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Author: Drew Davison

Drew Davison is the owner and principal consultant at Davison Consulting and a former system development executive. He is the developer of Project Pre-Check, an innovative framework for launching projects and guiding successful project delivery, the author of Project Pre-Check - The Stakeholder Practice for Successful Business and Technology Change and Project Pre-Check FastPath - The Project Manager’s Guide to Stakeholder Management. He works with organizations that are undergoing major business and technology change to implement the empowered stakeholder groups critical to project success. Drew can be reached at [email protected].

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Measuring Key Stakeholder Satisfaction

We know that the active and sustained participation of a project’s decision-makers is the primary contributor to project success. Even Project Management Institute (PMI) research reveals “that having actively engaged executive sponsors is the top driver of project success.” So what does it mean to have actively engaged executives and how does one ensure that their project’s decision-makers are, in fact, actively engaged? Measure their level of satisfaction, of course!

In this case, we’ll see how a project manager, frustrated with the lack of key stakeholder commitment and availability, used a comprehensive decision framework and frequent measurement and reporting of satisfaction levels to force active engagement and steer a troubled start to a celebrated and successful conclusion . Disclosure: I did have a couple of phone conversations with the PM and one two-hour meeting with the PM and two key members of the team early on. That was the extent of my involvement.

Thanks to M.A. for the insights on this story.

The Situation

This pharmaceutical company had made a number of acquisitions over the years but had not rationalized the operating processes and technologies of the acquired companies. The CEO recognized the increasing burden this mishmash of practices and systems was having on the overall effectiveness of the organization – increased costs for redundant software and services, a significant drag on productivity and a costly impediment to the realization of corporate strategies.

The CEO targeted the consolidation of business processes and supporting technologies, what he called the Refresh project, as a top priority and believed he had the support of his executive team. In fact, the VPs had agreed to defer a number of priority projects to focus on the Refresh undertaking, believing that their initiatives would be simplified and less costly to implement on the upgraded processes and infrastructure.

The CEO worked with the CFO and his PMO Director to select an appropriate PM to lead the Refresh project. They picked an in-house PM with a stellar track record, good contacts with the affected organizations and an understanding of the processes and technologies that would be addressed by the project. The CEO then gathered his executive team and their direct reports together, reviewed his expectations for the project, introduced the new PM and asked for everyone’s support. The Refresh project was underway!

The Goal

The Refresh project was to deliver one set of processes and a homogeneous infrastructure across all operating units. The CEO set a target to have the project wrapped up within eighteen months. While there were no project estimates as yet, he had put a target maximum of $4 million on the endeavor. At that price, he expected to get a payback within two years. He also decreed interim implementations every four to six months to reduce risk and accelerate value delivery.

The Project

The new Refresh PM, we’ll call her Elizabeth, was excited. She had an engaged and enthusiastic sponsor in the CEO. All the key decision makers were in attendance at the launch and apparently fully supportive of the endeavor. She had a sizeable cost target to manage within and what seemed to be a reasonable target date. So off she went.

She pulled together a small team to help build the charter and project plan. However, as she approached the VP’s to get the needed staff, she ran into varied responses. The CIO and CFO responded immediately and provided their top talent. Two of the operational VPs responded in a similar fashion. However, the remaining two VP’s were much more difficult to connect with, were reluctant to provide the necessary staff and didn’t offer their top talent. In fact, one of these VPs never did respond in spite of numerous emails and phone messages.

Approval of the project charter and plan was also problematic even though the material was presented to the executive committee and individual reviews were offered to those who had concerns. Like the staffing experience, the CEO, CFO, CIO and two of the operational VPs responded quickly. The others were laggards and by some of the feedback, it was evident that they had not reviewed the material in depth. Elizabeth was becoming concerned. She was only six weeks into the project but was already experiencing commitment challenges with key decision makers. She decided to try something different.

Elizabeth was aware of Project Pre-Check, a stakeholder management practice, through a course she had attended a few months previously. The practice measures key stakeholder satisfaction on a broad range of project and change related items called decision areas in a comprehensive decision framework. She believed its use could improve the response and engagement of the laggard VPs and facilitate consensus across all the stakeholders by soliciting their views at a granular level and reporting the findings and evolution of the results to the executive team on a regular basis.

She downloaded the material from the Project Pre-Check website and called me to get my opinion on her planned approach. I agreed. She then completed the questionnaire herself and, with that experience under her belt, decided to review her plan with the CEO first. When she met with the CEO, he insisted that he go through the exercise himself. She scheduled a one-hour follow-up meeting. The full questionnaire contains 125 decision areas (organized within four domains and eighteen factors) and asks for opinions on relevance, accountability and satisfaction on each. Forty-five minutes into their meeting, Elizabeth pointed out that they had covered barely half of the decision areas and perhaps they should spend the remaining fifteen minutes on reviewing the process and her plans going forward. The CEO called out to his assistant to rebook his next meeting and told the PM to keep going. He wanted to finish the whole thing.

