In it’s ever present sense, well planned projects have the strange ability to fall utterly flat, even after careful evaluation, consideration and the most diligent of planning. But wait! What if that planning phase, wasn’t as diligent as it could have been, what if a saboteur was innocently veiled in the project planning meetings. This saboteur we will call ‘the quite guy in the corner who thought of a really important detail that no one else seemed to notice, because he was secretly an expert at xyz.’. OK to long, by was to afraid to say, hey what about this? For whatever reason, our accidental saboteur decided that the cost of looking like a skeptic and ‘nay sayer’ was personally to risky. Maybe he raised a hand, maybe she made an under the breath comment. Regardless because a culture existed wherein this person was ignored, or not safe in sharing their idea, things went bad. Article #2 for me, is again (surprise) an HBR post on the nuances of premortem vs postmortem analysis or project. How doe we ensure that that we avoid the postmortem, but having a strong enough antithesis conversation and a culture that demands the ‘what ifs’ are explored exhaustively. This pre planned critique, will always be vital when dealing with something so intricate. It really falls on everyone in the room to push the collaborative conversation and to really take ownership of the project/product/task/deliverable/use_your_term_here.
Food for thought? Comments and critique welcome!