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:

Gratuitous Complexity as a Type III Error

Some of the technological assets we build — whether hardware, software, or procedures — are gratuitously complex. That's an error, but an error of a special kind: it can be the correct solution to the wrong problem.

On Repeatable Blunders

When organizations make mistakes, they sometimes acknowledge them and learn how to avoid repeating them. And sometimes they conceal them or even deny they happened. When they conceal mistakes or deny they occurred, repetition is more likely.

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.

Covert Inter-Team Noncooperation

Occasionally teams find that they must cooperate with another team despite strong misgivings. Because noncooperation isn't an option, they find covert ways to avoid cooperating. Here's a little catalog of techniques of Covert Inter-Team Noncooperation.

Responses to Outrageous Demands

From time to time, we might encounter a powerful person making outrageous demands, possibly accompanied by threats if we don't comply. At first, the choice seems to be between acceding to their demands or flat out refusing. There are other possibilities.

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

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident

A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.

And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers

Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.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