It took another forty-five minutes to complete the questionnaire. The CEO was pumped. They agreed to cut the questionnaire back to the fifty-seven decision areas they both felt were relevant to their project. They could add or delete as new views came in and the project progressed. The CEO also encouraged Elizabeth to get the results from the other executives as soon as possible and agreed to send out a message to the executive team asking them to expedite the process.

Elizabeth proceeded to meet with each of the executives to gather their views on relevance, accountability and satisfaction on each of the fifty-seven decision areas. A week later, she had covered all but one of the VPs, one of the original laggards. When she reviewed the results with the CEO, he noticed the report did not include any results for the laggard VP and ask why. When she explained, the CEO suggested she try him again the next day. Elizabeth did call him and found the laggard VP most cooperative. Sponsor influence in action!

Elizabeth also decided to survey her own team to see how their views of the project related to the executives’ perspectives. She sliced and diced the results for the executives and her team a number of different ways to gain insight into the collective views and the issues that needed to be addressed. Some of the results from the first iteration are shown below:

davison july22 img01Relevance

The stakeholders were asked to determine the relevance of a given decision area (e.g. business goals and objectives) to the Refresh project. A “Don’t Know” response simply indicated that the stakeholder needed more information or deliberation before making a call.

On the Refresh project, the fourteen “Not Relevant” and the four “Don’t Know” results were driven by her team. The executives felt that all fifty-seven decision areas were relevant. Elizabeth facilitated the discussion with the CEO and her team to explain the rationale. In the end, her team understood the relevance of the fifty-seven.

davison july22 img02Accountability

One of the keys for effective ongoing project performance is to understand which stakeholder has the final authority to make decisions on each of the relevant decision areas.

On the Refresh project, there was wide disagreement initially on who was accountable for what, with 242 selections for the fifty-seven decision areas. Again, the PM facilitated the resolution of accountability so there were only fifty-seven specific accountabilities, one for each decision area. The CEO was accountable for the business-related decision areas, the CIO for the technology related ones and the PM for the project related ones.

davison july22 img03Stakeholder Satisfaction

The executives and team members were asked to rate their level of satisfaction with the current state of each decision area on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is Dissatisfied and 5 is Completely Satisfied. One of the key elements of this assessment was to base the judgment on specific evidence or products (e.g. a report, presentation deck, email, video, prototype, etc.)

The Refresh project results presented a typical early project range, from a low of 2.2 to a high of 3.8 among the executives and a low of 1.5 to a high of 4 among team members. As Elizabeth and her team explored the reasons for the variations, she found some of the high scores were not evidence based and the stakeholders reduced their assessment accordingly. In other situations where the evidence existed, sharing the products with others resulted in upward adjustments across the board.

As the assessments were rationalized and the gaps identified, the PM updated the plan to reflect the work needed to bring satisfaction levels up to the target of 4.0 or greater for all decision areas. She continued to survey the stakeholders on relevance and satisfaction and reported the results to the executives and her team on a monthly basis. It was a very action oriented exercise with the outliers visible at a glance.

The project progressed with converging assessments across the board. The most contentious issues focused around technology alternatives and business process design, highlighted clearly in the stakeholder assessment results. That made it much easier to get the executives’ attention and, eventually, agreement on the way forward. The executives were committed, even the former laggards. Her team had crystal clear guidance throughout.

The Results

The project was completed in the planned eighteen months at a cost of $2.8 million, significantly below the target cost of $4 million. Implementation was phased on a process by process basis with implementations every four to six months reducing risks and accelerating value delivery, reducing the payback period to fourteen months. There were no outages, minimal rework and an essentially seamless transition to the new world. Terrific results!

However, what Elizabeth found most revealing in her post-implementation review was this – there was no need for the post implementation review. The challenges, issues and opportunities that would normally be revealed in a project post mortem were identified and dealt with during the course of the project, by getting and maintaining agreement on decision area relevance and accountabilities and by resolving satisfaction gaps as they were disclosed. Additionally, the executive ownership for the undertaking was palpable. They knew, at a granular level, what was being done and why. And they were eminently satisfied! Even the former laggards. The final satisfaction scores: for the executives – 4.5, for the team – 4.8.

How Great Leadership Achieved Success

There’s a lot of talk these days about the vital role executives play in project success. Elizabeth took it one step further. She measured and reported executive satisfaction. That act garnered an accountability transformation. It wasn’t her project anymore. It was theirs. They looked after the Five Ws (the Who, When, What, Where and Why decisions) on the business and technology transformation. That allowed Elizabeth and her team to focus on How.

How did she manage that evolution? Five simple steps:

  • She identified the key decision-makers: the CEO as sponsor, the CFO, CIO and four VP’s as targets.
  • She engaged these key decision-makers. They knew why they were involved, what their responsibilities were and ultimately took it upon themselves to understand the proposals, issues and options on all fronts and work to achieve consensus.
  • She leveraged a proven practice to measure and manage the satisfaction levels of the key decision makers and her team. She didn’t have just one satisfaction measure. She had fifty-seven relevant points of light covering the breadth and depth of the change.
  • She used the satisfaction results to drive the plan and build consensus on the issues that were disclosed
  • She tracked relevance, accountability and satisfaction on a monthly basis until they became the primary metrics on project progress. Sure, budget, schedule, scope, risk, resources and quality were tracked and reported. But satisfaction became the litmus test.

