The “too difficult bucket”

This week I was going to write about how the SWOT framework can be used to structure a discussion and get you started on your annual planning process. Typically, I use PEST and SWOT frameworks together in a workshop forum; encourage the participants to talk openly and use the framework to record and organise the results.

The PEST looks at the external factors affecting the organisation; these vary between organisations but usually include upcoming legislation, competitors, changes in population and so forth. The SWOT focuses more on the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the organisation. Once the external setting for the organisation is established through the PEST, it is easier to determine which the important elements of the SWOT are, and to establish some plans to address or exploit them. This approach works well and clearly identifies the issues and opportunities that need to be in the short to medium term plans; however the last few times I’ve used this approach, I’ve noticed an effect that I’ve labelled “the too difficult bucket”, which appears to indicate a waning of joined-up management and thinking across the client organisations.

All organisations have objectives that they want to achieve, sometimes they conflict for example “provide an exemplary level of customer service,” “maintain an excellent reputation” and “cut staff costs,” but usually they are clear and provide something for everyone to rally around. The business strategy will have been formulated to meet these objectives and each sub-strategy e.g. HR, Operations, Finance, Manufacturing, IT etc will have been articulated to align with and support the business strategy.

In theory, this is great, but what is typically missed is that for this to work it must be possible for a manager to influence the outputs and actions of other groups and strategies in a joined up way. If for example a manager is charged with maintaining cost effective, efficient operations they need to be able to influence or direct external groups when their activities cause more work; examples could be invoices being received with no contract number so leading to lots of time spent chasing them or a preferred solution having to be dropped because of a minor piece of software not being upgraded. In these cases ideal behaviour would be to try to work with the other groups to fix the issue but under time pressure and conflicting priorities these cross departmental issues often get put into the too difficult bucket and the managers involved revert to only working on things within their span of control that they can easily influence. A recent experience was a home working project, projected to save thousands of pounds on accommodation and travel costs stalling because a single piece of equipment in the IT machine room had gone out of warranty and could not be easily upgraded. Consequently, everyone affected used their own approaches to overcoming the problems of not being able to use the shared equipment rather than try to fix the underlying issue. This, of course this led to a huge disjointed mess that cost a lot of money and took months to unravel.

Clearly while the issue is a governance one and enabling groups to work together effectively is the solution, remember that big problems usually arise because of lots of small ones conspiring together. As these changes over time are quite small, they are difficult to notice from within. Governance structures rarely need to be changed, assuming they are in place; however, an occasional test and tune-up is a very worthwhile investment. The SWOT approach is ideal for this type of “organisational service”; to see where the small problems are coming from, how fast the “too difficult bucket” is filling up and where a small tweak would result in a significant improvement.