That’s what we used to call it in my consulting days, when we would look at all the client’s issues and try to develop a plan to solve them all at once.
Sometimes that meant coming up with a strategic plan that would account for all of the problems – after having conducted an exhaustive Needs Assessment to ensure that we had captured them all.
Other times, we’d use the most currently popular “hammer” to see every issue as this month’s “nail.” Leadership Development, for instance, that would then iterate outward to resolve all problems now and forevermore.
Less scrupulous consultants just tried to get “connected at the hip” with the client, offering whatever comprehensive solution had been recently proposed as “the flavor of the month.”
As evidenced by our currently not living in an ideal world, none of these approaches had the legs to outrun the complexities of the workplace, nor were they all well-implemented even when they were well-designed. Circumstances that contribute to disruptions in all organizations (places of work included) are nuanced; they are not the same every place and time, so not any one solution will bring about the desired change. At the same time, not all is lost to the complications of life – there are consistencies and fundamentals of human existence that inform both goals and roadways to get there.
So, rather than trying to “boil the ocean” with this first blog post (tempting, I assure you), this site, these blog posts, and your responses will comprise a discussion that will be informative at the formative as well as summative levels: macro and micro.
What do you think?