Jun 15 2022

C&C&E: You Can’t Always Fix What You Want*

*With apologies to the Rolling Stones.

I posted earlier this year on this – but you may not have read it because of its title:

Command & Control & Empowerment

That post is – here.

Those who dislike the notion of Command & Control have likely never run a business that was 100% based on their equity (their money) where dozens of neat-niffty ideas pop up all of the time about “what to do and how” that stray from the owner’s vision.

Of course, Command & Control also has its downside – in not letting good ideas flow upward – so I like to pair C&C with Empowerment. I just spoke recently with Bob Mosher for one of his podcasts about this – and so this is a bit of a follow-up to that.

About C&C&E. In ISD/LXD with a Performance Orientation. Leveraging a PST.

Key is the PST

The Project Steering Team
The Project Steering Team is typically responsible for
• “Owning” the project
• Reviewing the Project Plan and directing the project
• Selecting all participants for later phases of the project
• Reviewing and providing feedback for all project documents and outputs
• Establishing development/acquisition priorities
• Approving or redirecting the Implementation Plan

The project manager uses the Project Steering Team to test ideas and obtain sanctioning for all project activities via the gate review meetings. The members of the Project Steering Team review, debate, and challenge the Project Plan. Team members also assist in making available the human resources data and other data needed to conduct the project. In addition, they select all of the other PACT team members.

Project Steering Team roles and responsibilities are similar in Curriculum Architecture Design, Modular Curriculum Development, and Instructional Activity Development. In each case, the team is composed of members who have a stake in the outcomes and process for conducting the PACT Process project. And in each case, the most important role on the Project Steering Team is that of chairperson.

In some of my recent books I also share my “business-like” approach with the PST, and how I tell them that at the end of every GRM – Gate Review Meeting – they have four options – that my immediate client often dislikes my option sequence.

The PST is told at the beginning of their first Gate Review Meeting that the end-of-the meeting decisions include:

Kill this project as it does not make business sense for whatever reasons (bigger fish to fry, etc.)
Defer this project because it is not timely
Adapt the Project Plan because it is not appropriate
Approve the Project Plan…and continue planning for the next steps