Parallel Process: Draft Then Consult

Definition

Parallel Process is the practice of presenting a change plan in draft form to the people who will be affected by it or who can affect it, genuinely incorporating some of their feedback, and only then finalizing and communicating the plan — as distinct from either deciding alone and announcing, or asking people to co-author the plan from scratch. The leader still owns the decision; what changes is that the decision happens after a real feedback loop, not before it.

In the Book

Tip #7, "Lend Them Your Ears," grounds the practice in the claim "People Support What They Help Create," and warns that "any change plan is only as valuable as the paper it is written on" if the people affected weren't consulted. The book is explicit that this isn't democratic co-authorship — "it isn't that you are actually asking people what to do. Instead, you are presenting a draft of the change plan for their feedback" — and lays out an eight-step sequence: determine who is impacted or can impact the change, decide how and where to gather feedback, send the draft, tell people their input will be seriously considered (while being honest that not every suggestion can be used), evaluate the feedback without defensiveness, make appropriate changes, and communicate the updated plan with thanks. It closes with the line: "when people plan the battle, they don't battle the plan."

Why It Matters

A plan announced as finished invites people to defend their prior position against it, because the only way left to have influence is resistance. A plan circulated as a draft invites the same people to invest their expertise in improving it, because influence is still available through the front door — and it surfaces implementation problems (the people doing the work often know the plan's shortcomings better than its authors) before they become expensive failures instead of after. The mechanism generalizes to any decision-maker who wants informed consent rather than either unilateral authority or diffused ownership.