Involvement – what exactly do we mean?
The subject of involvement often comes up in our matrix management virtual teams training. People like to feel involved, managers are expected to keep people involved, decisions require involvement – but what does involvement really mean?
When you break it down there are many different types of involvement.
- Stakeholder involvement – usually covers everyone who might be interested in a decision or topic; from the person who is fully accountable for its delivery, to someone who just needs to be communicated with when a decision is made.
- Buy-in – people who need to be committed to the implementation of the decision or activity.
- Consultation – people who need to be asked about their views before a decision is made.
- Informed – people who need to be told when a decisions been made.
- Committed – people who need to be fully committed to the decision as there is a major implication on them.
I’m sure there are others, but you get the idea. There are many different types of involvement and each of them need to be handled differently.
There is an old joke about the difference between being involved and committed to an English bacon and egg breakfast. The chicken is involved but the pig is committed!
One of the consequences of this lack of clarity on what “involvement” means is that we tend to use the same medium for creating all of these forms of involvement. This can lead to everyone being invited to meetings “just in case”. For instance, inviting those people who need to be informed to your meeting, may result in them beginning to see themselves as decision makers. This can lead to slow and unnecessary complex decision-making.
Many organizations use the RACI (we call it ARCI) process to help clarify who should be accountable, responsible, consulted and informed. This can be helpful; but it is quite a time consuming and potentially bureaucratic process.
Our advice is to be really clear about what form of involvement you want, and then think about the appropriate means to achieve it and when in the process you need to involve people.
If you are consulting someone, talk to them before you make a decision. If you’re informing them talk to them afterwards. Not everyone is a decision-maker.
By bringing this level of clarity to how you manage involvement, you can speed up meetings and decision making.
If you’d like to find out more about implementing this in your organization, give us a call.
[banner heading=”Contact Us” link=”https://www.global-integration.com/contact-us/” icon=”man_with_laptop” anchor=”Find Out More” align=”left”]Find out how to improve your levels of involvement by contacting one of our consultants today.[/banner] [banner heading=”Better Meetings Campaign” link=”https://www.global-integration.com/meetings/” icon=”bettermeetings” anchor=”Find Out More” align=”right”]Increase your meeting effectiveness by joining our Better Meetings Campaign.[/banner]
Explore our training programs to see how we can help.
Agile & Digital Training Matrix Management Training People and purpose Training Virtual Teams TrainingEducate yourself further with a few more or our online insights:
30 years of experience learning with a range of world class clients
We work with a wide range of clients from global multinationals to recent start-ups. Our audiences span all levels, from CEOs to operational teams around the world. Our tools and programs have been developed for diverse and demanding audiences.
Tailored training or off the shelf modules for your people development needs
We are deep content experts in remote, virtual and hybrid working, matrix management and agile & digital leadership. We are highly flexible in how we deliver our content and ideas. We can tailor content closely to your specific needs or deliver off the shelf bite sized modules based on our existing IP and 30 years of training experience.
For more about how we deliver our keynotes, workshops, live web seminars and online learning.