This is the 4th of 5 post which deals with  how to consult over committed organizations.

Over committed organizations have a pathology which I documented in this post.

In my last post, I pointed out what not to do.

In this post, I will point out  major interventions which are most effective.

1) Find out where the real commitments are made. No doubt there are project reviews and plans of record which are all useless. Find out what the informal mechanism is for decision making. Once you have done so, work with that team of people and add some developers from the trenches.

2) Get management and troop buy-in for “no surprises”. It is amazing how interested both sides are to end the lying which props up the over committed way of life. “No surprises” serves the interests of both sides.

3) Get people engaged to committing to one another and not only to management. Troops have a much more difficult time bullshitting  a peer than bullshitting a manager. And because the commitment to peers will surface a lot of pathologic lying, this is a very good tool to pry out the real state of affairs.