I was just taking a peek at your site* (like I regularly do), and I
decided to read this article (see title).
Reading it, I recognized a situation in which I might be a few months from
now. We are experimenting a new way of setting/tracking goals, and in my
section here, I made sure a lot of people were involved in the process.
The results are nice (the plan for the year) and very aggressive. However,
just like you say in your article, most of the items we volunteered to do
are "unique" projects, in which we'll learn a great deal (and that's why I
like the plan). My fear is that just what you describe in the article
happens, people (including me) feel they are pressured for results, lose
sight of the fact that most of the plan is based on "mostly untested
auumptions" (or educated guesses - same thing to me), feel frustrated at
one point for the progress not meeting expectations and finally start to
cut corners.
One possible way to avoid some of these negative side effects is to lower
expectations when revising the plan. But ain't that falling into the
"Drifting Goals" trap? I feel like I could get sucked in a double-bind,
accepting less than successful results or letting the goals drift.
Do you have any clues for me ?
Christian
* The article can be found at
<http://www.radix.net/~crbnblu/projmgmt.html>
--Christian Giroux lmccgir@lmc.ericsson.se System Support Manager, Technical Assistance Center Ericsson Research Inc. Montreal
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>