As contract manager in BPO and IT outsourcing deals you inherit the contract that is drafted by legal counsels and the bid team. In my experience, especially the governance schedule can be thrown into the dust bin directly after contract signature.
How come?
Because apparently senior management in outsourcing deals find it difficult to adhere to prescribed and contractually agreed governance and procedures. They prefer creating their own “elephant paths”: paths formed by people making their own trails and shortcuts; an unofficial route (1).
Therefore, when designing governance and procedures involving senior management do keep in mind the concept of elephant paths.
For instance, when you design a contract change process and you already know certain stakeholders will be involved, you’d better keep elephant paths in mind and incorporate those in your design. Consult with senior management in the design process or, if that is not feasible, anticipate how they will likely behave in certain scenarios.
You may want to learn from Ohio State University and UC Berkley. For their university yards they both waited to see how the students would walk on the grass before creating the permanent pathways. Note: for the lawns at Oxford University such an approach would be unthinkable (2) 😊.
1) Source: http://www.elephantpaths.net.
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