Elizabeth’s satisfaction tracking and reporting transformed the experience for everyone, engendered active participation and turned the key decision makers into project owners. It was a terrific process leading to a great result. So, please, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavors so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering stakeholder, the engagement and collaboration process and decision area best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, past or present, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens and published in this blog, don’t be shy! Send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Nine Steps to Project Success

Often, it’s once bitten, twice shy. We try something. It doesn’t work out. We go on to something else. Yet, many discoveries and innovations are launched from an initial failure that yields valuable lessons and ultimately paves the path to success.

In this case, a failed project provided valuable insights that helped this company launch a second, highly successful effort to address an important business challenge. The lessons learned from that first project formed the foundation for later success.

Thanks to F.W. for the details on this case.

The Situation

This facilities contractor had a nation-wide presence designing, constructing and servicing commercial and residential building systems including heating and cooling, plumbing and electrical. The services business was a consistent, reliable revenue generator with minimal risk. However, the project side of the business was another story. The company had a checkered history of performance and suffered a number of losses when projects ran into trouble. As well, clients often demanded fixed price contracts to limit their exposure but that put the contractor under greater risk.

The company had attempted to improve their project management capability and performance in a previous project, but that had been abandoned when the delivered solution failed to gain traction. The post audit from that attempt revealed a number of causes:

  • Very few project participants realized the importance of the project to the company’s ongoing well-being.
  • There was little user input in the design phase so users had little motivation to use the application or seek remedies to make it work for them.
  • Duplicate entry of data was required by a number of different users, a significant disincentive to use.
  • There was little value to many of the targeted users as the data was accessible only to the managers.
  • The application was very time-consuming for the foremen so the foremen tended to use it only as a last resort.

Learning from those earlier lessons, the company launched a new project to address their project management challenges. This time, the project needed to achieve its goals. The company’s bottom line depended on it.

The Goal

To institutionalize project management best practices across the organization to significantly improve project performance. The delivered system would support planning, scheduling and budgeting activities as well as change orders and performance tracking and reporting. The corporate target was for 80% of projects to meet or exceed gross margin forecasts.

Because of other corporate priorities and financial constraints, the budget for the project was void of any new capital acquisitions. The project would have to make do with assigned resources and available technologies.

The Project

The CEO formed an initial steering committee that included the head of the organization’s Project Management Office (PMO), the head of the Business Process Management (BPM) organization and the process manager for facilities projects. He also included primary contacts from two key sub-contractors. The head of the PMO added a knowledgeable project manager to the team. The PMO members were to be the subject matter experts. The BPM members would actually guide the project.

The CEO also announced the formation of the steering committee and launch of the project to all staff and to many of the company’s sub-contractors. The communication stressed the importance of the effort to the company’s bottom line, asked everyone to contribute to and support the undertaking and promised frequent updates as the project progressed.

The process manager pulled together a project charter that reflected the lessons learned from the prior project and itemized the remedies and actions that would be incorporated into the new project, including:

  • Improved stakeholder identification and extensive engagement
  • Better communication to all stakeholders
  • Appropriate recognition and rewards
  • Providing better data for more informed decision-making
  • Reduced data entry
  • Phased implementation

The charter included a high-level plan with a three month requirements exercise engaging key stakeholders across the country, staged design and development including prototyping to facilitate collaboration and accelerate consensus, piloting of development iterations with selected targets and a staged rollout over the year. The communication strategy included in the charter covered monthly updates to key stakeholders, quarterly CEO updates, and periodic local show and tell sessions to give stakeholders a sense of the new project management environment and to solicit feedback. The process manager also proposed a recognition and reward scheme that included recognition for key project contributors and bonuses for facilities projects using the new project management process and tools that achieved the corporate goals.

In addition, given the constraints on the project’s capital budget, the process manager recommended using Excel as the primary interface for the delivered functionality. All facilities project managers had Microsoft Office on their laptops, they were familiar with the tools so little additional training would be required and it would allow the project to focus on the new project management process versus a new technology suite.

The document received full approval from the steering committee and the project was underway.

The Results

The results were quite amazing. Where the previous project met with indifference and, ultimately, abandonment, the new project management environment was met with enthusiasm, internalized and fully integrated into the organization’s operating practices. Participants knew it was a CEO top priority, they had numerous opportunities to shape the solution and they were rewarded for their contribution and their facilities projects’ successes using the new environment.

The project was completed mostly on plan and budget. What variances existed happened because of decisions to change approach, timing and content based on experiences and target feedback. In the year following the first successful implementation, 93% of facilities projects met or exceeded their gross margin forecasts. As well, there was a significant increase in best practice submissions from facilities project teams across the country, many of which were embedded in the new project environment, helping shape a continuous improvement culture across the country.

