The three most common mistakes

The most common mistake is to start with area of clarification 7. A new tool is supposed to create the order that never emerged at the levels before it. Then the technology is not the problem, but the unclarified basis beneath it. What moves into a system in disorder is afterwards in disorder in a system.

The second mistake is to leave the entire clarification to an outsider or to a new position, in the hope that someone else will lay down the fundamentals for management. Evaluations of failed undertakings show a recurring pattern: leadership, stakeholders and risks are not addressed at the outset, and a frequent characteristic is a lack of initiative from top management, combined with too much burden on the shoulders of employees. Much of the preparation can be delegated, but the decisions that depend on leadership responsibility cannot be made by anyone from outside.

The third mistake is the quietest. People clarify the upper, pleasantly strategic areas and stop where it becomes uncomfortable – at decision rights and ingrained habits. Surveys show that a considerable proportion of undertakings are abandoned early, after the first review phase, and that a large share of change initiatives are not completed. What remains is a clear intention whose implementation fails because of the unclarified areas that follow.

It is worth looking more closely at why it stops precisely there. The upper areas cost reflection. The following ones cost something else, namely influence. Whoever defines decision rights redistributes them. Whoever orders ingrained habits puts into words what previously applied unspoken. That is not a problem of good will but a predictable reaction, and it occurs in well-run organisations just as much as elsewhere.

Added to this is something that happens daily in the meeting room and is rarely named. In the debate about an undertaking, it is not always the best proposal that prevails, but often the best presented one. Whoever masters the art of being right wins against the one who is right but argues less well. That is why a visible decision path alone is not enough. Visibility helps where an organisation can tolerate contradiction. Where it cannot, the visible path is simply played better.

This names the most important precondition, and it is at the same time our clearest limit. The ability to handle conflict is a precondition, not a service of the Office. We create the place where assumptions and decisions become visible. Whether an organisation can then bear what it sees is for it to decide.

What you can take away from this is not a diagnosis of your organisation but a pair of glasses. Next time, pay attention to who puts which figure on the table when, and how confidently it is presented. Afterwards you will see more than before. Nothing more is needed at this point.

Behind this stands a simple economics that supports the whole idea of the Office. Clarification at the very beginning, when you define what an undertaking is meant to achieve at all, is the cheapest point in time of all. A mistake recognised early at that stage costs a fraction of what its correction swallows in the middle of implementation.

In the Office's reference model, this is exactly where the impulse phase with its decision points comes in. It helps to make early clarification a conscious step before an idea becomes a binding undertaking. The idea is not to make every project heavier, but to ask the right questions early enough, while course corrections are still cheap.