“Outsourcing,” even in the most simple examples — like that of sending an e-mail campaign by a third party — requires alignment just as any other business activity. In this business case the supplier of the e-mail campaign had just changed their approach. Since last month it is no longer “possible” to send html-e-mail that take more than X. kbyte. The chat feature worked fine and from “Jim” I learned that newsletters are now bounded to a content limit. But he made an exception…

Whatever the reason was for this change, the approach to handle the change is quite clear: Just do it and wait for the consequences. This is the same strategy that Google uses for the You-Tube video content: just allow every content uncertain of copyrights and wait what happens. The difference is that the you-tube case is operational and the e-mail campaign directive concerns a change of tactics, but the idea is the same.

Exceptions are a pain. So in order to gain more efficiency organization will try to create standards to which clients will “have to comply” to. Of course there is always the possibility to complain and those individual cases will be handled case-wise. To approve too many exception will make that the new standard will loose credibility, but a limited set of exceptions can be handled and will not weaken the main standard. There are always some exceptions, they will not disorganize your business.

Another advantage if this method is that the information value of the exception. If clients do not massively complain about the new rule, than the dropped feature wasn’t too highly valued anyway. If clients do complain than there is a problem. A simple test (the launch of a balloon) amongst a client panel will clear this issue.

In this way you have managed your clients into a new direction. And this pattern is equally powerful to handle internal clients in accepting a change. The main recipe for this approach is: just do it. This is possible if the impact of the change is (below) average. In that case: put on your shoes and go and see where the resistance takes a certain volume so that you have to reconsider your tactics. In many other cases: Well begun is half done.

© 2007 Hans Bool

Hans Bool writes articles about management, culture and change. If you are interested to read or experience more about these topics have a look at: Astor White or sign-up for our newsletter.