How Great Leadership Achieved Success

This project is a great example of how the learnings from an initial failure can be harvested and leveraged to feed the follow-on project’s success. Nine actions taken by the key stakeholders made all the difference:

  1. Great Sponsorship – The CEO took on the sponsorship responsibility and guided the change through the realization of planned benefits. Everyone knew the project was his and responded accordingly. His personal emails and visits to key contributors and successful facilities teams elevated the project to top of mind for everyone.
  2. Engaged Stakeholders – With active sponsorship and frequent virtual and face-to-face visits from the project team, staff and sub-contractors affected by the change were vital and enthusiastic contributors.
  3. Appropriate Incentives – Emails and visits from the CEO, mentions regarding personal and team contributions in cross company project updates and bonuses for those using the new environment to deliver successful facilities projects created an unprecedented demand to be involved.
  4. Process Over Technology – Sometimes a limited budget can be a benefit. In this case, the default selection of Excel allowed the project team to focus on the new project environment, which accelerated delivery, lowered the learning curve and minimized resistance.
  5. Phased Development – The team was able to focus on the key functionality and gain acceptance quickly, incrementally adding capability according to need. That reduced risk and built an expectation and reality of continuous improvement.
  6. Piloting Makes Perfect – Nothing aids understanding more than being able to try something. The piloting activity was instrumental in getting stakeholder buy-in and providing feedback and insights to improve the environment.
  7. Staged Rollout – The staged rollout helped build a wonderful camaraderie between the team and the targeted stakeholders. The team was able to focus exclusively on the rollout subset and work with the targets until they were fully knowledgeable and performed competently. The after implementation dialogue that frequently occurred generated numerous ideas for future improvements, which were often incorporated as part of the rollout.
  8. Stellar Communications – From the CEO’s quarterly updates to the process manager’s targeted reports, from individual and team acknowledgements to facilities project successes using the new environment, no one in the organization or among key sub-contractors was uninformed or left untouched.
  9. Lessons Learned – This project was the offspring of lessons learned from the forerunner. As well, the conduct of the project, from stakeholder engagement to phasing, piloting and staging was fully geared to harness lessons learned as the project progressed and after implementation, in a continuous improvement culture.

These nine actions aren’t new. We (the project/change management practitioners and others) know they work to reduce risk, add value and accelerate delivery. They’re not rocket science. There’s lots of information available about the practices. They’re reasonably easy to apply. So why aren’t they used on every project? It’s a mystery! If we analyzed the fifty plus posts in this blog we’d find, I expect, that most of the successful projects used the majority of these practices and most of the failed projects didn’t.

So, please, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavors so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering stakeholder, the engagement and collaboration process and decision area best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, past or present, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens and published in this blog, don’t be shy! Send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – It’s All About the Orgasm

It’s difficult to produce your best results when you’re under attack from your boss. Unfortunately, management applied duress, intimidation, pressure, bullying, and browbeating of individuals and teams is a too frequent occurrence. And it is incredibly costly in both the short and long term, in lost productivity, poor morale, staff and customer turnover, and bottom line impact.

In this case, an equipment manufacturing company had been family owned and operated for many years and had a typical, family owned, collegial culture. The president knew most people on a first name basis. There was a welcoming, team atmosphere wherever they were located. Regional offices were free to try new marketing, sales and service approaches. The results, good and bad, were shared across the company. Under the family’s leadership, there had been consistent growth in their market share, revenue, and bottom line. And then the family sold the business.

Thanks to D.W. for the details on this case.

The Situation

The business was taken over by an investment company that was looking to dramatically increase returns. They replaced the senior management with their own people, put new budgets and targets in place, and then waited for the expected increase in profits to arrive. After positive returns through the honeymoon period, about nine months long, sales and revenues started to decline in most of its markets.

After another nine months of declining results, with pressure from the board mounting, the CEO acted. Already three months into the fiscal year, performance against plan was abysmal. The CEO scheduled a two-day offsite meeting with his executive team and regional managers in an exotic, far off location. The first day was devoted to a state of the nation address from the CEO, updates from each of the vice presidents and a keynote speech on some obscure and mostly irrelevant topic. The morning of the second day was devoted to an update from each of the regional managers. The afternoon was to be a forward looking session to develop an action plan to reverse the company’s declining fortunes and garner commitment to make it happen.

The Goal

The goal of the offsite meeting was to develop a plan to reverse the company’s falling fortunes, to achieve the year’s objectives with only nine months to go, and obtain commitment from the regional managers to their local targets.

The Regional Manager’s Update

On the morning of the second day, the CEO opened the session with a summary of his state of the nation speech from the previous day. The agenda for the session included an update from each of the nine regional managers covering how they were doing against plan, what they were going to do to make plan over the rest of the year or, if they were meeting or exceeding plan, and to share the secrets of their success.

The CEO pointed to Jack, the first regional manager on this left.

