The Complicator – a fable (possibly)

In a recent Snippet Trust your inner compass and avoid the complicator I shared the story of talking with the wonderful @Samantha Rush on her Marvellous Women podcast about the dreaded Complicator.  (Check out the full episode)

I’ve had lots of messages since from people who’ve had their own Complicator experiences and were curious about the back story.  So here it is.

Shared in the hope it will help you spot and avoid The Complicator before you find you’re already in one.

Once upon a time… in an organisation (not too) far, far away, a project was underway. Or at least it was trying to be.

It was one of those Big Projects. Lots of ambition. Lots of dollars ending in lots of zeroes. Lots of years to get it done. It was still early days.

There was also Lots of Interest. Lots of Needing to be Included. Lots of Wanting to Know. And, of course, lots and lots and lots of Reporting Up to make sure Important People were Informed.

Three months in it nearly broke me.

In a single day I was asked to update seven different reports about the Big Project. Yes. Seven. That’s a lot of reports in anyone’s book.

Given it was Early Days of a 10-year project there wasn’t much of significance to update week to week. The last reports had only just been issued. Why were the next ones needed so soon? 

To give Other People time to check them and get them to the Boss Person in time to read them before the Right Meetings. (This would take two weeks apparently). Turned out five of the seven reports would all end up on the same Boss Person’s desk. Yes. You read that right. Five of the seven, reporting the same thing, going to the same person.

Why so many reports on the Big Project?

There were Lots of Important People who wanted answers from the Boss Person (to questions that hadn’t even been considered yet).

Lots of other Very Busy People also wanted to put something in a report to show they were On Top of Things.

And still more Interested Parties wanted to Keep Abreast of Things in case This Thing became The Thing and they should Be Involved. (Or, in case This Thing became That Thing and they needed to Distance Themselves).

Still Others wanted to crowbar the Big Project into their Strategic Priorities to show Something Was Happening.

I needed tea.

Tea turned out to be a mistake. In the kitchen I ran into the Finance Guy.

He wanted an update.

Not a report. No, he just wanted an update on the Justification to have the Project Money released into the Project Budget. I was confused. Very confused. We’d already done the Business Case and got Approval from the Big Cheese. The Big Cheese had said Yes.

Turns out the Yes was not a yes and was in fact a Maybe, or maybe a Possibly, or possibly a No depending on what had changed since the Yes.

The Big Project had to be justified all over again. To do that the Finance Guy would need answers for the Boss Person and the Big Cheese. You guessed it – answers to questions that hadn’t even been considered yet. And wouldn’t be for a while yet. Was this Big Project still a Strategic Priority I asked? Yes (or maybe possibly?).

My head hurt. Would Tea, my constant companion to all life’s challenges, be enough?

It was. It was enough to create a Pause.

It was enough for me to seek some counsel on the best way through. (As opposed to the tempting, and in the circumstances, understandable but seldom successful, Toss the Toys strategy).

Counsel thankfully arrived in the form of a Wise Old Hand.

“Ah,” she said, pouring the tea. “Yes. We like to put things through The Complicator around here. Sometimes we put it through twice just to make sure.”

“But putting it through seven times is a bit much even for us. Let’s see what can be done.”

It was time to get a few heads together and come up with a different approach. Turned out I was not the only one debating the Toss the Toys strategy.

I’m glad to report (!) together we found a way to, if not altogether eliminate, then moderate The Complicator.

The reporting was down to once a month, one Master Report, the one source of truth for anyone Who Needed to Know. The Justification was extracted from the business case (yep – it was there all along) and passed through The Complicator without too much fuss and no unnecessary rework.

As to providing answers to the questions that hadn’t been answered yet – that is for another day.

Thanks go to the Wise Old Hand who alerted me to the presence of The Complicator and those who put their heads together to find a way through.

I close with a simple plea. If you spot a Complicator – please do not perpetuate it. It will take bravery, some allies, and a Wise Old Hand by your side.

And very probably a cup of tea.