It often happens that two or more initiatives are “discovered” to be working on the same thing. So-called scarce resources seem to have been made available, or found, for pure duplication.
How can this be? What can be done about it? It’s bad, right?
Question #1: How can this be?
Most issues facing an organization are multi-faceted. They may have a marketing component, a sales component, an IT component, and so on. If the organization is large enough, and if the pressure to “do something” is strong enough, a project team will be put together to take rapid action. The thing is: this is true not just in department “A,” but department “B” and department “C,” too.
Duplicate initiatives Photo: Darren Bond
Question #2: What can be done about it?
There are reactive (firstly) and proactive (secondly) steps.
Reactively, identify openly that there are duplicate teams working on the same thing. Don’t avoid that. Don’t be concerned about strained relationships and stay quiet.
Find a way either to merge the teams, thus freeing up resources to work on something else, or separate the individual activities and make the project go twice as fast (well, one and a half times as fast) with the same number of people.
Proactively, ensure that your strategy and strategy execution follow some kind of balanced scorecard methodology that includes all areas of the organization in the creation of the plan, and that establishes metrics, targets and initiatives that become part of the monthly status. This prevents redundancy and encourages open, ongoing dialogue on priorities and execution success.
Question #3: It’s bad, right?
Depends on how you look at it.
Yes, it’s unfortunate when any kind of resources are being wasted, but on the other hand, it shows that some kind of issue needed strong attention and there was obviously a clear call to action. The priority must be high on many people’s agenda.
So, when you see duplication, don’t get irate and go on a witch-hunt. Treat it as an opportunity to redeploy resources that were already identified and made available.
The alternative is the all-to-frequent scenario of spending time trying to scrape together resources in the first place.
It’s a nice problem to have. But don’t let it happen again…
