I hear your struggle with an assignment you received from a senior manager in your organization. Not having much detail to go on is frustrating, but typical, especially if that senior manager is with a client organization. Clients --whether internal or external-- often don't know exactly what they want. They "just want it done!" How can you make the most of this situation?
A few years ago, the CEO of my organization came back from visiting an organization where he had worked a decade ago. I'll call it UNICO. He had a tour of their Emergency Operations Center (an EOC) and was excited about it. He came back and told us to build an EOC fast, like the UNICO one. That was it. There were no specs, no use cases, and a weak comparison to an organization that differed from ours in a number of respects. What did we do?
First, we broke down the problem into some initial constraints: how much time and how much budget do we have? He said to spend what we needed to. And to show him something in less than 90 days.OK, that was a start.
We then met with the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Disaster Management (this was a nonprofit humanitarian organization). We asked, "When a crisis occurs, what are the top questions you need to answer?" He thought about it for a while and we discussed it back and forth. He said there were four things that were most important to know:
- What are the details for this EVENT? (Are we matching size of response to size of disaster?)
- What are the ASSETS and resources we can bring to bear?
- What PROGRESS and decisions are being made?
- How are we INFORMING others?
Then we broke the solution area into two tracks, which senior management supported:
Track one – Develop EOC prototype using existing data sources and setup EOC room in headquarters (HQ). Have a room set up with a minimum viable product (MVP) demo ready in 90 days
Track two – Conduct a needs analysis and consultative study process with stakeholders to clarify the specific purpose, business processes and options for establishing an EOC and related Emergency Operations Center Network servicing the organization locally, regionally and globally (i.e., complete an analysis and plan in parallel in 6 months, with implementation to follow.)
Next we created a small cross-functional team of our best people. While we were working out a design to answer the SVP’s top questions, we saw two opportunities:
- Reorient and standardize our data collection in the field into feeds that can readily be used for analytics and decision support
- Develop a virtual EOC that can run anywhere on a laptop or tablet
The result: We delivered our MVP demo in exactly 90 days and built new opportunities into Track Two.
This example is an ambiguous situation. Handling ambiguity is an important skill to learn. In fact, it can often stand in the way of of success with customers and in your career path. Senior managers don't have time time spell things out and provide perfect requirements or specs. These just don't exist. You have to figure it out and take a reasonable course of action.
Why is it important to be able to handle ambiguity?
- Everyone in leadership expects you to be able to handle ambiguous situations and projects
- It’s an opportunity to prove your value-add
- It shows you can break down a problem and propose options for decision-making
So what do you do? The story about the EOC provides some clues.
- Clarify the problem and the options
- Gain a better understanding of the context
- Understand the business questions that the project is supposed to answer
- Use crisis management tools 1 to break down the need (ambiguity, after all is often a crisis.)
Finally, keep a sense of humility and flexibility: there is no one answer when it comes to crisis… it depends on the context. |