Before It Becomes a Crisis
Difficult programme issues often become much clearer once they turn into a crisis. Priorities shift, decisions get made, and things that seemed optional suddenly become essential.
This short exercise uses that change in perspective to look at an issue before it gets that far.
Choose a specific issue
Think of one specific issue in your engineering programme that leaves you uneasy.
It could be something that keeps coming back, depends on several people or teams, or simply feels less under control than it should.
Keep this one issue in mind throughout the exercise.
Imagine it has escalated
It is next week. The issue you chose has become a serious crisis for your programme. You are expected to bring the situation under control.
Imagine that situation as concretely as you can. The following questions all refer to this same issue.
Make a brief note of the situation if that helps.
What would need to happen now?
Imagine you needed to act now.
- What would you need to know today?What information or evidence would show you where things really stand? What would you need to see or check for yourself?
- Who would you bring together immediately?Who understands the issue, who would need to help resolve it, and who would need the authority to make decisions?
- What would you need to get underway?What work should start immediately? What would it need, and what decisions would be necessary for it to proceed?
How would you tackle it?
You have considered what needs to happen immediately. Now think about how the crisis would actually be worked through.
- How would collaboration be organised now?Who would need to work closely together? How would the necessary work be coordinated?
- How would you make sure the solution keeps moving forward?Who would keep track of what needs to come together? How would obstacles be identified and resolved together?
- How would you check whether the solution works?What results or evidence would need to be examined? What would show that the solution actually holds up?
Back to today
Compare your thoughts about the crisis with how your programme works today.
- How does the work come together today?How do the many contributions across your programme come together into an overall system? How do you keep sight of what is still missing, what is getting in the way, and whether the result actually holds up?
- Why does this work differently today than in your crisis response?What makes it harder to work this way in everyday programme work?
- What could you already do more like you would in a crisis?Which part of your crisis response could already help with the issue today?
A final thought
The comparison shows what suddenly becomes possible under pressure, and what may be missing from everyday programme work.
You may have identified approaches that could be useful before a crisis develops.
What would need to change for you to work more like this already today?
This is also the kind of situation I work on in engineering programmes: understanding what is making a programme harder than it should be, where change would help most, and how to put those changes into practice.
Thank you for taking part.
I hope the comparison has helped you better understand your programme and the sense of unease you started with.
What could you already do more like you would in a crisis?