Incoherent Initiatives

From time to time in organizational life, we encounter entities we call initiatives. Some initiatives reside entirely within an existing organizational element. Others span several elements, drawing resources from multiple elements or from resource pools attached to administrative elements. Usually, we charter initiatives to exploit previously overlooked opportunities, or to address previously unrecognized weaknesses, or to proactively attend to recently detected threats. Initiatives usually begin their lives narrowly focused and clearly defined. But many eventually expand their missions. They lose focus. They become more difficult to define. They acquire multiple objectives. They become incoherent initiatives.

Keeping When the purpose of an
incoherent initiative becomes
unclear, team unity gives way
to division and confusionincoherent initiatives aligned to their original objectives, which are usually important and worthy, can be difficult indeed. Because the purpose of an incoherent initiative is unclear, the people assigned to the initiative become less able to affiliate with it. Unity of purpose gives way to division and confusion. Incoherence thus becomes a threat to the initiative itself. Effectively managing incoherence risk is essential to the success of initiatives.

Incoherence anti-patterns

Managing incoherence risk begins with understanding the sources of risk. Below is a little catalog of anti-patterns and forces that enhance the probability that a focused, coherent initiative can become incoherent.

Constituency building run amok

To build support for the initiative, advocates add to the mission specific objectives designed to attract support from a collection of organizational elements. This is a sensible approach. But when constituency building takes precedence over maintaining mission focus, the result can be loss of coherence.

Not accounting for reorganizations

During the early phases of initiative development, advocates develop objectives that appeal to those organizational elements that they believe will support the initiative. But reorganizations do sometimes occur after initiative objectives are partially developed. When that happens, organizational elements that previously supported the initiative sometimes vanish or are redistributed across organizational elements that have survived the reorganization. In some cases, those vanished or redistributed elements can no longer support the initiative. Indeed, in some cases, a primary goal of the reorganization was strangling the initiative.

When a reorganization occurs, advocates of the initiative would do well to review all elements of the initiative's mission. By examining elements that support only vanished or redistributed organizational components, initiative advocates might be able to refocus the initiative to make it more coherent.

Vague or non-existent public expressions of objectives

Clear, specific statements of objectives are essential tools for maintaining coherence. But some regard clarity and specificity as constraining. The clarity imperative is most troublesome to advocates who want to maintain the freedom to adapt the initiative's mission as needed to build support from heterogeneous constituencies.

Ambiguity and vagueness do leave people free to work toward their preferred objectives. But the price of ambiguity and vagueness is incoherence. Express objectives and key results as needed to build support, but not by sacrificing coherence.

Blocking the missions of rivals

Some initiatives are created for political reasons. For example, to delay or obstruct Person A's efforts, Person B (a rival of A) might create an initiative that consumes the budget resources that A needs. Or B's initiative might fully occupy the space or personnel A's initiative needs.

These "blocking initiatives" need no coherent mission of their own. They need only a justification for the allocation of budget, space and personnel that A requires.

All-or-nothing objectives

One concern many initiative advocates have is that their proposal will be accepted, but only in part, while other parts are rejected or deferred. To prevent this "slicing and dicing" they craft the initiative mission in such a way that partial acceptance is impossible. The elements of the initiative are so interlocked that the organization must accept the entire package.

To accomplish this interlocking, initiative architects often impose constraints that have the incidental effect of compromising coherence.

Last words

If political agendas, or maintaining flexibility, or mitigating the risks of partial acceptance, or building or maintaining support for the initiative, is the advocate's primary goal, coherence can suffer. One indicator of these agendas is the history of the mission statement. In one form of this history, there is a trail of proposals, with successively more elaborate statements of benefits. Each revision is designed to appeal to a new set of stakeholders, with requirements of their own, not covered in previous revisions. In a second form, the goals of the initiative change for reasons unrelated to the work itself. If a close reading of the different versions of the proposal reveals any of the patterns above, support the initiative with care. Leave yourself an exit.  Top    Next Issue

Is every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics, filled with tips and techniques for succeeding in workplace politics. More info

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Devious Political Tactics:

Behavioral Indicators of Political Risk

Avoiding dangerous political interactions is easier if you know what to look for. Among the indicators of possible trouble are the behaviors of the people around you.

Narcissistic Behavior at Work: VII

Narcissistic behavior at work prevents trusting relationships from developing. It also disrupts existing relationships, and generates toxic conflict. One class of behaviors that's especially threatening to relationships is disregard for the feelings of others. In this part of our series we examine the effects of that disregard.

Unethical Coordination

When an internal department or an external vendor is charged with managing information about a large project, a conflict of interest can develop. That conflict presents opportunities for unethical behavior. What's the nature of that conflict, and what ethical breaches can occur?

Unrecognized Bullying: I

Much workplace bullying goes unrecognized. Three reasons: (a) conventional definitions of bullying exclude much actual bullying; (b) perpetrators cleverly evade detection; and (c) cognitive biases skew our perceptions so we don't see some bullying as bullying.

Time to Let Go of Plan A

We had a plan. It was a good one. Our plan seemed to work for a while. But then troubles began. And now things look very bleak. But people can't let go of the plan. For some teams in this situation, there isn't a Plan B. For others, Plan B is a secret.

See also Devious Political Tactics and Devious Political Tactics for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming January 1: The Storming Puzzle: II

For some task-oriented work groups, Tuckman's model of small group development doesn't seem to fit. Storming seems to be absent, or Storming never ends. To learn how this illusion forms, look closely at Satir's Change Model and at what we call a task-oriented work group. Available here and by RSS on January 1.

And on January 8: The Storming Puzzle: III

For some task-oriented work groups, Tuckman's model of small group development seems not to fit. Storming seems to be either absent or continuous. To learn how this illusion forms, look closely at the processes that can precipitate episodes of Storming in task-oriented work groups. Available here and by RSS on January 8.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenyrWpTxHuyCrjZbUpner@ChacnoFNuSyWlVzCaGfooCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info