Planning and the Art of Design
How to Design a Process That Fits Your Organization
A wise old Turk once said that life is a journey and how one travels is the mark of that person. Thus, it is the process that will inevitably determine the quality of the product or the outcome. In a bottom-line world where outcomes receive most of the attention and the process of how work is accomplished is relegated to a position of relative unimportance, such thinking can have dramatic and often negative consequences.
Key Principle:
While it is well known that both productivity and product quality can be dramatically influenced by how work is accomplished, the process domain remains vague in the language of business. The concept of design focuses on what can be done to impact outcomes by means of focusing on the process.
Since most leaders are consumed with meetings, we'll focus on meeting design. Consider:
- Meetings cost $800 to $1,500 in time and money - it's doubtful that many such meetings would be worth the going price
- Rather than imagining every meeting as an opportunity to challenge, educate, stimulate, excite, or motivate employees, leaders often see them as a necessary evil
- That is satisfying to them. Since any complex planning process is comprised of a huge number of meetings that can flavor the credibility and attitudes attendant to it, we believe it is essential to use meetings as the first focal point of our discussion on design