> On 6 Feb 2017, at 5:01 pm, Francois Nsenga <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Dear David
> 
> Could you please elaborate more on:
> - those 50% potential risks of failure when dealing with political special
> interests
> - special ways/know-how you and your team have developed to handle those
> special requests
> 
> Regards
> 
> Francois
> Kigali
> 
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 1:44 AM, David Sless <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 6 Feb 2017, at 2:11 am, Chris Smith <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi All
>>> A Question
>>> Can I ask if Designers are Politicians?
>> 
>> Hi Chris,
>> 
>> Our project archives show that at least 50% of the effort (work) on any
>> project is devoted to dealing with political matters. By that I mean that
>> there are always people with particular interests whose interests need to
>> be taken into account in our design projects. They represent the greater
>> risk to failure in any of our design projects.
>> 
>> We have to teach all our project staff how to deal with these matters.
>> Specific skills and management techniques are required.
>> 
>> David
>> 

Hi Francois and all,

I’m free for a few hours from our current monster projects! So to elaborate in more detail than I had time for earlier this week.

Potential project failures for political reasons are always lurking in the wings. Here are some sanitised but real examples:

1. A project is cancelled after a quarter of a million has been spent because one manager thought he might loose his job if the project went ahead to conclusion.

2. A special interest group protested at the highest level against some project content because they perceived it as ambiguous and not focused enough on their special interest. Test results showed that their concerns were misplaced.

3. A government Minister insisted on making a decision about a document which had been at the centre of a controversy. Had the minister been allowed to make the decision they wanted to make, the controversy would have escalated. Instead, the Minister was persuaded that choosing the colour of the document was a better area in which to exercise Ministerial power.

These are all examples where people with particular interests tried to exert their influence on the outcome of a project. In each of these cases the risk of failure was high. In the first case, we knew about the risk, but were powerless to prevent it. In the others, we had contingencies to minimise the threat. 

Explaining the special ways/know-how that is needed to manage projects and prevent these risks from arising would take much longer than would be appropriate for a response to a list question. But I have written about this in some detail under the topic of Logic of Positions. Essentially this is about how we each see our communicative environment from a specific position within a communication landscape and from that position construct images of other people in the landscape.

The best place to begin getting an insight to this is published in:
Sless, D (2006)
‘Where am I?’
In Designing Effective Communications: Creating Contexts for Clarity and Meaning  
edited by Jorge Frascara, New York Allworth Press pp 29–37.

Best to all from a hot Melbourne, 
cooling after a heatwave came through.

David
-- 


blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>

Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •

Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless

60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068

>> 
> 
> 
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