“Well,” said Jack, “We haven’t had a very good first quarter. We’ve missed our revenue targets, and we’ve lost some customers, so our market share numbers are down as well. Things are very tight right now. But, we have confronted all our distributors and told them to get any orders they see for the rest of the year and submit them now. We’ve offered a commission incentive for any orders they submit this quarter.”

The CEO was pumped. “Great work Jack. We’re looking for a solid turnaround in your region next quarter”. He then looked to Thomas, the regional manager sitting beside Jack, to give an update. Thomas essentially repeated Jack’s story – sales were down, lost some customers, times were tight. But Thomas hadn’t put pressure on the distributors to book future orders, and he hadn’t sweetened commissions as an inducement. The CEO wasn’t happy and he suggested Thomas give serious consideration to Jack’s approach.

The CEO then looked to the next regional manager at the table, the one who handled the Canadian region. We’ll call him the Lion because of his large curly mane, his pearly white teeth and the fact he “serviced his pride” superbly, figuratively speaking (he was one of the two managers who had actually made his budget and looked to be in good shape). The CEO asked him to share the secrets of his success with the rest of the team.

The Lion paused, looked around the room, and said “It’s all about the orgasm.” He paused again.

The CEO was annoyed. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

First, some background on the Lion. He had been in the business for 20 years and had been the manager of the Canadian region for twelve years. During that time he had grown the business from less than 30% of the market to almost 60%. He had a great rapport with his distributors and their clients and played a leading role in the industry association. His region was the company’s most successful on all measures.

His first encounter with the company’s new management team came when his new boss emailed him his new targets for the year. No discussion, no negotiation, no warning. Just “here are your new numbers”. The Lion looked at the new targets and realized that he would have to achieve close to 90% market share to make them. That wasn’t going to happen. So he called his new boss, a mid-30’s MBA with absolutely no experience, knowledge, or interest in the industry and explained the reality of the situation. His new boss wouldn’t budge. It seems the number crunchers had figured out what kind of revenues the company needed and what kind of expenses they could afford to achieve their return on equity targets. Those totals were divvied up among the VP’s who apportioned them across their regions. The Lion’s VP insisted he had no choice. Those were the numbers.

So the Lion called the CEO, introduced himself and explained the situation. After some deliberation, the CEO agreed with the Lion and accepted the numbers the Lion proposed. Needless to say, the Lion’s new boss was not happy and there was some consternation among the number crunchers that their wonderful formula had been messed with, by their fearless leader no less.

So, back to the meeting. The Lion responded to the CEO’s challenge, repeating his message “It’s all about the orgasm. It works this way. When you have two people working together, they both need to get some pleasure, some enjoyment out of the relationship. If one of the participants walks away feeling great and the other feels they got screwed, the relationship isn’t going to work for very long. When I work with my staff, my distributors and their clients, I want them to feel orgasmic about our relationship. I want them to feel good, to be happy, to trust me as I trust them, to smile when they hear my name.”

You can imagine the reaction. There was a stunned silence in the room. Then the CEO commented that he wasn’t sure how that comment was going to be very helpful to the other managers and asked the next manager in line for his report. They finally got to the other regional manager who was meeting his targets and he echoed the message the Lion had delivered, without the colourful language of course.

The afternoon session to develop an action plan to achieve the year’s targets was orchestrated by the CEO. While the Lion and the other successful regional manager tried to offer concrete suggestions, the CEO was focused on the approach Jack was taking, to pressure the distributors to book future orders and sweeten the commissions. The meeting continued to its planned conclusion and the participants departed for their home regions to pursue the limited action plans that came out of the meeting.

The Results

As you might have expected, the company didn’t make its targets that year. The CEO was let go along with two of the new VP’s. The plan they adopted at the meeting, to pressure distributors to book future orders, simply cannibalized order activity from future quarters. Three of the regional managers left the company to join competitors, including the Lion. He had been pursued by one of his competitors for a couple of years and found he could no longer say no to their overtures. They shared the same values, they had a competitive product line that he was comfortable endorsing, and they were after his distributors and their clients. In four years, the Lion took his new company’s market share from 15% to almost 40%. Of course, most of that growth came at the expense of his old employer.

How a Great Leader Could Have Helped

The CEO didn’t have to wait until the off-site meeting to find out what was wrong and figure out how to fix the problem. He had two successful regional managers who had great track records and knew what they were doing and why. He could have leveraged their expertise to help the other regional managers turn their operations around. It may not have helped him achieve the current year’s targets, but it would have built a foundation for future success.

Instead, he chose the bully approach – bully his VP’s to beat up his regional managers to beat up their distributors to bully their clients. It was all about his numbers. It should have been about the distributers’ businesses and their clients’ businesses. The regional managers weren’t feeling the love, nor were their distributors.

This case reminds me of a program I watched recently on TV about being happy. It featured Shawn Anchor, founder and CEO of GoodThinkInc and author of the Happiness Advantage. Apparently happiness is a state of mind that we can choose, or not. Some businesses have actually introduced happiness programs and have experienced significant improvements in productivity, sales, customer and staff satisfaction. It seems all one needs to do to improve one’s happiness is, once a day, thank or praise someone, express gratitude for something personal, and meditate for two minutes. Now that would have been so much easier! The CEO and his VP’s might even have retained their jobs.

