Who wants the ball?

In the summer, Oliver Kahn wrote a sentence about the German national team that has little to do with football. It describes quite precisely why change programmes fail – and that is rarely the concept.

The decisive moment looks unspectacular

Kahn writes about a team that, at the decisive moment, does not look for volunteers but has players who call for the ball. Companies have this moment too. It is just harder to recognise, because nobody blows the whistle for it.

It comes in meeting seven of forty. A figure no longer adds up. An assumption from the preceding project does not hold. Two divisions want the same staff. That is exactly where it is decided whether someone is willing to take responsibility – or whether the matter is passed on.

Responsibility always moves in the same directions

It moves upwards, because nobody wants to pre-empt the board’s decision. It moves sideways, into a working group that “prepares the topic properly”. And it moves backwards, into the next regular meeting, because two participants are missing today anyway.

Each of these three steps is justifiable on its own, polite and entirely normal. Taken together, they produce a programme without an owner. Six months later, nobody asks any more who should actually have made the decision – people only ask why it is taking so long.

Three signs you can see early

• The status meeting deals with documents instead of decisions. If the minutes record which presentation is being revised but not what was decided, that is not a formal slip.
• For every open question there is a committee, but no name. A committee can do many things – it just cannot be held liable.
• Deadlines shift without anyone objecting. A deadline that falls without discussion was never binding.

Half a position

In a recent mandate, it came down to exactly one question: who gives up half a full-time equivalent? Ten independent companies, one central institution, a finished service catalogue – and a dispute that ran for months.

The matter itself was not difficult. What was difficult was that nobody wanted to decide it. The responsible division head was not able to find a solution, his counterpart at headquarters could not be persuaded, and both had good reasons not to call for the ball. It was resolved on a day when everyone involved sat together and the decision could no longer leave the room. How that day went is described in the case report on facilitating a deadlocked conflict.

What actually helps

1. One name per open question, not a committee. Not “Organisation division”, but one person with a date.
2. One hour every two weeks with the client. Short, without a battle of slide decks. This hour decides more about success than any workshop in between.
3. Record postponed decisions in the minutes too – with the reason and a new date. Anyone who makes postponements visible postpones less often.
4. Bad news early. Anyone who reports a deviation only at the steering committee has already failed to decide twice before.

None of this is new, and that is exactly the point. The ability to remain capable of action under pressure does not arise in the crisis meeting. It arises in the unspectacular meetings beforehand, in which someone takes a decision on themselves even though nobody would yet have asked for it.

And what does this mean for someone from outside?

Above all, it means one thing: an external can take over implementation, but not responsibility. A consultant who offers both is selling something he cannot deliver – at the latest on the day he leaves the organisation.

A programme that only runs as long as I am in the organisation has failed, even if the figures add up in the end. That is why every mandate has an agreed end, and that is why I need someone on the other side who is authorised to decide. What follows from this in detail is set out under How I work.

Conclusion

Kahn’s sentence contains an uncomfortable message for every organisation: anyone who is to take responsibility at the decisive moment must have been allowed to practise it for years beforehand. That cannot be procured at short notice – nor can it be bought in.

What can be changed at short notice is the framework: names instead of committees, fixed dates, visible postponements. The rest is leadership work – and it begins long before the moment things get tight.