June 23, 2005
Sub-Optimization
A leader’s role is to get everyone moving in the same direction. Sub-optimization has everyone pulling in a different direction — their own.
I’m in Los Angeles at the 2005 West Coast edition of Legal Tech. Down on the exhibit floor, vendors get to see examples of sub-optimization every day. For software vendors, it goes something like this. An attorney stops in their booth to complain about something important to them that they have been told the program doesn’t do. Usually the software does it and has been doing it for years. You show the attorney and they ask when you added that capability? That is when the attorney realizes he has met the enemy and it resides within his or her own firm.
I hesitate to tell you how often I have spoken before groups of administrative and accounting managers and had someone in the audience remark, “We don’t want the lawyers to know that". That confession is followed by a chorus of support from the rest of the audience.
Sub-optimization is when the interest of individual departments or chieftains drives actions and decisions rather than the goals and objectives of the organization. In this case, the accounting and administrative area didn’t want any complications disrupting their routine or making their job more difficult or complex.
Unfortunately, sub-optimization is a naturally occurring tendency in any organization. It is most intense when the organization fails to communicate effectively the goals and objectives of the entire organization. It is lowest when the organization has given each department or functional area its own role in pursuing those objectives. People need to know where the organization is going and how they are expected to contribute to that journey.
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Filed under Firm Culture, Management by Tom Collins