Blame each other

"…perfection can wait till next year."

Dear X

I am sorry on behalf of my team for the misunderstandings which have messed up your programme this year. Introducing the new systems has indeed been a trial - and not merely for yourselves.

Almost everything we do in development work involves compromise - I am sure you find that. You remain right in principle that a gentle roll out is needed but unfortunately I am being asked to move quickly. And whilst it is admirable that you have asked your managers to finalise plans for next year in early May, we had not expected such zeal, aiming as we had mentioned last year, for July. Indeed, I understand that not all your programmes will have to convert to the new systems this year (despite earlier pressure on us to make everyone do so this year.)

Of course, I also recognise everyone's immense frustration; but you have said little that was not said by one or other programme manager the last time we changed the documentation. It is annoying enough to want to pull one's hair out at times, I know. And suffice to say that I'm sure my colleagues here are as frustrated trying to introduce changes as you are in swallowing them. We are all frustrated in fact. And we all feel like blaming each other.

Of course, you are the programme director and you must decide what is and what is not possible. If you are telling me that you are unwilling to attempt to manage the new project planning system this year, then I will have to accept that. As you suggest, there will then be more time to prepare. However, I would much rather that we start the transition now and look at this year as a first attempt rather than a final maximal quality production; perfection can wait till next year.

Yours patiently

Me

"...our organisation implicitly values misguided effort above well planned achievement..."

We're struggling to finalise our new global project document templates. I've endlessly argued that field staff need useful planning and management tools. In addition, I acknowledge that the organisation needs a usable funding proposal format.

In my opinion, one perpetual problem we endure is having no globally responsible Operations Manager who understands development principles alongside extensive field experience. Instead, we have allowed our financial wizards to control all globally relevant processes.

In practice it means that whilst notional effort has been put into writing a proposal template which simultaneously helps with project planning and management, in fact it improves little on the latter; or at least its marginal improvements pale into insignificance compared to the sea-change I'd prefer.

I'm left feeling that the consultant has not lifted my burden (draft version 5 but still predominantly only tinkering with our old format); now I have the prospect of designing my own project planning and management tools and selling staff the global forms simply as donor application forms: a somewhat distasteful but necessary linctus. (In fact, where we channel funds from a government donor to one of our projects, we're happy for our projects to use the donor-supplied format and simply fill in the Summary section of our own global template; I'll be sorely tempted to do the same for our own projects which utilise our maybe-to-be-designed local planning forms.)

Doubtless I will once again be labelled too pushy by colleagues. Or maybe I really am trying to push to improve too far too fast? But it seems to me that our organisation implicitly values misguided effort above well planned achievement. All rather frustrating, not least because I think our organisation lags significantly behind what COULD quite reasonably be achieved...