Monday, November 17, 2008

Ambushed By Minor Items

We shun micromanagement and then are tripped up by minor problems that remind us why such attention to detail must be addressed.

"I thought you were going to do that" is the refrain of detail's victims.

What surprises me is how often otherwise savvy individuals get to a certain point in planning and then suspend all scrutiny, relying instead upon a combination of hope, fate, and pixie dust. Things do not magically come together, but they don't just trust on that convergence, they rely upon it.

Indeed, there is frequently a fear that all planning is overplanning and that by calculating how long this will take and by designating precisely who will be handling exactly what, we are robbing life of creativity and joy.

This problem can be exacerbated by specialists who worry solely about their own areas and not whether the parts will make a productive whole. On many teams, it is possible to find a wealth of experts and a poverty of coordinators. The coordinators, of course, are those bothersome folks who worry about the details; especially the ones that fall between the cracks.

1 comment:

Eclecticity said...

OFTB. Glad you are back Michael, continued progress in your recovery. E.