(The Third in the Series-II of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’)
By Dinesh P. Bhrushundi @ dbknowledgey
Profound Gratitudes from ᵭᵱᵬ’the मितवा’ for Great Response to Series-I and a Grand Welcome to Series-II of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’
As you know by now, ‘ᵭᵱᵬ’ is my initial and ‘मितवा’, a Marathi acronym for Friend, Philosopher and Guide, my humble role to ‘Sit Back and Give Back’, after 4 decades of career-cruise.
Series Title: ‘7 Mavens of SOPs’ is expression for instilling some of my learnings as “seven propositions in sets of seven SOPs (norms)”, befitting the human mental capacity and attention span.
Foray into Aviation industry above a decade ago, led to espouse some of the techniques from earlier experience, of course with appropriate adaptation. Problem of iterative amendments many times, halfway through project implementation, due to sudden concerns raised by stakeholder or their respective SPOCs within organization, resulted into SHARPEN approach. As can be noticed from the figure, it is an acronym putting Stakeholder at the top and Norming at the base. (SPOC-Single Point Of Contact)
Stakeholders: Every project, small or big, new or refurbishment, will have such individuals/bodies connected with it, directly or indirectly, who will be affected by the project deliverables. These STAKEHOLDERS are normally identified as an important step of the project (if not available- needs to be done). SHARPEN approach necessitates a well-represented team of relevant functions that will select from this list and note down significant stakeholders in the order of importance by using appropriate prioritization technique.
Hassles: Projects are initiated with intention of achieving certain deliverables. However, more often than not, they have one or more UDEs (Un-Desirable Effects) those may create HASSLE and hazards for some stakeholders, slight or severe. The next step down the ladder is brainstorming to anticipate and enumerate all possible hassles/hazards for each of significant stakeholders from the previous step.
Assessment: Further, it is important to assign each ‘Combination of stakeholder and hassle (cosh) ‘a value, proportional to their impact-potential and incidence-possibility. ASSESSMENT is an exercise where team-members rate each of the combination for Potential and Possibility each, say on 1-5 scale and take the product of these two ratings (P2) for reckoning.
Reduction: This is a crucial step as it establishes (a) the Trade-off between two conflicting coshs (and associated stakeholder) with same rating and (b) evaluates the Threshold for the tolerable P2 value for the project under consideration. It can be done with technique like multi-voting or similar for the former, and consensus building for later. It is a good practice to get the final recommendation for (a) and (b) of REDUCTION step, ratified by the project steering team.
Plan: PLAN of actions, to address the influence of all the coshs, follows next. The coshs below the agreed threshold can be ignored to start with and revisited later if required. For remaining ones, team has to think of innovative ways and means, to contain the P2 value within the threshold. For the coshs which cannot be contained, a formal deviation may be sought from Project Steering Team to go ahead despite, with full cognizance of their influence. A proper PLAN also needs to be made for the steps below.
Engagement: Regular ENGAGEMENT with stakeholder for correct communication about the is central to achieve win-win for any project. For bigger projects stakeholders’ representation in SHARPEN team is useful proposition. The Engagement endeavors should consider the right level in the stakeholder organization, appropriate means of communication, suitable approach for meetings (individuals, cohesive groups or all together) and fitting frequency. Communication during such engagements should be clear with requisite explanation of method, measures and rationale.
Norming: The last but not the least, is the step of NORMING which has got two connotations: (a) making the agreed P2 for various coshs, a new acceptable norm for carrying out the day to day work or living with the agreed levels of UDEs for reaping the larger benefits of the project deliverables. (b) It is imperative that a practical monitoring mechanism is deployed, till the norming sets in, to ensure that no unexpected UDEs crop in or their influence is not more than that anticipated.
I am privileged to put across the above pointers of SHARPEN approach, with a hope that it will help you in handling the hassles and hazards in your projects more effectively. Happy Reading!
Bestest!!
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