No Wrong Doors | Irrational Exuberance

I had not heard of this No Wrong Doors approach but I like the approach. I've seen issues like this many times in my own organizations. The internal operations of a large team are often complex, and that complexity is typically (not always) needed for various reasons. But it makes things harder to navigate. Hence No Wrong Doors.

Beyond being helpful to your colleagues, which is an obvious goal in some companies and not-at-all a cultural priority in others, I think there are a number of other advantages to think about here. First, being helpful creates positive relationships across organizations. Second, it makes it more obvious where you do have genuine areas of ambiguous ownership, and makes it possible for informed parties to escalate that rather than relying on folks with the least context to know to escalate the ambiguities. Third, it educates folks asking for help about the right thing to do, because a knowledgeable person helping is a great role model of the best way to solve a problem. Finally, if you happen to route to the wrong person–it happens!–then you learn that immediately rather than forcing someone without context to navigate the confusion.

I've seen and helped this happen in teams like Help Desk, but applying the concept to more boutique needs could add a lot of value.