Mr. Johnson saw a free plot of land on the outskirts of town and decided that he would build a local convenience store there.
After a few months the store was built and Mr. Johnson opened up to the public. But after the first potential customer walked in Mr. Johnson realised that he had made a huge mistake.
There was no stock to sell to customers.
He had been so preoccupied with the architecture, the design, the marketing and acquiring the staff that he had forgotten to fill his shop with a vital component, something to sell!
Now everyone involved goes about scrutinizing everyone else’s job descriptions to find someone to blame because this was a howler of a mistake.
This is was obviously poor planning and with any project you’re bound to miss something as you can’t think of everything, you’re only human.
But a way to avoid an aspect that one person forgot is to gather a large group of stakeholders together and have a massive brainstorm and cataloguing of everything that needs to be done.
That way you can use other people as a safety net for anything that might have slipped your mind. It’s much harder for 20 people to forget about stock then it is for one.
Thomas Duggan 