Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
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The Miracle Question
David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Long silences spoke volumes when the author made a presentation to a group of Intel project managers. But before it was over, a simple question gave everyone “permission” to at least explore the causes of their underlying frustration in an organization renowned for process maturity, state-of-the-art governance and those laminated cards of corporate values.
One of the more common myths in business today is that achieving process maturity elicits Agency, the facile ability to actually do something. Most companies hold process maturity as a worthy goal, though this aspiration does not usually work out as expected because the emergence of Agency depends upon something more than well-formed methods. In my consulting work, I have found no correlation between the maturity of a company’s processes and the Agency exhibited by individuals. This isn’t to suggest that process improvement is a meaningless goal. The pursuit of process maturity falls into necessary but insufficient territory, more clearly definable, perhaps, but worthless without that certain something else. That certain something else, Agency, requires employing deeply personal knowledge within often difficult, indifferent circumstances. This self-knowledge is always available, but not always easily accessible when working within tight constraints.
We seem to need to master both of these worlds, the …
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