From the film, The Adjustment Bureau
“No one ever made it to this point in their career by taking stupid risks … We’re going to kick this case upstairs.. .to someone with the latitude to clean up this mess without breaking into a sweat. We’re going to walk this upstairs to Thompson”
Richardson goes to Donaldson who goes to Thompson.
Project manager to project board to programme board to portfolio board to steering committee. The “decision making” process, aka decision drag, walks every upstairs.
No project plan you ever put together lasts longer than the first project review meeting, let alone as long as the first crisis.
Do you work on a project where the decision making point – the person who has the latitude to clean up the mess without breaking a sweat – is so far above your head you get a crick in your neck every time you look for them? As if they had a master plan and they were charged with making small adjustments to keep the plan on track. As if.
Your job is write and keep writing briefing note upon briefing note, and rewriting them, hoping that *this* version will be the one that gets the decision made. V127.2 edit 4 will definitely be the one.
And, in the mean time, the project drifts later and later. Decisions, that is, indecisions, drag on and on.
