Clarity of the relationship

We just got approval to move forward with a joint program with our sister organization to begin the scanning of legacy reports. Our goal is to make reports published prior to 2003 available on the Web.

The biggest stumbling block in getting the process moving forward had little to do with the scanning of documents, it was recent changes in our publishing agreement (which didn't apply to this project). The challenge was to keep the discussion focused on the task at hand, while finding a way to address these concerns.

It became very apparent that what's needed was a clear definition of the connection between the two organizations. Different individuals were operating on different assumptions about the relationship. Conflicts occurred because individuals, while operating in good faith, were trying to achieve different objectives.

To address this we will promote a senior level discussion to define our relationship. Items to be included are what's the driver for cooperation, how does this match with the drivers for each organizations, how should we share information between the organizations, ...

Once we came up with an approach for addressing the relationship, agreeing on the task at hand was simple. On accomplishing the task, you'll just have to wait ...