Stopping bad decisions is as important as making good ones
Good services don’t happen overnight.
Neither do bad ones.
The things we do (or don’t do) today affect the long-term health of our services. That’s why, sometimes, stopping bad decisions is as important as making good ones.
Almost every decision your organistion makes will affect the way your services work; from the way we buy or build technologies, to how we manage staff incentives. We broke this down in Full Stack Service Design.
Stopping bad decisions could mean saying no to wrong KPIs, line management direction, delivery timelines, meeting guest lists, wording of a presentation, or overall strategic direction. Thousands of these decisions get made daily, and every one has the capacity to have either a positive, or negative impact on your service, so much as we like to count our successes, if all you do in your role is avert bad decisions, that’s still progress.
I have done this many times. I once accidentally-on-purpose ‘lost’ the business card of a prominent leader who had enthusiasm for creating an (even more) hostile environment for immigrants to the UK. I’ve also tactically failed to answer emails, receive calls or turn up to meetings. Your presence is not your only tool; sometimes your absence can be powerful.
The people who get stuff done are the people who survive the longest. I’ve seen great ideas fail multiple times before finding the magic combination of the right senior sponsorship, timing and money. Sometimes, all you need is enough energy to try again.
It’s easy to try to measure our impact in things that are tangible, shippable or bloggable.
Not all progress looks like this, especially when what we’re talking about is complicated, long-term organisational change.
If you’re curious about stopping bad decisions as a tactic, check out my new book Bad Services