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 – A Moment of Truth

Written by Drew Davison on September 9, 2014. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – A Moment of Truth

In my last post, The Four Pillars of Successful Change Management, we witnessed the repercussions a retailer experienced when it decided to move its administrative staff from the downtown headquarters to a suburban setting to provide more retail space and reduce costs. Unfortunately, management failed to include three of the four change pillars in the cost/benefit analysis. They reaped the consequences.

In this post, we’ll look at a chance personal encounter (I call it a moment of truth) that changed the lives of two people for the better. The post isn’t about a project, or a major change. It’s about how individuals react when faced with change. As targets of a change, most often we find out as much as we can, collaborate with colleagues who are similarly affected, revise our practices accordingly and get on with our lives. However, in some situations, for any number of reasons, we ignore the change or fight against it and often suffer for our ignorance or intransigence. Sometimes, as in this case, all we need to move forward is the help and support from another person, to offer a different frame of reference for our consideration.

Thanks to M.D. for the details on this story.

The Situation

A manager at a wholesale business products company located in the mid-town of a large city was heading out for lunch this particular day. The area where the company was located had declined somewhat over the last decade and was now populated with charities and services catering to the down and out. Pan handlers were often seen sleeping, begging or haranguing passers-by.

As the manager headed down the stairs from his office building and onto the sidewalk, an individual sitting on the sidewalk (let’s call him the sidewalk guy, SG for short) reached out with his foot, tapped the manager on the ankle and asked him for a dollar for a coffee. That tap on the ankle caused the manager to stumble so he wasn’t feeling very charitable towards SG. He told him to get a job and walked past.

But then the manager paused. SG was young, late teens perhaps. What a waste. If the manager gave him money, he’d probably use it for booze or drugs. He might have some psychological or emotional problems. What could have caused this young man to be in this sorry situation? The manager turned around and approached SG. He told the SG he couldn’t give him any money but he’d be willing to buy him lunch. SG accepted the offer.

The Goal

It seems neither the manager nor SG had any specific goals in mind. The manager’s reaction was driven mostly by his values and his belief in a sharing, civil society. SG motives were perhaps a little simpler. He was being offered a free meal and he was hungry. Neither of them had any expectations beyond having lunch.

The Project (Lunch)

After SG accepted the lunch invitation, they walked side by side for a couple of blocks to a local burger place, entered and ordered burgers, fries and soft drinks. They took their trays to a vacant table for two, sat down and proceeded to eat. A couple of minutes in, SG said “Thanks man.” They started chatting.

The manager asked SG how he managed to get himself into this situation. SG retorted that the manager wouldn’t understand. From SG’s perspective, the manager had a good job, nice clothes, money to spend. The manager said “Try me”. So SG went into his life’s story. He partied too much, didn’t do well at school, wasn’t great at sports and didn’t have a lot of friends. The ones he did have liked to party too. He dropped out of high school in grade eleven, didn’t try very hard to get a job and just hung out. He stole from his parents to buy cigarettes, dope and alcohol.

Apparently SG’s parents tried everything they could think of to help him turn his life around but according to SG they were just meddling in his affairs. Finally, his parents gave him an ultimatum: clean up his act and go back to school or get a job. When he didn’t do either, they set a one week deadline – clean up or leave. Of course SG thought they were just bluffing. They wouldn’t kick him out. Unfortunately for SG, they weren’t bluffing. The week came and went with no change in SG’s behaviour so they helped him pack, gave him $100, wished him luck and showed him the door.

He’d been on the street ever since, more than six months. During that time, he’d stayed with friends until he’d outlived his welcome. He’d used up his cash long ago so pan handled on the street to pay his way. He slept in alleyways, in parks, in the local homeless shelter. He’d been attacked by thugs, had a tooth broken, visited the emergency department a couple of times. SG finished his story by stating again that the manager wouldn’t understand.

The manager paused to finish his meal and then told SG his story. The stories were eerily similar. The manager had done too much partying, messed up in high school and dropped out. Eventually he had been asked to leave his parents’ house. The key difference in the stories – the manager had managed to get a job. It was a low level job stocking shelves but it gave him the money he needed to support himself, pay his rent and regain his self-esteem.

When the manager and SG had finished their lunches, they exited the restaurant, shook hands and wished each other well. The manager gave SG a little pep talk and they parted company.

The Results

Over the next several months the manager kept an eye out for SG but he didn’t see him on the street again and eventually forgot about him. Five months after the lunch, the manager was in his office when he received a call from reception on the main floor. A gentleman was asking for him. He didn’t recognize the name. The manager asked the receptionist to show him up.

The receptionist ushered a well-dressed young man into the manager’s office. The manager got up from behind the desk, shook his hand and asked the visitor to sit. The manager asked the young man about the purpose for the meeting. The young man replied “You don’t remember me, do you”.

