Take each example you thought of in Activity 2.4 and make a judgement as to whether your example is, overall, a hard or soft problem/change situation.

Did the activity confirm or refute your judgement of what is a difficulty and what is a mess in terms of your answer to Activity 2.4 ?

Activity 2.4

1 Using the descriptions in Illustration 2.12 , identify three ‘difficulties’ you have faced at work or in similar situations elsewhere.

2 Identify two or three ‘messes’ you have faced or been involved in.

3 Using Illustration 2.12 , list the ways in which the difficulties differ from the messes.

What might this tell you about ways of dealing with them?

Transcribed Image Text:

Illustration 2.12 Difficulties and messes Difficulties are bounded in that they: • tend to be smaller scale and are less serious in their implications; ● can be considered in relative isolation from their organizational context; have clear priorities as to what might need to be done; • generally have quantifiable objectives and performance indicators; • have a systems/technical orientation; • generally involve few people; have facts that are known and that can contribute to the solution; have agreement from the people involved on what constitutes the problem; tend to have solutions of which the type at least is known; have known timescales; are 'bounded', in that they can be considered separately from the wider organizational context and have minimal interactions with the environment. Messes are unbounded in that they: • tend to be larger scale and have serious and worrying implications for all concerned; • are an interrelated complex of problems that cannot be separated from their context; have many people of different persuasions and attitudes involved in the problem; ● have subjective and at best semi-quantifiable objectives; have an absence of knowledge of factors and uncertainty as to what needs to be known; have little agreement as to what constitutes the problem, let alone what might be possible solutions;