To Include, or Not to Include – That is the Question
Posted Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 5:08 pm by Andy (11 posts)
Here at Beaconfire we tend to pride ourselves on our process. While our approach is highly effective and fairly well defined, there are still gray areas with which we sometimes struggle. Take for instance, our approach to workshops. When we set up workshops, we strive to include a group of stakeholders that represent those portions of the client’s organization whose work will be impacted by the project, key decision makers, those individuals whose buy-in is critical to making the project a success, and sometimes critical third-parties such as audience members or other vendors.
While this collaborative and consensus-building approach is highly effective in the world of not-for-profits in which we work, it can lead to significant delays and complications. There is an inherent conflict between consensus and efficiency. One of the gray areas around our process is deciding with the client core team who to should be included in our various workshops. As much as I would like to say that we have refined this into a science, I cannot. It is an art that we have not been able to formalize.
Determining the proper balance between including all key parties in these collaborative early meetings and keeping a project on time and on budget is tricky. To make this call, we rely on the client core team’s knowledge of how their organization works and them being candid about it. We then work with the client core team to use our best judgment based on past experience to figure out who to invite. Including too many parties can lead to one morass after another as consensus becomes exponentially more difficult with each person added. Omitting key individuals invariably leads to issues farther down the road. Thankfully, as long as the client core team is frank, we can generally find that correct balance, or adapt and evolve the process as soon as it becomes clear that the current mix of stakeholders is not working.
As much as we appreciate process, we have learned that flexibility and adaptability are the best tools to make our process work for each individual project and client.