The young man was SG, transformed. SG told the manager that their discussion over lunch that day got him thinking about the future. He realized that his then current situation offered only misery. Although he didn’t really know how he was going to proceed, he made up his mind that he had to do things differently. He called his parents and asked for their help. He didn’t really know what to expect from them. He had put them through a lot of grief but they agreed to meet. He was welcomed with open arms and a few tears. He told his parents about the lunch and how that had been an awakening for him. SG and his parents chatted about his desires, his options and opportunities.

The bottom line: SG’s parents welcomed him home. He got a job at a local fast food restaurant. He enrolled in school and planned to graduate. His parents hired a tutor to help him improve his learning and study habits. He stayed away from drugs and had only an occasional beer. He reconnected with some old friends, ones that didn’t party to excess, and had a girlfriend, his first. He had become a new SG.

How a Great Leader Helped Change the World

I’m sure you’ve heard of the butterfly effect, where one small change in one place can result in large differences in a later state. That one act by the manager, an invitation to lunch, was the catalyst for SG’s transformation. It had a significant and beneficial impact on his life, and on his parents and friends. We don’t know what ultimately became of the new SG but we do know that his potential for success, enjoyment and influence improved immeasurably because of the manager’s action.

So, what does this all have to do with guiding projects and managing major change? Invariably, there are some folks who are negatively affected and have difficulty making the transition to a new, changed state. Change management disciplines aim to identify the change targets and develop strategies to help them make a successful transition. But still, some folks fall by the wayside. That can negatively influence the success of the change and the lives of those so affected. The manager in our story led by example. He took a chance. He saw an individual struggling. He invited that individual, who he did not know and would not normally have invited, to have lunch with him. In the end, the lunch was a vital opening for SG to change his ways. It also encouraged the manager to continue helping the troubled and down trodden.

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, don’t hesitate to reach out. Don’t let anyone fall through the cracks. Regardless of whether you’re the sponsor, a change agent, a champion or another target of the change, keep your eyes and ears open and, if necessary, act. Start a dialogue. Listen. Try to help others make the transition to the new state. And, if you feel so inclined, offer to buy them lunch. The project will benefit and the world might be a better place.

In the interim, 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, send me the details and we’ll present it for others to learn from and comment on. Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – The Four Pillars of Successful Change Management

Written by Drew Davison on August 20, 2014. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – The Four Pillars of Successful Change Management

In my last post, Best Practices Accelerate Value Delivery, we saw how the CIO of a relatively new government agency used a comprehensive best practise based framework to quickly deliver a decision support mechanism that would support the leadership team in their decision-making activities related to IT application and services investments.

In this post, we’ll look at the repercussions a retailer experienced when it decided to move its administrative staff from the downtown headquarters to a suburban setting to provide more retail space and reduce costs. Unfortunately, management failed to include three of the four change pillars in the cost/benefit analysis. They reaped the consequences.

Thanks to L.P. for the details on this case

The Situation

This mid-west retailer housed most of its administrative functions in its historic headquarters in the downtown core. With the tepid recovery from the 2008 financial meltdown, the company’s management were focused on two key challenges: increasing revenue and reducing costs. The COO proposed that the company move administrative staff to a suburban location that offered much less expensive floor space and leverage the vacated space in their headquarters to support a range of high end products and services. Increase revenue and reduce costs in one move! It was viewed as a no-brainer. The proposal was approved.

The Goal

Within six months:

Complete the move of 400 administrative staff to a new location offering a 50% reduction in the cost of floor space
Refurbish the vacated space and have the retail space fully operational

The Project

The COO charged his real estate organization with locating new facilities to house the administrative staff and assigned his Human Resources VP with planning the actual move including the layout of the new facilities, a seating plan and communication to the affected staff. The real estate group acquired suitable space for almost 60% less than the cost of the headquarters space. Even with the required capital improvements, the savings realized would be greater than the 50% reduction target.

The Human Resources VP had his staff focus initially on the floor plan and facilities for the new space, figuring that would require the most lead time. With about three months remaining until the move, he started work on the transition and communication plan. The core elements of the emerging plan included one major big bang move:

Staff would receive notification about the move 30 days before the actual event. Part of that communication would include the new floor layouts and the workspace locations for each staff member.
Work from home would be expanded to reduce the commute stress.
On the Friday before the move, staff would pack up their work spaces for delivery over the weekend.
On Saturday, private movers would transport the personal packing plus personal computers to the designated locations in the new facility.
On Sunday, tech support would hook up and test the transported PC’s and their connectivity to other technical and network services.
Also on Sunday, store staff would start reconfiguring the former administrative space to house the retail operation.
On Monday, shuttle buses would leave the downtown store at 7:00 am for the new administrative complex. Shuttle buses would depart from the administrative complex at 5:00 pm for the downtown store. The trip was expected to take about 45 minutes each way, subject to traffic. Of course, staff could choose to use their own means of transportation as well.

