Envisioning Outcomes
You’ve heard the proverbial tale of the elephant and the 5 blind men. Each saw in their mind’s eye a part of the elephant that they thought was representative of the whole. And in so doing, only saw a part of the picture from their limited perspective.
Similarly with stakeholders in a company, each sees the problem, and the ‘possible’ solutions, only from their point of view. They fail to realise that there are other stakeholders with their own set of problems and diverse points of view. As a result, we find many organisations attacking the problem with a narrow view, and oftentimes, mistaking the symptoms for the problem. They attempt to find solutions to these causes, without quite understanding what the problem really is.
We help Clarify Vision. We are here to disentangle cross-purposes. We bring everyone onto the same page – to identify the problem and to de-clutter misconceptions. We start with the big picture, helping each stakeholder group through the process of articulating and re-defining their end-goals.
Here is an illustration of how we helped one client define what it was that they really needed, rather than what they thought they needed.
A government agency with 800 staff over 16 divisions, wanted to implement a records management system (RMS). They then put together a 16-member team, comprising individuals from different functional units and the IT department, to develop a corporate taxonomy for the RMS. 3 months into the project, the team realised they weren’t getting anywhere. Latize was brought in to help unravel the problem.
In the first instance, developing a corporate taxonomy requires specific skills and techniques, which the group was not equipped to do. We conducted a 2-day workshop to help the client understand what their real goals were, and what business outcomes needed to be achieved.
At the end of our exercise, the company came to the realisation that it was a file classification plan, rather a corporate taxonomy that was needed. The company mistakenly embarked on the taxonomy project as an end in itself, thus missing the problem altogether. The client had a fixed idea as to how to go about resolving the problem, without really understanding the underlying causes and its pertinent solutions.
Another example involved an Electronic Document Retrieval Management System (EDRMS). A large corporation with about 2,000 staff in Singapore, had tens of millions of unclassified documents sitting in silos, making it very difficult to manage. They realised they needed an electronic platform but first needed to understand how to go about building a proper foundation.
We conducted a Maturity Assessment to evaluate the company’s information preparedness. We measured the readiness of the organisation for EDRMS implementation against their records classification scheme and meta-data model, as well as ascertained level of compliance.
We then put in place a records management policy to guide the development of the file classification scheme and meta-data model, so that EDRMS implementation could fall in line with local legislative requirements.
