Several meetings I participated in last week left me musing on 'implications of swirl'. This is a phrase I came across in a Bain brief 'Four paths to a focused organisation' looking at change and transformation. They have a graphic that illustrates swirl that runs on the lines of:
1. Issue identified that requires resolution
2. New process/initiative proposed to resolve issue
3. Data needed to determine whether proposal merits go-ahead
4. Meetings scheduled to review data
5. Additional requests come from meetings before any decision to go ahead can be made
6. Data needed to answer requests
7. Follow up meetings to review answers before any decision to go ahead can be made
The implications of this is that a) a lot of people spend time and resource getting stuck in the data sludge b) the issue is not resolved instead heading towards the plug-hole the swirl leads to.
What Bain doesn't go on to describe is that further implications are that, in my experience, at this point either someone gets frustrated by the lack of progress and hands the issue to a different group of people to resolve. They then work through steps 1 – 7 above.