The plan was reviewed and approved by the organization’s senior management. It looked like a nice clean move. Unfortunately, word about the move started to leak out shortly after the new facilities were arranged. The grape vine was alive with rumours and conjecture. Middle management was not in the know and so could not handle questions passed on to them. As the queries percolated up to senior management and on to the Human Resources VP’s desk, the standard response from HR was “all your questions will be answered shortly”.

Because of the growing unease among the staff and middle managers, the formal announcement about the move was released by the HR VP six weeks before the move date rather than the planned 30 days. Not only did the communication not address the questions and concerns, it raised a whole new set of issues, including:

Lack of public transportation to the new site
Significant extension to the work day because of the planned shuttle bus schedule
No consultation on floor layout and facilities and the location of departments and staff
Minimal neighbourhood services in the new complex for babysitting, shopping, dining, etc.

The office environment in the weeks before the move was a cauldron of criticism, accusation and spite. HR’s only comeback was “just wait, you’ll like it once you move”. That didn’t placate anyone.

The Results

When the new facilities were finally opened for business, 17% of the administrative staff had already handed in their resignations. At the end of the first month, the figure had climbed to 23% including a number of key managers. A couple of departments experienced staff losses of over 40%. Most of the remaining staff were frustrated and disgruntled. The lack of accessible public transit was the number one complaint. Even with revised shuttle schedules, the days were still considerably longer for most employees with no commensurate increase in pay. Those employees that tried to drive to the new location usually experienced morning and evening rush hour gridlock.

The loss of key staff caused a number of vital projects to be cancelled. Others projects were delayed. Consultants and agency staff were brought in to keep functions operating, increasing costs. A hiring campaign was launched to replace the lost staff but it was an arduous, costly process that just added additional stress on the shoulders of the managers and senior staff. The promised work from home expansion was killed because of all the other challenges.

On the retail front, sales in the new retail space created from the staff moves were 80% below target. Sales throughout the rest of the store were down more than 30%. It seems that those 400 employees that were moved to the burbs accounted for a considerable portion of the sales activity. On top of that, local neighbourhood organizations and their employees were feeling the pinch from the lost 400. Sales were down in local restaurants and other retail stores. They took it out on the guilty retailer by shopping elsewhere.

Finally, in an effort to place the blame, the CEO fired the Human Resources VP.

How a Great Leader Could Have Achieved Success

Do you want your change to be successful? Then you had best pay attention to the four pillars of change management: shareowners, customers, people who do work for you (including employees, partners and suppliers) and communities. Each had a vested interest in this change and each needed to be engaged effectively to ensure a successful outcome. In this case, three of the four pillars were ignored until they rose in protest, after the fact. Everyone lost. Yes, it can be messy and contentious engaging those with vested interests up front. But that pales in comparison to what can happen if you ignore a pillar or three.

Here’s what a great leader could have done differently:

Get your facts straight. The retailer didn’t know who its customers were. It didn’t understand how much business its own employees provided. It didn’t understand how much the local economy depended on the 400. It had no idea what kind of challenge the move would pose to its staff.
Engage your stakeholders up front. The retailer needed to involve the other three pillars in its planning and execution from the start, to make the solution a collaborative effort with broad understanding and support. If they’re not part of the solution they’ll undoubtedly be part of the problem.
Always consider alternatives. Senior management was fixated on moving the administrative staff somewhere cheap to free up the expensive floor space for more retail revenue. They didn’t look at any other alternatives yet there were many other viable options.
Establish key metrics and report performance widely. There were no metrics established to track the performance of the change and no public reporting of progress. When resistance started to surface, senior management was not even remotely prepared to address the concerns. A tracking and reporting process would have helped position the organization to acknowledge the issues and respond appropriately.
Stage the rollout. One big bang implementation exposes the organization to substantial risk and gives no one the ability to gauge success and adjust tactics accordingly. In this case, a staged implementation, by department for example, would have been a meaningful approach to assess readiness and the effectiveness of the plan.
Do a post mortem and incorporate the lessons learned into your corporate change behaviour. In this case, the lesson learned was “if you screw up, you’ll get fired”. That’s not a terribly meaningful message if you’re trying to improve corporate change performance.

Thomas Kochan recently published a very relevant article, In Market Basket Protests, Three Lessons For Corporate America. Kochan is the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management and co-director of the Institute for Work & Employment Research at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In the article, he reports on the employee protests at the Market Basket supermarket chain. The employees banded together to protest the firing of their CEO and to register their outrage at a shift in corporate strategy that would benefit owners at the expense of a loyal workforce and the company they helped build.

