Every quality professional has been through it. If you have not then either you can skip and whistle across water or you may be delusional. The dilemma is: Being right and no one listening. Let's face the truth that what we do while we know is essential, is pretty boring to most. Why boring? There is a rant that I will be going on for a while.
What happens is there is a tendency for us to be tuned out. The complexity of what we do, coupled with the word "no" or the phrase "Yes, however.." infuriates those that want to produce product. They see our mandate against progress or operation. When you have well intentioned people on both sides, this tends to work out. When you have people who may be good people but are driven only by mandate, you have a problem.
Then comes of the complexity of those that do not want to listen as their goal do not align with your own. That tends to be the big bullshit lie. That they are your goals. Its compliance. Its the law. It should be their goals as well. Right?
How many of you are shaking your heads in my over simplistic view of regulation. Yeah I get it. But that is kind of the point.
Most folks have a saturation point on how much they want to hear and the steps that they want to follow. The steps need to be spoon fed. Then in their willful ignorance they are flabbergasted to the details when the steps in their head are complete but a system is not full. implemented.
Of course you are having musings of why hasn't their been communication? Why wasn't their a project plan? Why...why...why?
What I have found in most start ups is there are few executives that understand the complexities of their wants with little true understanding of their needs. Couple that with a resistance of executives to only want to lead through milestone and mix in poor project management skills among the technical side and you have a complete mischaracterization of scope through passive/behavioral rooted dissonance.
So its not about being right. Its not just about the organization structure.. Its not about understanding the mission. It is about ensuring the stakeholders and decision makers understand the effort, complexity, gating and steps. The commitment of resources and treasure needed to make everything go from red on the project schedule to green. That they understand the what they do impacts lives and failure to do so trivializes their company and your role.
More to come...stay tuned.