Decisions that can’t be made

"Hey, there. I need Mary to enter a few contributions we got over the weekend. Can you upgrade her permissions temporarily? She hasn't really been trained, but I'll walk her through what she needs to know for this."

Sounds like a pretty simple request, right?

But is it really? Of course not.

• How long is “temporarily”?

• What are all the permissions Mary will need?

• How will that affect other staff members who have the same role as Mary?

• What are the security and privacy implications?

• If something goes wrong, how will we handle it — or even know about it?

• Who’s really thinking about all these questions and has the understanding to answer them? ‘

Sometimes even the simplest requests can be surprisingly hard to deal with.

In a very small team, you can afford to make such decisions ad hoc. You might even have to.

But in a larger team, where several departments have varying levels of access, the potential risks become substantial.

If you have clear lines of communication, clear policies that everyone understands, and a clearly designated administrator for those policies, this can all go very smoothly.

But without those things, you can find yourself in a position where nobody is able to make an effective decision.

That's a formula for delay, frustration, and error.

Putting those things in place takes time and effort, but they are essential. The time and effort is absolutely justified.

Here's the thing:

If your organization is growing and struggling with questions like these, take a moment to think about where the bottleneck is.

Do you have the policies? Do you have the clear lines of communication? Has someone been designated to answer these questions?

If yes, then you should be good to go. If no, then it's probably worth thinking about.

All the best,
A.