When my work is one small piece, I want to know what it contributes to, so I do not spend years without knowing what I am building.

Job context

Who

An employee in a large organisation

When

Steadily, and most sharply after a project is cancelled

Trigger

A year-long project stopped with no explanation

Situation

The distance between the work and the outcome is too long

Constraints

The final outcome is not visible

5 Pains

• Cannot see where their work leads

  High

  The outcome appears several layers away.

  Root cause: Large organisations divide work into pieces that say nothing on their own

• Projects are cancelled without explanation

  High

  After months of work.

  Root cause: The reasons for cancelling belong to decisions not published

• Never meeting the end user

  High

  So there is no knowing whether it helped.

  Root cause: Only some roles are allowed contact with users

• The mission statement does not match the daily work

  Medium

  So it rings hollow.

  Root cause: Missions are written for outside audiences rather than for the people inside

• No idea whether they made any difference

  Medium

  Because too many things decide the outcome.

  Root cause: One person's contribution cannot be separated from a joint outcome

5 Desired Outcomes

• See where their work leads

  Functional

• Know why a project was stopped

  Functional

• Meet the people who use it

  Social

• See the mission match the work

  Social

• Know whether they made a difference

  Emotional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Read the company's results

  Product

  The official source, too far away to recognise your part in it.

• Ask the manager what this is for

  Behaviour

  The right question, answered one level up and no further.

• Find a way to meet users

  Workaround

  The thing that changes the most, outside the job description.

• Find meaning inside the team

  Behaviour

  How most people cope, and it does not survive a reorganisation.

• Move to a smaller organisation

  Behaviour

  The complete solution, traded against stability.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• The daily work and the final outcome sit several organisational layers apart, and nobody is assigned to connect the two ends for whoever is doing the work.

  Why existing solutions fail: Dividing work into small pieces is how a large organisation functions at all, and that same division severs the thread between action and outcome, so the problem is a consequence of what makes scale possible.

  Potential opportunity: Returning the final outcome to the place each piece of work is done, regularly and concretely.

• Only some roles are permitted contact with users, while most of the organisation builds things they never see anyone use.

  Why existing solutions fail: The customer relationship is treated as a few departments' asset and defended as such, so user understanding enters through a narrow gate and loses most of its detail on the way, while direct contact is what changes how people work more than anything.

  Potential opportunity: Giving every role a quota of direct user contact, treated as part of the work rather than as a privilege.