Quick Fix... An Option, not The Option...

We all may faced various difficult situation at work, or perhaps at home, or school... at those times, we often wished for a quick solution, or what we generally call as a quick fix. There's nothing wrong with that. Even in several consultant firms, quick fix has become an option. They usually ask you, with this limited time you have, do you prefer to have a quick fix, or a full blown solution. Tempting offer, especially when you're career is on the line....

What's actually wrong with a quick fix? Nothing. But you must remember that a quick solution have a price. It may come with a cheaper price, due to shorter mandays and project period, but you must be aware of the consequences which might arise from it.

An example. An organization was running smoothly without any problems, although they haven't had any review on their policies and structures for more than 3 years. Suddenly the Director received a news that two months from now there will be an audit from one of the biggest shareholder, which play an important role in setting the direction of the company. What should the management do?

Ideally, organizational review will take months. Depends on whether the company have issues or not despite that they haven't done a periodical review on their policies and structures. First thing on my mind was to conduct a full Organizational Audit, which was done whether internally or by third party. From the result, there always been two options, a full blown recommendation, or a quick fix recommendation. Based on my experiences, quick fix has always been a favorite option, because the initial cost is somehow lower, and the period is shorter. In this case, a quick fix will be to engineer or re-engineer current policies and structure to address the ongoing issues. For most cases, this will work, but not for long.

For this case, perhaps, the organization will have a good assessment result from the shareholder's audit. But, the organization should not stop right there. Remember, it was a quick fix. Which means a further course of action must be taken. What usually happened during quick fix was that, they failed to interpret the Vision, Mission and Values of the organization completely. Which is why afterward, organization must re-check which element of VMV that need to be aligned with the quick fix recommendation, what are the gaps, and set a timeline to close it. It can also be done internally, by forming a committee, or independently with a Consultant Firm. The risk of using Consultant Firm different from the one that the organization used to create a quick fix solution, is that they might will give you a completely different solution, and will cost the organization time and money to achieve the expected outcome.

So, remember, that quick fix might be a perfect way to solve your problem, for a while...

Turtle 08032012

#business #change #management #motivation #productivity #work