Each Change Has Its Most Preferable Tactic
Think about the situation where your company is receiving more phone calls than it can handle, not for one day but every day for weeks, the customers and prospects are waiting minutes of valuable time. They will loose their patience. And your company is loosing even more...
You can solve a mathematical problem ending up with a solution. If your organization is facing a change, than the problem solving equation is more complex... And you are there in front of a decision to take...
It is possible to focus more on the problem part or more on the solutions side. In the last case the management sets the direction (for the solution). You can do this if you are not in entering new territories, although even then.
The idea behind this tactic is that you know that the problem you face has been dealt with by others in previous situation. So the question is; how unique is our situation? Or, more important; how unique do we want to organize our business? This (solutions oriented) approach will give you the costs and time benefits, but the third resource aspect -- the function or quality -- is taken for granted. You start a cut and dried implementation and (the) problems are solved down the road.
Yet the disadvantage of this way of handling change is that you will face more resistance than you have calculated. If your new strategic line is that you want to go for market solutions (because that’s where you are talking about; the solution should be already on the market), you will face a lot of employees who think otherwise; they will have to give up their experience and build up new knowledge. That makes their position fragile.
You loose some, you win some.
The other way around however would mean that you emphasize the problem area. This could be even more risky. Think about it; if you put ten economists in a room and you ask them to think about the unemployment problem, you will end up having more than ten solutions.
If you leave your team to find a solution on the growing call center traffic, you might end up with even more solutions; from hiring more agents (favored by the sales team) to implementing a computer system (brought in by the ICT department).
The ‘solution’ to this dilemma is that you should choose either way. If there is a standard, go for it, but think about the impact. If you are really dealing with a new business development – really new, uncharted territory, with no market solution, then opt the problem oriented approach.
More important than choosing the best approach is to learn from it at the end.
© 2006 Hans Bool
Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days. You can apply for a free demo account
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