitment, No Breakdown, No Problem!
November 4th, 2003 by HalArticle Series - Designing Breakdown-Tolerant Project Environments
Let's start with my definition of a breakdown:
An interruption while in the midst of fulfilling ones commitment jeopardizing the completion of the commitment.
In the previous five postings I described three actions for preparing for breakdowns:
- Make commitments at the last responsible moment by engaging in recurrent conversations exploring, "Is it time to act?"
- Make our commitments with confidence that we have what we need to fulfill the promise.
- Distribute accountability for the outcome of the project by
- Expand the group of people who can assess and declare breakdowns.
- Empower those people to take compensating action.
Those are the summary points. Here's my summary commentary:
The failure to take our own promising seriously is the principal source of breakdowns and therefore project delays, dissatisfactions, and budget busts.
Breakdowns are inevitable…in life. We've seen that as humans we must make commitments to just get through the day's events. We tell our children we'll meet them at the soccer field. We tell our spouse we'll deposit a check. We tell our mechanic we'll drop the car off before 5:00 PM. We promise throughout our day accumulating like charges on our credit card. At some moment we must make good on each commitment. Others are depending on us to do so.
Projects are exactly the same. We are continuously making and re-making or re-negotiating our commitments to complete some aspect of the project by a given time. We do this so others on the project can plan and perform their work. When anyone of us on a project fails to manage the commitments we make, or worse, when we fail to make commitments, then we bring about the situation for one breakdown after another. The failure to take our own promising seriously is the principal source of breakdowns and therefore project delays, dissatisfactions, and budget busts.
Designing our projects to be tolerant to breakdowns is simple. Deciding to take that action is another matter all together. I've laid out the steps. Now step up and make it happen.
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