Making Needed Adjustments

What if the decision you’ve implemented ultimately doesn’t work out as you’d expected?

Most implementation plans require some adjustment. If nothing else, conditions change over time. So occasional adjustments, ranging from fine-tuning to wholesale changes, are often needed.

What if the decision you’ve implemented ultimately doesn’t work out as you’d expected? In most cases, corrections can be made. These will often involve only “tweaking” the decision you’ve implemented. But sometimes you may find that the alternative you chose just isn’t working. In such cases, you need to revisit the decision-making process.

Make sure you framed the issue correctly. Have you learned anything new that makes you think the problem is different from what you thought the first time around?

Has there been a change in your objectives? Do you have new information that you didn’t have before? Perhaps you see that one objective should have been given more weight and another one less.

Have you learned about an alternative that wasn’t considered the first time around? Or have you acquired a different perspective that causes you reassess data you’ve had for some time?

Go through your decision-making process again, preferably without reviewing your earlier results. With experience in implementing one alternative, chances are good you’ll change your opinion of how well some of the other alternatives satisfy your objectives.

After you’ve evaluated how well each alternative would be expected to address each objective, return to the results of your first evaluation. Where you find discrepancies between the first time and this time, decide which one is more on target in light of what you know now.

ACTION POINT: Revisit your decision making process when adjustments are needed during implementation.