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, as either the bully-er or bully-ee, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavors so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering stakeholder, the engagement and collaboration process, and decision area best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, past or present, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens and published in this blog, don’t be shy! Send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Stronger Economies, Better Lives

We know how difficult it is to deliver projects successfully within an organization. Imagine the challenges involved in managing hundreds of concurrent projects in developing countries and communities around the world. That’s exactly what the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO) does and has been doing successfully for almost 50 years in Asia, Africa and South America and among Aboriginal communities across Canada.

In this post, we’ll look at the steps CESO takes to manage its relationships with government and non-governmental organizations, private sector enterprises, its small and medium size business clients and over 700 volunteers to launch projects and ensure their success.

Thanks to L.O. for the details on this venture.

The Situation

CESO was founded in 1967, on Canada’s centenary, by several noteworthy Canadians including Maurice Strong, Mitchell Sharp, Paul Martin Sr., Claude Hebert and Cy Peachey. Its mission: to strengthen economic and social well-being in Canada and abroad through engagement of skilled and experienced Canadian volunteers working co-operatively with partners and clients to create solutions that foster long-term economic growth and self-reliance.

The Goal

CESO envisions a world where there are sustainable economic and social opportunities for all. It has two strategic priorities: private sector development and institutional strengthening. Their partnership model involves working at the institutional level with associations/governments to strengthen the overall industry and also at the client level (private sector development) to achieve their goals.

To realize their vision, CESO operates according to four core values:

  1. Striving for Excellence
  2. Demonstrating Respect and Integrity
  3. Living Collaboration through Sharing Skills and Knowledge
  4. Encouraging Volunteerism

The Projects

CESO provides a variety of services to organizations and communities within Canada and in many other countries around the world.

Service areas include:

  • Strategic Planning: helping clients answer questions about what they do, how they do it, where they want to go and how they will get there and to document their goals and create a plan to ensure that they achieve them.
  • Business Development: helping clients with start-up, expansion, marketing, locating sources of business financing and all aspects of management.
  • Accounting and Finance: assistance in accounting, banking, national and international tax issues, financial management for individuals and businesses and financial reporting.
  • Organizational Development: helping clients create the structures that foster success, from human resources to policy and training development to mediation and change management.
  • Community Development: working with community leaders to develop feasibility studies, land use plans and community assessment frameworks and “train the trainers” in community health management.
  • Governance: Partnering with band councils and all levels of government to help implement award-winning, streamlined governance systems that are fair and accountable to all community members.
  • Production and Operations: Manufacturing experts assist with research and development, production and maintenance management, as well as application for quality management (ISO) certification.

What’s amazing to me is that CESO provides all these services and more with less than 50 staff and over 700 volunteer advisors who contributed over 6,000 days of their time and expertise in 2014.

To deliver its services cost effectively, CESO has a very flat, focused organization with the following key roles:

  1. Country Representatives (CR): CR’s are the on the ground staff for a given country who look after business development – finding and identifying partners/clients, as well as building and sustaining relationships. They also manage local government/stakeholder relations and liaise between CESO, the local/regional/national governments and Canadian embassies. They are also accountable for client relations, ensuring that the needs identified in the plan are being met successfully.
  2. Lead Volunteer Advisor (LVA): The LVA is the individual volunteer who leads the planning with a local partner, collaboratively developing a “Partnership Action Plan.” This plan is the blueprint for assignments that will be carried out over the entire course of the multi-year project. The LVA will also brief/debrief Volunteer Advisors pre and post-assignment, and oversees the delivery of the Partnership Action Plan. The project management process also includes measuring progress at key points, troubleshooting as necessary to ensure local partners meet their goals.
  3. Volunteer Advisor (VA): VA’s execute individual assignments. They connect with the LVA, are briefed on the project and their role, and execute the short term assignment. They often connect with the client and partner ahead of time to determine needs and start the mutual plan for the assignment. On completion, they submit their recommendations and participate in evaluation of the assignment and the project overall.
  4. Program Officers: They provide coordination and logistical support to CRs, LVAs and VAs
  5. Knowledge Officers:  They facilitate getting evaluative information back to CESO. As well, as their name suggests, they are also accountable for eliciting and sharing information and best practices.

The Results

Over the years, CESO projects have had a positive influence on citizens world-wide, as follows:

  • Up to 50,000 beneficiaries in each – Haiti, Jamaica, Vietnam, Guyana, Suriname, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, China
  • 50,000 to 100,000 beneficiaries – Canada, Belize, Columbia
  • 100,000 to 2,000,000 beneficiaries – Tanzania, Bolivia
  • 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 beneficiaries – Honduras, Peru, Senegal, Philippines

That’s quite an amazing legacy.