Kochan concludes “Market Basket workers are sending a message to business schools across America that it is time to teach the next generation of managers how to lead companies in ways that better balance and integrate the interests of all stakeholders — owners and executives, middle managers who might someday lead the organization, front line employees who are the face of the company to customers, and customers and communities that support the business.”

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, identify and engage those four pillars right up front. Work with the key stakeholders to shape the change to address stakeholder needs and deliver the required outcomes. Finally, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember to use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks right up front so you don’t overlook those key success factors.

Thanks

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Best Practices Accelerate Value Delivery

Written by Drew Davison on July 22, 2014. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Best Practices Accelerate Value Delivery

In my last post, Reorganizing for Performance, we looked at the challenges one consultant faced trying to help a CEO manage eight different and growing companies with overlapping markets and skills. We’ll review the steps he took to position the CEO and his organizations for greater productivity and growth and the remarkable results they achieved together.

In this post, we’ll look at how the CIO of a relatively new government agency used a comprehensive best practise based framework to quickly deliver a decision support mechanism that would support the leadership team in their decision-making activities related to IT application and services investments.

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

The Situation

This government agency had a veritable grab bag of technologies supporting its various business operations, from internally hosted mainframe applications to spreadsheet solutions to externally hosted applications. The technologies had been put in place one by one as business needs emerged with little over-riding guidance or architectural influence.
As the business grew and demand for and investments in new technology solutions increased, the new CIO recognized it was time to put some structure in place to guide the organization’s technology platform and hosting decisions. The agency did not have a centralized, consistent, transparent and repeatable approach for assessing applications and services. This resulted in ad hoc procedures for submitting, assessing, authorizing and monitoring application and service provisioning initiatives. With maturing platform/hosting advancements in the industry (e.g. Cloud, SaaS, and Managed Services), the agency needed a mechanism to look at more efficient and cost effective provisioning options.

In 2012, the CIO engaged The Manta Group to design and assist with the roll-out of an end-to-end Decision Support Framework (DSF) process that would support the leadership team in their decision-making activities related to IT application and services investments. The Manta Group is a professional services firm with disciplines in management consulting, workflow automation and talent management. Manta has developed its Best Practice Ecosystem (BPe) based on implementing various best practice frameworks and methodologies, including Project Pre-Check, in large complex organizations.

The initial scope of the project was limited to corporate IT investments. Manta was charged to leverage best practices from the Project Pre-Check framework, which is itself built upon guidance from numerous well-established and recognized industry frameworks and methodologies (e.g. ITIL, Cobit, PMBoK, SEI, ValIT, Gartner, etc.).

Full disclosure here – as you know, I developed the Project Pre-Check practice referred to in this case and, in fact, all my other cases. I have also worked as a Manta consultant over the years and was involved at the start of this engagement in an oversight capacity. However, the project was carried out by other Manta staff to its successful conclusion, much to my delight and the delight of our clients.

The Goal

The objectives of the DSF process were three-fold:

Provide a consistent and repeatable approach for capturing required information for effective management decision-making
Develop a DSF model to assist with decisions on proposed IT expenditures.
Develop and deliver an operating solution within three months.

The Project

Initially the CIO asked the Manta consultants to work with his own managers within IT. The consultants urged him to go beyond IT, to engage with the other executives and make them a vital part of the development effort. After all, the decisions the DSF would be facilitating would underpin the organization’s core applications and involve changes throughout the agency, not just IT.

Not quite convinced, the CIO agreed to a trial with one executive, a trusted colleague. The executive’s response and feedback would determine the approach going forward. The executive was taken through an introduction and interview exercise in which he was asked to identify which of the 125 Project Pre-Check decision areas (specific questions that needed to be assessed) were relevant to platform and application hosting decision making. The meeting took fifty minutes. He chose 62 decision areas. Most importantly, the executive was thrilled to have participated in the process and looked forward to ongoing involvement.

Based on those results, the CIO asked the consultants to ensure the DSF was proactively socialized with all impacted stakeholder groups to solicit buy-in and support, as well as identify any stakeholder concerns before investment dollars were spent
The first phase of the project took approximately 1.5 months and included requirements gathering, a review of existing practices, followed by design and development of the process. Process design activities encompassed the identification of decision areas required for decision-making, integration with other agency process/procedure models, governing policies/principles and process roles and responsibilities definition.

From the 125 decision areas included in the Project Pre-Check framework, 66 were identified as relevant across all the stakeholder groups. An additional two decision areas unique to the agency’s needs were added to the list. A worksheet based prototype of the model was developed to back test existing applications and services, and included a DSF Request Form that captured initiative information for input to the model. Reporting included several views based on agency groups (e.g. compliance, security) with graphical representation of platform options.

