Perceptint Musings

When you’re dealing with an organization with more than a hundred thousand employees, it’s very likely you could end up bumping into a negative zone version of yourself or your team on any given day. Discovering others within your organization with a similar charter, goal, time-line, project or scope can throttle into a Monday morning like hot soup in your lap.

My team has had several instances lately of running into new internal people trying to solve similar problems to the ones we face. They have their own budgets, their own clients, their own agenda and our sudden discovery of each other usually leaves both groups puzzled. Did I just run into my shadow? Do we own this part of the business now or do they?

We’ve recently been in process of looking at vendors for a certain need.  We’ve had preliminary interviews with all of the companies we wanted to speak with. The next step for us was to find additional internal sponsors and then begin the RFP process. Right after we crossed the threshold of speaking to the first round of vendors, we discovered another group that has a similar goal related to the need we are trying to fix.

This group is already in the dog and pony part of the show with vendors. So now we’re quickly tagging along with them to see where they’re at, what they know, how far along they are in their process etc. We’re also hoping they don’t jump the gun and start down a path that we aren’t able to influence.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I realized I need to start documenting our strategy for dealing with these types of issues. This is my first draft for handling these types of situations.  I’m very open to feedback and any thoughts you might have about this list.

Code of Conduct for Internal Comet-Like Collisions

1. Stay calm, you didn’t worry about this team or their projects before today
2. It is highly likely that the discovery of the other team(s) will be of benefit to your projects if you handle it properly
3. Begin an ambassador outreach program to this team at once
4. Get any and all background that you can and provide them with the same
5. Document their team structure, reporting structure, etc.
6. Make it official - do your two teams overlap and where? If they do, put it out there in the organizational mind-share.
7. It could benefit both teams and help management better plan future resource development
8. Look for opportunities to spread your buying power into theirs or vice versa
9. Keep in touch - don’t let your projects and day to day worries keep the other team out of your mental picture, you may need them and their expertise sooner than later
10. Share knowledge and learning’s often - you both stand to benefit from the others experience
11. Do you now have a bigger story to sell within the organization? It may be that the combined efforts of two teams produces better results than one team alone. If it does, tell people and sell the cross-over success. If it doesn’t and your tripping over each other, let people know that too
12. If a mirror image team within the organization existed for this project, there is a greater probability that there are more mirror teams for other projects as well

Keeping your cool is what it’s all about when things get wacky like this. Discovery and knowledge are a faster path to enlightenment than denial and worry.

Just because another project or team overlaps in your area of expertise doesn’t make you any less of an expert. If anything, it keeps the kettle warm underneath you and pushes that competitive corporate button that can help you excel.

So never fear the negative zone, its just part of some bizarre corporate duplication theory that physicists are just beginning to document. Until these scientists know more, you can operate in peace knowing that the collision of corporate anti-matter does not have to end with a big-bang.