OCE.12:4.3.3 - Prepare a proposal for decision and first use

Use this branch when people need to examine a proposed organizational change before committing to it, or an agreed change has yet to become a workable first contribution. Begin with the result another person will use. Follow how the proposed practice would produce it: which working product changes, who prepares and receives it, and which tools, access, learning or help must be available. Retain an adequate existing arrangement. A short brief may suffice when the proposal and conditions are already settled.

Bring the needed judgement into preparation. Ask the decision maker and affected participants whose advice they need to assess the proposal and which question that person could help answer. A trusted former colleague, peer or specialist outside the formal project may influence the decision. Offer an appropriate explanation or permitted example through an agreed contact; let the recipient consult privately when that is preferable. Seek the grounds of the returned concern, including what would answer it. An adviser may clarify a consequence without speaking for the people who bear it or having authority to commit their work.

Concentrate on advice and affected interests that could change the decision. A credible technical objection needs the relevant specialist’s answer; a concern about burden needs examination of the work and its receivers. When a material question remains confidential or inaccessible, agree a narrower way to examine it or retain the uncertainty. Exhaustively discovering everyone’s informal contacts is neither necessary nor a condition for proceeding.

Make the proposed work and its consequences examinable. Explain how the proposed arrangement would produce the needed result and compare it with the present way of working. Use one representative task, its working products and the receiving decision. Let participants expose extra operations, missing inputs, displaced work and consequences they cannot accept. Separate a misunderstanding from a true disadvantage or an unsupported promise of benefit. Repair the explanation through dialogue, obtain the missing domain answer through 4.3.2, or revise the proposal. An understood proposal can still be declined.

Discuss the contribution and its conditions far enough to know what must be done before bargaining over personal appointments or titles. Include actual competence, authority and available resources whenever they change feasibility; postponing those questions would conceal a defect. Examine consequences for both current service and the change work, using OCE.11 where they compete. Preparation itself needs time for explanation, consultation, trials and revision. Use an adequate answer already available; limit new inquiry to a question whose answer can change the decision enough to warrant that burden.

Obtain a decision on a workable proposal. Where contributions conflict, use 4.3.1 to construct and obtain agreement on the whole arrangement. Identify who can authorize its start and commit each required contribution through OCE.6. If the participants cannot commit a needed resource, take the proposal and its unresolved condition to the person who can; keep the dependent start conditional. An institutional rule may permit a decision despite disagreement. Name that rule and retain the objection instead of reporting mutual consent. When a refused voluntary contribution is necessary, obtain an acceptable alternative or leave that use unagreed.

Keep responsibility for organizing the change distinguishable from responsibility for running and receiving the resulting work; one person can hold both when the arrangement permits it. Make the effective decision, its scope, timing and conditions recoverable in the form the organization uses. A promise to find time or support later leaves that condition outstanding. Authorize only the preparation, trial or use whose conditions are satisfied; retain an unresolved issue, refusal or deferral where they are not.

Make the agreed start mutually visible. Give the people whose actions depend on one another the same accepted proposal and effective decision. In a brief or a suitable shared exchange, let them confirm their contribution, the help available and how an exception will reach someone able to respond. Each needs to know what the others have actually undertaken, including the arrangements for an absent shift or provider. A readable update with the necessary responses can supply this result without a launch meeting. Attendance or silence leaves an unconfirmed contribution unresolved.

Use this exchange to confirm what is settled and expose what changed. A new substantive objection returns to the affected inquiry, agreement or decision; an announcement cannot close it. Identify which work must wait and which preparation can continue under its own conditions. When a revision changes another person’s work or reliance, obtain the affected response and communicate the resulting version before that use. Existing commitments remain effective until their authorized change.

Obtain the first useful handover. Put the working product, access, permitted help and receiving contribution in place. When a checklist supports the occasion, CHK.3 locates its questions where observations and answers can change the work. Use the subject practice’s criteria to produce and check the result; give the receiver the applicable result and unresolved questions. Follow what the receiver can actually do with it. Opening a form or reporting agreement leaves that handover untested.

Arrange a first assisted use when assistance is needed, and retain that condition in the result. A failed attempt may reveal a missing explanation, unavailable means or an unworkable arrangement; return that difficulty to its supplier rather than repeating the announcement. Use OCE.9 when the question is whether the organization can provide the whole capability, and CHK.3 for ordinary later use of the aid. One successful handover can justify its bounded continuation without establishing independent performance, recurring provision or usefulness across the organization.