In addition:

  • Over 400 assignments were completed in 2014
  • CESO has over 350 clients/partners in Canada and around the world including government agencies, chambers of commerce and other non-profit organizations
  • 310 new staff were hired in small and medium sized businesses post assignment, 43% of them women
  • 78% of small and medium sized business clients reported improved operations post assignment

Perhaps most telling about the relationships that develop between the CESO volunteer advisors and their clients, 85% of volunteers have provided follow-up mentorship with their clients after an assignment.

How Great Leadership Achieves Success

How does CESO achieve such amazing results with such a small permanent and part time staff? There are three key elements to their success:

  • Getting the right people with the necessary skills in place up front
    CESO uses an effective stakeholder model to ensure the key decision makers are engaged and involved in every assignment.
    • CESO looks for experts in their field, experienced managers and professionals who have the capabilities to function effectively in remote, foreign and unstructured settings. CESO volunteers are obviously self-motivated. While travel and living expenses are covered while on assignment, there is no compensation other than the opportunity to do good works for people and organizations in need of assistance. In fact, CESO’s Volunteer Advisors must pay a small initiation fee when they successfully apply and join the roster.  They must also pay a small annual fee to stay active on the volunteer register.
    • CESO partners with local organizations that have an intimate knowledge of the situation on the ground, including local chambers of commerce, government agencies and other non-governmental organizations. CESO’s Country Reps manage the relationships with the local partners and solicit client candidates for the CESO assignments.
    • Finally, CESO’s clients are the small and medium sized business owners and government or NGO managers who need CESO’s advisor assistance. They and their staff are the direct beneficiaries of the projects as well as the constituencies they support.
  • Using proven processes to guide each engagement from inception through completion
    With years of experience in national and international assignments, CESO has built a solid framework of proven practices to guide its operations, including:
    • The advisor application and acceptance processes including resume guidelines
    • Eligibility requirements
    • Privacy policy
    • Principles of conduct
    • Conflict of interest guidelines
    • Frequently asked questions
    • Comprehensive social media coverage
  • In addition, the Partnership Action Plans that the Lead Volunteer Advisor’s develop with their local partners form the foundation for the development activities that will occur over the multi-year horizon. Over the plan period, the plan may pivot, grow or change, depending on a variety of factors, but it always reflects the collaborative results and forward thinking of the partners involved. It is their strategic plan. It enables many, low risk, short term assignments to deliver incrementally toward the overall goals, even as those targets evolve.

    What helps bring all aspects of CESO’s operations together is its learning framework, built upon a comprehensive evaluation process and a commitment to knowledge management. The learning framework benefited and evolved from CESO’s participation in a community of practice undertaking with other national and international agencies that looked at ways to meet financial accountability requirements while strengthening planning and evaluation for learning and respecting confidentiality. The learning framework now supports and informs all organizational operations, programming, planning and strategic directions.
  • Leveraging lessons learned on each project to ensure insights from a legacy of experience yield continuing value
    CESO’s commitment to knowledge management is a core strength. Examples include:
    • CESO has learned to break down assignments into manageable chunks knowing that shorter duration assignments get completed more effectively. International assignments are typically two to four weeks in duration. National assignments are usually from two days to two weeks.
    • While CESO staff review client requests for assistance and develop a short list of potential volunteer advisors, it is the clients themselves that actually pick the advisor they believe will help them most. Because it’s the client’s choice, there’s a greater commitment to making the relationship work.
    • CESO staff facilitate contact between the volunteer advisor and client prior to the assignment. This preparatory work allows for a greater degree of collaboration on the design of assignment activities, and gives the advisors a more complete picture of client needs, enabling them to hit the ground running once they arrive.
    • In addition to the expertise the volunteer advisors bring to the engagement, much of the focus of the short-term assignments is on mentoring local clients and partners to ensure sustainable value.

I think CESO’s story is revealing. Here’s an organization that relies on somewhat uncertain government and donor funding, limited resources and committed volunteers to serve an international clientele superbly. They do it with a lean, highly focused organization. Their actions are guided by clear mission, vision and values. They always engage and serve their principal stakeholders. They plan big and do small. They measure, manage and communicate their performance and manage and leverage lessons learned. Why doesn’t every organization do this?

Here’s a suggestion. Take a look at your own organization and the projects you’re involved with. Are they making use of the practices CESO uses so well? If not, seek to start putting them in place. You and your organization will be the beneficiaries. As well, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering stakeholder, process and decision area best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, past or present, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens and published in this blog, don’t be shy! Send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your experiences. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – The Devil is In the Details

Technological complexities often pose significant challenges to project staff. That’s especially true when a number of companies are involved and the technologies run the gamut from hardware subsystems, system and application software and communications infrastructure. In these cases, the difference between success and failure is often a function of detailed minutiae. Correctly addressed and everybody’s happy. One small item overlooked and there’s hell to pay.

In this case, the company was responsible for a vital interface between a financial services provider and its corporate clients. The company needed to move the servers that managed thousands of transactions a day and still ensure they provided 24x7x365 coverage to their clients. They planned, they studied, they consulted, they configured, they tested and tested again. They thought they were ready and so flipped the switch. And then the fun began.

