Picking up where we left off last time, with the traffic on my way to work, another little traffic incident got me thinking.
Traffic is based on a set of rules to which we all have agreed to adhere to, if we don't bad, possibly lethal, things will happen. If all do as they should according to the rules - and here i won't get into the differences found across countries on our little planet - we should be able to navigate the system in relative safety. At least taking into consideration the fact that we put ourselves in 1000 kg metal cans that moves at 100+ km/h.
However there is always someone who, with the best of intentions, decides to disregard the rules and do something unexpected. It is of course a nice gesture to stay back at let the cars from a smaller side road move into the main road, but it usually causes confusion a possibly dangerous situations, because we do not know how to react. We have no verbal communication, and at this time of year probably not much visual communication either.
The problem is that I do not expect someone to give way to me when I'm entering from the side road, and when they do I am not sure that I trust they will stay back, thus taking extra time to survey the situation. In this time the nice person in the other car could have moved along, and I could probably have hit a natural hole in the traffic, thus not holding up everyone else trying to get to work.
This can be translated to a business analyst work, when dealing with business areas, contact persons etc. The best way to get everybody moving along the same path is to follow a certain set of "Traffic rules". If we have agreed on how to navigate through our common project it might cause less bumps in the road along the way. In this way we are relatively sure that our counterparts will react in a foreseeable way, and not cause any accidents.
Now at this point there are probably someone screaming - WHAT ABOUT INNOVATION AND PROGRESS - is doing the unexpected or new, a way of ensuring innovation and progress.
YES - you are absolutely right - but my point here is that you should do it in a foreseeable way. Don't drop your new idea as a bomb in the middle of a meting, taking over the agenda and have everybody seeing either possibilities or problems. The only thing you will get for certain, is a very unproductive meeting.
Instead call a meeting with the specific purpose of presenting your new idea, then you have followed the traffic rules and everybody is probably much more inclined to follow your idea.
In our traffic metaphor I guess you could say that instead of causing problems at an intersection, you send an idea to the city council, suggesting that traffic lights are put up.
A final point is that the "traffic rules" might not be written down or agreed upon, they can simply be culture. For example at another intersection, not too far from the one that gave the inspiration to this post, there is a culture of letting fellow road users on to the main road, this is of course not in accordance with the official laws, but all of us who pass by there every morning have a common non-spoken agreement that we do let them out.
For the next post I will try to get out of my traffic metaphors, but no promises.
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