The first phase also developed a six stage model that placed the DSF process in the context of the overall strategic planning, solution development, implementation and monitoring cycle. It provided an end-to-end view to ensure initiatives were assessed objectively, launched right, and delivered the targeted value quickly and effectively. Of the 68 Decision areas identified for the DSF, 8 related to the development of IT strategy, 20 related to the assessment of platform alternatives, 25 related to the assessment of providers and 15 related to change readiness, implementation and monitoring.

The second phase of the project, development of the process, guide book and final model took approximately 1 month. This was accomplished through design workshops and a few test and tweaked iterations to tune the model.

This stage encompassed:

Process awareness and education activities through workshops.
Consensus on decision areas and the key characteristics for application and service scoring.
Testing and tuning the model with existing corporate IT applications as cases.
Process “tweaking” and developing additional process support materials.
Development of two corporate IT iterations based on submitted initiatives.

A key element of the DSF model/process was the ability to report on existing and proposed corporate initiatives. These reports provided the agency leadership team with a view of initiatives by benefit, as well as impact (compliance, technology, privacy, and security). In addition, a number of other views were produced to provide insight into decision areas by agency group.

The Results

The DSF process provided the following benefits to the agency:

Proactive socialization of the initiative helped with gaining support and resource commitments from peers prior to submission for executive consideration.
Ensured initiatives were assessed in a more efficient and effective manner through the application of a consistent, repeatable and scalable process based on best practice.
Provided an objective way of addressing multiple initiatives and created the framework for appropriate communication among agency executives.
Provided centralized coordination, management and oversight of technology spend on continuous improvement initiatives.
Minimized waste and/or duplication of effort by monitoring and managing initiative viability from the point of conception.

After just 10 weeks, the agency had a robust and standardized approach for assessing, authorizing and managing internal continuous improvement opportunities that were aligned to corporate and department strategies.

How a Great Leader Achieved Success

The CIO succeeded with this initiative for a number of reasons:

He recognized the advantages a best practice based platform would provide for his organization in terms of comprehensiveness, objectivity and responsiveness and chose Project Pre-Check as the base framework.
He engaged a consulting firm with expertise in the use of Project Pre-Check and decision frameworks.
He set a short three month target from start to finish to accelerate value delivery and reduce risks.
He initially tried out the fact finding process on a trusted and willing executive to get the executive’s reaction. It turned out the executive in question was thrilled to be involved and fully supportive of the process.
He worked with the other executives to understand the challenges and opportunities, participate in the development of the DSF and contribute to the ongoing assessment of application and hosting options. They were all willing and eager participants.
He encouraged the consultants to test the DSF on existing applications and platforms as well as planned initiatives to confirm the process was delivering decisionable and actionable results.

After just 10 weeks, the CIO had delivered to the agency a standard application and hosting assessment practice that the executive group helped develop and were fully committed to going forward. So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, leverage all those practices you know have been proven and add value. Engage the affected stakeholders right up front. Do things quickly, in four to six week intervals. And measure and report how you’ve done. Finally, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember to use Project Pre-

Check’s three building blocks right up front so you don’t overlook those key success factors.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Reorganizing for Performance

Written by Drew Davison on June 24, 2014. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Reorganizing for Performance

In my last post, Maximizing Value, Optimizing Capacity, we looked at the challenges one organization faced in dealing with competing and conflicting demands across their various lines of business. The actions it took ensured the tactical plans fully supported the company’s strategic plans and priorities and optimized business and IT capacity in support of those goals.

In this post, we’ll look at the challenges one consultant faced trying to help a CEO manage eight different and growing companies with overlapping markets and skills. We’ll review the steps he took to position the CEO and his organizations for greater productivity and growth and the remarkable results they achieved together.

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

The Situation

This CEO, a serial innovator, had developed eight different companies over the course of time to take advantage of synergistic opportunities that arose from customer comments and requests and ongoing business operations. He started out with a creative design organization, which opened up opportunities for on-line obituaries, recollections and wishes, which lead to self-written video obituaries (before death of course), and into funeral plans and services, floral orders and arrangements, online learning videos for a wide and growing range of skills and more. All the businesses were housed in their own spaces in a business park with a common cafeteria and food court, employing about 90 staff in total. However, the businesses were run as distinct entities. There was no sharing of common skills and services. There was no collaboration among the firms on common challenges and opportunities.

The CEO was concerned about the incremental costs he was incurring from running independent businesses, the demands on his time and the risks involved in using the same model, spawning more independent businesses, to tackle new opportunities. So he contacted a management consultant with a proven track record helping small and growing businesses like his implement organization and management structures to improve operating performance. A lengthy phone call and some reference checks convinced the CEO that he had found the right man for the job. Shortly after, the two met for a day at the client’s office, reviewing the current structures and key players. The CEO took the consultant on a tour, introduced him to management and staff and asked for the consultant’s thoughts and recommendations. The CEO bought the consultant’s recommendations which were then wrapped up into a contract.

The Goal

Implement a new organization and management structure that improves operating performance, increases overall staff productivity, reduces CEO time spent on operational matters and provides a platform for managing future innovations and opportunities. Any excess staff made available by the reorganization would be assigned as needed to deal with expected business growth. There would be no layoffs. Time frame – six weeks to design and implement.

The Project

The consultant proceeded to talk to everyone in the eight companies. Most discussions took about 30 minutes. The senior managers and key staff got an hour or more. He focused on five key factors:

The core operating processes, inputs and outputs
The major roles involved and the primary skills required for each role
Current skills and capabilities of each incumbent
Current likes, dislikes and opportunities for performance improvement
Readiness for change as indicated by satisfaction levels and aspirations.

The consultant had a conference room dedicated exclusively to the project. At the end of each day, with the assistance of a senior administrative assistant assigned to him for the duration of the project, he would retire to the conference room to map the day’s discoveries. He used Post-It-Notes on a wall full of white boards to reflect the process flows, the current organization, and current staff with their roles and skills. Lots of lines connecting processes, the current organization and staff along with notes, asterisks, exclamation points and question markets littered the available white space. At the end of the day and occasionally during the creation process, he would video the white boards’ contents to track the day to day evolution of his findings and observations. He would also invite senior managers to drop in to review progress and provide feedback. The CEO was welcome to visit any time.

Once he had a reasonable understanding of the current environment and a consensus from the CEO and senior managers that his diagrams represented an accurate picture of the current state, he returned to his office 600 kilometers removed from his client’s location. There he began deliberations on the future structure that would satisfy the project’s goals. He reviewed his video story board again and started to develop alternative solutions based on a number of criteria:

Grouping similar activities
Grouping similar skills
Differentiating by product or process maturity
Differentiating by skill availability

The consultant identified two alternatives that would satisfy the goals: a consolidated organization that would bring together all product lines in one corporate structure, group common functions and services together and place the unique elements under separate product managers and; combine all common functions and services in one company and leave what was unique to each product line as separate business entities. He then rated and ranked each alternative against the goals. The consolidated alternative achieved a significantly higher score. Returning to his client’s office, he reviewed the alternatives, thought process and findings with the CEO, then with the senior managers. After lots of discussion and a few changes to his findings and recommendations, the consultant had full agreement on his recommended alternative.

He then proceeded to fill the organization with actual people, create draft personal development plans for each manager position and develop communication and implementation plans for the rollout.

The Results

The consultant’s final report was presented five weeks after the start of his contract. It confirmed what had already been agreed to by the CEO and senior managers over the course of the project. It presented the recommended structure and the recommended placement of managers and staff relative to the core operating processes.

The new organization was implemented by the CEO and his senior management in one big bang seven weeks after the consultant began his assignment. The reorganization included the new structure, new roles and responsibilities and new reporting relationships for many of the staff. Overall, the CEO and his managers were pleased with the way the change happened and with the way the organization was functioning. There was a slight drop in some of the key performance metrics, as had been predicted by the consultant, but the numbers improved within six weeks and were 15% to 30% above plan after six months. The hiring needed to fill the identified vacancies took place expeditiously. The CEO was able to devote a much greater amount of his time to tactical and strategic matters and explore other innovations and opportunities. And perhaps the most telling indicator of success – the consultant received a large bonus.

How a Great Leader Facilitated a Successful Reorganization

The consultant succeeded because he employed a number of essential practices during the contract:

His client was the CEO. The consultant made sure everyone he dealt with across the companies knew he was the CEO’s man. He leveraged the CEO’s passion for the undertaking and his willingness to explain and boost it to advantage. All the staff knew what was expected. They knew cooperation with the consultant was part of that.
He made great use of the client’s physical plant. The centrally located food court became update central. It was the soapbox the consultant used with the CEO to keep staff engaged.
The consultant used simple, informative tools to keep the management team involved and on side. He used post-it notes, story boards and the companies own online learning video technology. It was comfortable, non-intimidating media that enabled rapid change.
He shared the journey with his stakeholders on a weekly basis, taking them through the thought process and interim conclusions and building their ownership of the findings and recommendations.
Because the consultant’s office was in another city he used the senior admin staff as his eyes, ears and mouthpiece on the ground. In essence, he was ever present even though he was 600 kilometers away.
He kept the engagement short. If he had added a month or three to the contract, he could have added more detail to the report, more consultation with the CEO and his management team, supervised the transition in person. But he made it known early on that his role was one of facilitation. The changed belonged to the CEO and his management. They needed to run with it as their own. And they did!