Thanks to S.B. for the details on this case.

The Situation

This company managed millions of transactions daily across their various services. One of the services provided a bridge between their financial services clients and a remote exchange. That service was hosted on three parallel servers located across the continent and managed by a local firm on their behalf. The service provided an attractive revenue stream and so the company decided to invest in upgrades to the hardware, software and communications services to provide faster throughput, greater stability and security. However, when they contacted the local firm to plan the upgrades, they discovered the local firm was no longer interested in managing the service. So, what to do?

The company decided to move the service to their data center and host it locally. They had the facilities. They had the capacities. They had the skills for the new target environment. The biggest challenge would be to acquire the expertise to work with the existing configuration and manage the transition. So they launched the project.

The Goal

The project would be handled in two phases. Phase I would move all equipment and functionality to the company’s data center and offer the same levels of service as provided by the remote facility. Phase II would upgrade the servers to company standards, move the operating system version to current levels, convert to the database technology used internally and implement a disaster recovery capability. There were also a number of functional enhancements planned to address client needs.

Phase I was to be completed in seven months at a cost of $720,000. Phase II would be sized and planned on the successful completion of Phase I.

The Project

The sponsor, the business director of the service, worked with the CIO to line up the key decision makers including the VP of Computer Services, the VP of Software Development and a project manager with suitable knowledge and skills, with an initial focus on Phase I. They also contracted with a local technology support organization to manage the move. These four individuals plus the assigned manager from the contractor made up the steering committee that would oversee the project.

With the steering committee in place, the project manager got to work. He put together a project charter and had it approved by the members of the steering committee. He then worked with the contractor and the firm that currently managed the service to consider alternatives for the move. There were three options that made the cut for further consideration:

  1. Replicate the current configuration with three new, identically configured servers in the company’s data center. Once the switchover was complete, the old servers would be decommissioned.
  2. Move one of the existing servers to the data center to handle the initial switchover and ship and configure the remaining two servers after the initial switchover was complete.
  3. Move one of the existing servers to the data center and add a new, identically configured server to handle the initial switchover. Ship and configure one of the remaining two servers after the initial switchover was complete and redeploy the remaining server.

The PM put together an assessment matrix to manage the evaluation of the alternatives. Factors considered included capital costs, one-time and ongoing expenses, resource and skill availability, conversion and operating risks and the impact on schedule, quality and test plans.

As a result of the analysis, the PM and contractor both felt option 2 was the preferred approach. It was by far the lowest cost in terms of capital, one-time and ongoing expense. It was the simplest approach and therefore lower risk on some dimensions although it would not offer bullet proof reliability during the switch over period.

With the analysis complete, the PM presented his findings and recommendation to the steering committee. It was a very contentious affair. The VP of Computer Services was adamant that Option 1 was the only viable approach. He pointed out that the performance penalties contained in their contract with the exchange would wipe out any possible savings and result in considerable incremental costs if there were any significant issues. The sponsor and the VP Software Development liked the recommended approach for the lower cost and apparent simplicity. As the key stakeholders were unable to agree, the matter was escalated to the CIO. After considerable heated debate, the CIO sided with the recommended approach – Option 2.

The PM got to work. He developed a detailed work schedule and expense plan. He drafted a risk plan. He prepared a master test plan strategy and a quality plan. All were reviewed and approved by the steering committee members. Work progressed ahead of schedule and well below budget until they were ready to do the switchover. And then the fun began!

The Results

The initial cutover at midnight, almost six months after the start of the project, failed. There was a communication problem. The service had to be switched back to the original site. Outage – 2 hours. The next attempt three days later also failed. There was a date problem. Back to the original site. Outage – 3 hours. This pattern reoccurred over the next three weeks, with six more failed attempts and outages totalling more than 16 hours. After a number of particularly nasty conversations with the exchange, his CEO and his clients, the CIO finally pulled the plug on the project.

After a bitter post mortem, the company decided to relaunch the project with Option 1 as recommended by the exchange and supported by his clients. The project was finally delivered successfully, ten months late and, including exchange penalties, almost three times the original budget.

How a Great Leader Could Have Helped

This project got off on the wrong foot and never recovered. It was almost entirely internally focused. The stakeholder group included only managers within the company whose organizations would be affected and the hired contractor. They forgot about the exchange the service supported. They didn’t consider the needs of their clients or give them a voice at the table. Had they included the exchange in their stakeholder group, they would have discovered that using a single, standalone server to support the feed from the company’s clients to the exchange was unacceptable. Had they included their clients in the discussion, they would have heard the same message. In addition, the exchange could have provided a very explicit road map they had used with other intermediaries in similar circumstances to manage the transition successfully.

Getting the right decision-makers actively engaged in a change initiative is the paramount project success factor. In this case, the company spent too little time identifying, engaging with and leveraging external influencers. While the devil was certainly in the details for this project, salvation lay with those external stakeholders. So, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering stakeholder, process and decision area best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, past or present, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens and published in this blog, don’t be shy! Send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.