Or, in plain English, "Mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse will be born" (Horace).
Many organisations consume tons of resources and logistics just to put in place something that is so insignificant and useless that it really makes the sanity questionable. Generally this kind of projects start from a good idea, something that requires some kind enterprise engineering at some levels.
People identify issues and possible solutions. They look around for examples of similar issues and how others succeeded in overcoming the obstacles. Examples of such a good idea are: common ways of working (especially after mergers) common development infrastructure, re-architecting products and so on.
Usually what happens is that, once the management acknowledges the initial issue, a committee that will handle the problem is put in place. The committee is formed by generally capable individuals but each one with its own baggage of interests and stakes in the project. They start thinking the idea, usually from conflicting stances and some progress emerges. Sooner or later, in these groups, some stakes become more important than others or some change resistance interests appear. IKEA syndrome is booming. Some projects have so many technical debt so that for them change would be suicidal. Others discover in terror that their functionality is already implemented by others, But the charter is there and managers committed to implement it. So the backstabbing and parallel communication begins, people forget the scope and the charter is liberally interpreted. The relations of trust between the committee's members are shaken and nobody works towards the initial goal. So, instead of giving birth to a magnificent mountain a mouse is born.
What to do in this case?
Generally, business as usual. Travel, meetings, paperwork, slideware, buzzwords. Everything is like a movie set, looks impressive from distance. On a closer scrutiny... well there is nothing or in best case very little worthy. The little mouse was created. Everyone involved is still in a newly painted silo. Many "change agents" are created so they can tell, as in "Emperor's New Clothes", that something really great is to be seen, no wonder that the organisation struggled so hard to produce it...
How to deal with this? There are several ways.
One is that this cannot be solved from inside but rather from the outside. I would personally bring some consultants from outside that are unbiased and can judge the decisions with no emotions or attachments. They should really listen and be mediators. They have to ponder all the aspects and write down pragmatic, sometime cruel decisions. They should be smart and technology wise so they can see migration paths and human enough to be able to compensate the emotional burdens.
The second view is that there might be a chance of solving it internally. This really involves a coordination game. There should be no hidden cards, no hidden agenda and in fact it involves a lot of sincerity, openness and altruism. These are hard to find in organization as changes really hit the amygdala or the base Maslow's pyramid. People will fear changes, they'll sabotage it even unconsciously. To prevent petty results and huge efforts people should reach agreements based on clear and open communication. They have to assume some suffering and discomfort. There should be some safety net professionally and materially that give them courage to go on.
Coming back to the output of the huge labor, rodents could grow big (think of a capybara) but this requires no natural enemies, at least not internally. Scoping correctly the goals and reducing the internal sabotage is the key for a viable and valuable output. Also keeping the internal theatre as low as possible also helps. If there is no internal struggle then the mouse can evolve, can grow - maybe in the end it will really be magnificent. Otherwise it will be always the petty effort of majestic mountains...
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