• David.Poole - Monday, October 16, 2017 11:18 AM

    I'm convinced that inappropriate boundaries are the cause of life's woes.  It doesn't matter if it's geography, technology, age, gender, religion or something else entirely.  It is too easy to setup boundaries by accident.
    I'm reaching the conclusion that managers should review their decisions and the behaviour of their subordinates and ask "have inappropriate boundaries been created".

    Yes they should ask that question.  And when they so they should also ask "have appropriate values been left uncreated.  The first few times they'll get the answer yes to both questions the should eliminate the detected inappropriate boundaries and create the approriate boundaries discovered to be missing, and after a while (perhaps 4 weeks)  repeat that question and fix process, and then repeat again and again.  This will gradually increase both productivity and customer satisfaction while improving product stability.  Once a reasonable level of team effectivenes is reached this process should still be repeated, but at a reduced frequency - perhaps twice a year.
    But I don't think getting the boundaries wrong is the cause of all life's woes, just of some of them.  So that's not the only question managers should be asking themselves (and their subordinates).  They should also be asking whether the resources available are sufficient to achieve the imposed objectives (and are people pretending that the objectives have been agreed when in fact they have been  imposed) and whether the imposed objectives actually make sense, and if the either or both answers are "no" they should try to find a way to fix that problem too; that too is somthing that should be reviewed regularly.

    Finally I'll leap onto my hobby horse (as this is a great opportunity):  one of the most  difficult to fix causes of inappropriate boundaries is over-specialisation, and managers should do their best to ensure that their people understand that and don't overspecialise, in particular don't they specialise to the extent that important things are no-one's problem because they are outside each and every person's specialty and then sulk when told to extend their boundaries to cover what are essential parts of their jobs.

    Tom