Balancing The Choice Between Rightness and Success

Introduction

The choice between right and successful is crucial, often dictating our actions in various situations. But how do we decide which path to take when the choices contrast?

This question is a personal choice and always depends upon the situation. In this article's context, I will address this choice from an organization and team perspective, working towards a collective goal.

Leadership, including executive sponsors, program executives, managers, value stream, and cross-value stream personnel, often wrestles with this choice. Their decision-making process is not only influenced by incentives, measurements, and rewards, but also by their character and integrity, which are crucial in such situations.

From my own experience and introspection, I have found that maintaining this balance and making this choice requires information from the following elements:

• The situational basis from which the choice arises.
• The ethical basis from which the choice arises.
• The impact on the collective goal and sound of the organization and team.

In making this choice, I am sure that we all seek input from the organizational and team members who are familiar with the situation creating the choice, the people involved, and the known options based on the available information.

Situational Awareness

Situational awareness is meaningful and valuable when choosing between rightness or success for the organization and team. Situational awareness includes an understanding and knowledge of the following:

• Current organizational history and culture.
• Current management culture and merit system.
• Organizational groups and members raise the need for the choice.

Current organizational history and culture can explain why the item is being raised for a decision. In my experience, organizational history and culture can reveal why and how decisions have been made. For example, a client with a highly customized enterprise solution can indicate that the solution was designed based on past legacy systems and processes. While customizations only increase lifecycle operating costs and technical debt, those increases could be the tradeoff in mitigating disagreements with the business.

The potential disagreement avoidance and merit system also provide additional organizational cultural information about why the choice arises. For example, the financial division of many organizations offers valuable input to designing and improving a process or solution. However, if financial input becomes the only input, a process or solution could sub-optimize how value is generated or costs are controlled. Thus, this information provides additional insights.

Finally, understanding the groups and members raising the need for choice can provide great information. From my experience, one example was an individual who passionately felt their solution and approach were the best to achieve success. They lacked the data and factual results to verify their position, but they believed their passion for their position was more than adequate. Thus, a question of culture may arise in this type of situation.

Management Culture and Merit System

The management culture and merit system often dictate organizational and individual behavior and the basis for making decisions. In my experience, if the organization’s stock performance primarily drives the management culture and merit system, decision-making tends to be short-term focused.

Short-term-focused needs and resulting decisions often make achieving longer-term goals and objectives more challenging. For example, I once had a client whose stock performance dictated a funding reduction on a significant transformation effort. This client asked all parties to plan a headcount reduction due to this funding reduction.

However, my program and scope were based on a fixed-price, milestone fee-based agreement. I proposed to my client that their funding reduction initiative should not require my team to reduce headcount. We were on track and progressing well, and I preferred not to disrupt the momentum. So, I suggested an alternative.

Since the agreement was a milestone fee-based fixed price, I proposed reducing the milestone fees for the targeted fiscal year and increasing the out years by the amount to meet their budget constraints.

The initial reception unsettled them, yet they understood the proposal would still help them meet their goal (no other party made such a proposal). The result was acceptance and a stronger relationship of trust, and we could keep the team together and complete our collective mission and goal.

The Impact on the Collective Goal and Good for All Engaged

The first two areas discussed provide insight and awareness of why organizational issues and decisions arise. Situational awareness of organizational culture, management performance measurements, and merit systems provides insight into why people choose between being right about a subject and being successful with the mission.

We all hope that being right and successful can complement each other, but that is only sometimes the case. When a situation presents itself where you have a choice of rightness or success, one must look at the data. The data, respective trends, and forecasted impact could harm the collective good.

For example, I often see enterprise solutions implemented or migrated and heavily customized. Usually, these customizations replicate what standard functionality can provide or were done to replicate legacy processes. From a solution architect's perspective, I recommend that the organization eliminate those customizations, reduce its technical debt, and change the business process to work with standard functionality.

Yet, this could dramatically impact the relationship between business and IT organizations. So, while it may seem like the right recommendation, the result would not be successful for anyone. The alternative is to start logging all the process improvement opportunities identified, such as this example.

Deciding based on ethics and integrity is one of the few times that such a decision is right but may be detrimental to the overall goal.

For example, a CXO directed that a payroll solution be implemented following all the union contract rules agreed upon with the organization. When a payroll run was tested with all the contractual clauses, rates, etc., it was found that the organization was not always abiding by those contractual agreements in the legacy system.

The CXO decided to delay the payroll solution because of the additional audits and verification. Yet, this was the right choice from an ethics and integrity perspective.

Conclusion

Every leader, organization, team, and individual is confronted with this balance between rightness and success. While there may be no one winning formula, there is guidance within all of us that can assist us. That guidance is the heart and how each choice feels internally.