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, leverage all those practices you know have been proven and add value. Engage the affected stakeholders right up front. Do things quickly, in four to six week intervals. And measure and report how you’ve done. Finally, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember to use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks right up front so you don’t overlook those key success factors.

Thanks

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From the Sponsor’s Desk – Maximizing Value, Optimizing Capacity

Written by Drew Davison on May 27, 2014. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Maximizing Value, Optimizing Capacity

In my last post, If At First You Don’t Succeed, we looked at the opportunities one project manager had to guide the same project on three different occasions, with two aborted attempts and a final, successful implementation. We also reviewed the lessons he learned and applied along the way that made all the difference to the final outcome.

In this post, we’ll look at the challenges one organization faced in dealing with competing and conflicting demands across their various lines of business. The actions it took ensured the tactical plans fully supported the company’s strategic plans and priorities and optimized business and IT capacity in support of those goals.

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

The Situation

This mid-size financial services organization had a rough and ready approach to funding business and IT initiatives – convince the CEO and you’d get the dough. Of course, there were a few problems with this approach. The CEO didn’t have a systematic method for assessing the proposals and deciding which should go ahead and when. There was no guarantee that the initiatives approved by the CEO supported the organization’s strategic plans and priorities. Nor was there any assurance that the approved projects represented an appropriate mix of strategic, tactical and operational. Sometimes the CEO considered these things, sometimes he didn’t. Often the other affected departments didn’t know that a project was approved until after the CEO had made his decision, which usually wreaked havoc with the affected departments’ internal plans and priorities. There was very little understanding of the cumulative financial and resource impact as initiatives were approved over the course of the year. The CEO charged the VP of Finance with managing the financial side but he had little information and even less co-operation from the other VP’s. IT faced varying levels of demand with little warning and little control over expected timing and costs. Needless to say, project on-time, on-budget performance was abysmal. In the eyes of the CEO and the other VP’s, that was IT’s issue.

So the CIO decided that she needed to take control of the situation, at least from an IT perspective. She wanted to implement some kind of gate that would give IT the opportunity to control what projects they took on, what other projects they were packaged and released with, when they were scheduled, how costs were estimated and controlled, how resources were planned and allocated and how project performance would be measured. She reviewed her concerns and plans with the CEO and, to her surprise, found a very receptive audience. It turned out the CEO had been unhappy with the project approval process for some time but hadn’t had the opportunity to consider alternative approaches. Together, the CEO and CIO mapped out an approach that would address the challenges they faced.

The Goal

The CEO and CIO agreed to develop a tactical planning process that would :

Ensure support for the company’s strategies and priorities,
Provide an appropriate mix of strategic, tactical and operational investment,
Provide an open and transparent process built on a foundation of quantitative assessment,
Manage overall demand to optimize capacity and maximize value delivered,
Engage all senior managers in the process so there would be broad understanding and buy-in on the results.
Develop and deliver a process to achieve the goals within six weeks.

The Project

With the CEO’s backing, the CIO presented the plan to the company’s executives. There was lots of grumbling about added bureaucracy, impediments to individual department’s ability to respond quickly to opportunities, loss of control, etc. The CIO, and the CEO, countered that the plan would ensure that the company’s priority initiatives would be launched and resourced more effectively and delivered more successfully. They did concede that some projects that might get funding under the old regime wouldn’t get support under the new plan. But that was an acceptable cost to ensure strategic alignment. With somewhat grudging acquiescence, the executives approved the plan.

The CIO assigned responsibility for developing the process to the PMO Director. With an aggressive target of six weeks to deliver recommendations to manage the demand in support of corporate strategy and make the most effective use of on tap capacity, he charged his managers with a research project: discover the relevant best practices for collective review. Time frame: one week. He called it Maximizing Value, Optimizing Capacity – MVOC for short. At the end of the week, the PMO Director and his managers met to review what they had uncovered and assess suitability to the task at hand. They had accumulated a collective wealth of best practices, including material from the Office of Government Commerce, ISACA, the Project Management Institute, from leading academic institutions and change management practitioners, a number of books on strategic execution as well as countless articles on executing strategy successfully.

The managers presented their discoveries one by one, explaining why they believed their material supported the organization’s goals and should be incorporated into the final MVOC process. The group discussed the relevance of each of the recommendations presented and made collective decisions to retain or drop from further discussion. They then reviewed each of the retained recommendations against their ability to illuminate the following aspects of a proposed initiative:

Opportunity – the rationale for undertaking an initiative
Strategic alignment – the number one driver for a proposed initiative and the most significant test of its value
Competitive environment – the impact of a proposed initiative on the external environment
Benefit – the expected operating benefit
Payback period – the life expectancy and thus the required payback period for a proposed initiative
Stakeholders – the key decision makers whose involvement would be essential for success
Organizational impact – the number of organizational units impacted, both internally and externally
Organizational risk – the aggregate risk for the organization associated with a proposed initiative
Capacity – the skills, capabilities, resources and services necessary to deliver

The group selected nine different recommendations that addressed most of the above factors to form the core of the MVOC process. They then developed a plan to create the first MVOC draft for review with the CIO. The plan included three activities: develop the initiative workbook that would be used to capture the necessary information about an initiative; develop the quantitative assessment framework that would be used to arrive at a numeric score for each initiative; and develop the process guide, including background, process goals and objectives, the process model and roles and responsibilities.

The managers divided the responsibilities for the activities among themselves and went to work. When the PMO Director and his managers met with the CIO to review progress, the drafts for the initiative workbook, the quantitative assessment guide and the process guide were well formed. After a few tweaks, the CIO was sufficiently pleased that she booked a review meeting with the executives to approve the package and initiate rollout. The proof would be in the application. The executives agreed to the rollout.

The PMO managers introduced the MVOC to business unit directors and managers with the VP in attendance and in support. Business Analysts then worked with the business units over a six week period to complete a workbook and apply the assessment framework on all current and planned initiatives. At the end of the six weeks, 145 new initiatives had been documented and assessed in addition to the 65 that were already in progress. The results for each department were reviewed and approved by the responsible VP.

The Results

The PMO managers took the assessment results and put them together to reflect ratings and rankings, organizational demand and impact, risks and rewards. From that they prepared two scenarios – one maximizing strategic value but posing significant risk and capacity challenges and one that included the top strategic initiatives but included a greater allocation to strategically aligned tactical initiatives to lower the risk and capacity concerns. The scenario maximizing strategic value included only eight initiatives. The second, more tactically focused scenario included four strategic initiatives, twenty tactical undertakings and six operational allocations. They also looked at the 65 in-progress projects and concluded that eleven should be cancelled outright for lack of strategic alignment.

They reviewed the findings with the CIO who took the results to the executives largely unchanged. The VP’s received the full package of assessments a week before the meeting and were given an opportunity to discuss the results with a PMO representative. Two of the eight executives took advantage of the offer and only four minor adjustments were made to the package. None the less, the executive review was a tense affair, pitting departmental interests against strategic value. At the end of the meeting, the second scenario was approved with the addition of three more tactical initiatives. The executives agreed to cancel six of the eleven recommended projects to resource the three additions. Incremental hiring was approved to offset the remaining five projects that would not be cancelled.

A month after the executive review meeting, at the request of the CIO, the PMO Director sent out a short assessment to the executives to get their feedback on the effectiveness of the MVOC process. The results:

MVOC Goals	Rating: 1 – did not meet expectations to 5 – exceeded expectations
Ensure support for the company’s strategies and priorities,	4.5
Provide an appropriate mix of strategic, tactical and operational investment	4.3
Provide an open and transparent process built on a foundation of quantitative assessment,	4.6
Manage overall demand to optimize capacity and maximize value delivered,	4.8
Engage all senior managers in the process so there would be broad understanding and buy-in on the results.	4.3
Develop and deliver a process to achieve the goals within six weeks.	4.5

Not bad for a quick six week effort! Also, in an interesting follow-up one year later, the CIO assessed executive satisfaction with project performance. Prior to the implementation of MVOC only 30% had rated project performance as “Met Expectations”. A year after MVOC, slightly over 80% were at the “Met Expectations” level or higher. For this company at least, it definitely paid to manage value and optimize capacity.

How a Great Leader Delivered an Effective Corporate Practice

The CIO did a number of things right to deliver the results.

She tackled, head on, an issue that was causing her grief and costing the organization through poor project performance and wasted capacity. In the process of getting support from the CEO, she discovered that she wasn’t the only one bothered by the existing practice. It pays to talk!
She established a few key goals for MVOC and got buy-in to those goals from the stakeholders that mattered most.
She set a very short time horizon to deliver results. She achieved the six week target with time to spare and ensured that the executives would retain the information presented at the start to facilitate the review and decision-making process later on.
She engaged the PMO Director, and through him his managers, right up front. It got them involved and on-side early and enabled the rapid development of the MVOC process. They were also fully up to speed when they received the go ahead to roll out MVOC.
She was willing to work with her peers to shape and mold MVOC to meet their collective needs. She welcomed changes in the process itself and in the final results. That helped reduce resistance from the other executives.
She measured the executives’ satisfaction with the process and followed up with the measurement on project performance. