Coordinators

Some things require a consensus among stakeholders -- people throughout the organization, and in some cases clients as well.

Take planning, for example. Every internal entrepreneur is responsible for a plan for his/her own business within a business. But all their plans must be coordinated to add up to the organization's plan.

Furthermore, planning is a specialty in its own right; there are methods and analytical skills which require study.

Thus, there's a role for a "Planning Coordinator" whose job is not to decide the plan, but rather to help everybody develop their own plans in a coordinated manner. This is just one example of the "Coordinators" Building Block.

Coordinators help stakeholders (within the organization and beyond) come to agreement on shared decisions such as policies, plans, and standards.

They establish processes for decision making. They structure those processes with methods and project plans. They ensure that the right stakeholders are involved. They provide common information, such as assumptions and trends, templates and formats, methods, frameworks, and timeframes. They help individuals with their respective duties in the process. They facilitate collaboration on interdependencies, such that each group's plan fits into a higher-order organizationwide plan. And they compile the results and make them available.

Coordinators also help people individually as experts in the library of shared decisions, for example helping others find, interpret, and apply the relevant policies, standards, and plans.

But Coordinators are not accountable for the content; the participating stakeholders are. Coordinators are just accountable for effective consensus-based decision-making processes.

There are many types of Coordinators, including the following:

• Strategy Planning: Based on an ever-changing environment and the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, a strategic plan answers the questions, "What businesses do we want to be in? And how will we get from here to there?"

• Operational Planning: An operating plan looks one or two years ahead, and answers the questions, "What do we plan to deliver in the coming year? And how will we fulfill that demand (including the needed resources, such as budgets)?"

• Research: A Research Coordinator doesn't do any research. Rather, it helps others do research with expertise in research methods, and in how to develop research proposals. It also helps the executive coordinate decisions on which research projects to fund, as a portfolio of investments aligned with the organization's strategy.

• Organizational Effectiveness: The focus of this Building Block is on how the organization does business (not what business it produces). Its scope includes: culture, structure, resource-governance processes (termed the "internal economy"), shared methods and tools, and metrics and rewards. This Building Block leads transformation projects, and then helps everybody work within the organizational design.

• Audit Response: Coordinators do not audit or judge people. But external parties may audit the organization; and when that happens, the organization must provide a point of contact, and a coordinated response. An Audit Coordinator helps everybody respond to auditors and provides a point of contact, but the content of the audit response is the responsibility of the appropriate groups throughout the organization.

• Regulatory Compliance: Everybody is accountable for complying with laws and regulations. A Regulatory Compliance Coordinator helps them do so by providing expertise in laws and regulations and how they apply to the organization. It also provides a point of contact for regulators, and coordinates any compliance examinations and remediation projects.

• Business Continuity: In case of a disaster, the organization must ensure that its staff are safe, stabilize the situation, and then bring the business back to normal operations (disaster recovery). And advance planning can mitigate the damage done by disasters. A Business Continuity Coordinator helps everybody develop their own plans, and coordinates interdependencies to optimize the resilience of the organization.

• Security: Security means minimizing the risks of harm from espionage, theft, and sabotage. Everybody is responsible for their own security, and for providing safe, secure products and services to their customers. A Security Coordinator helps them protect themselves from threats and deal with incidents.

• Standards: To ensure the interoperability and supportability of the organization's products, standards are conscious constraints on design. A Standards Coordinator does not decide standards. Rather, it creates a framework of standards, and pulls together the appropriate stakeholders to decide each "cell" within the framework (specific standards).

• Design Patterns: A Design Patterns Coordinator is an expert in the "ripples" -- how decisions about, or changes in, one product affect others. It facilitates consensus on design guidelines that minimize future ripples, and helps Engineers identify ripples so that a change in one product doesn't harm others.

Although similar in that they coordinate and facilitate shared decisions, each of these types of Coordinators requires unique skills, and each is a profession (a line of business) in its own right.