October 8
Ask the Person Doing It
Plans can sound excellent around a table. The trouble becomes visible to the person who will actually carry them out: the schedule does not fit, the supplies are elsewhere, or a step everyone assumed was simple takes hours. If that person's role is only to receive instructions, their practical knowledge may arrive too late to help.
Participation respects the experience that responsibility creates. People learn things by doing a job that cannot easily be learned by discussing it from a distance. Inviting them into the decision changes more than the quality of the plan. It changes whether they feel like partners in work that matters. We may have to reconsider an idea we liked very much. That inconvenience is small beside asking someone to carry out a plan while withholding their chance to improve it. Useful information often has a person attached who deserves a real hearing.
Whose practical experience has been missing from a decision I am helping make?
It is worth hearing from the person who will do the work.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Concepts for World Service, Concept IV.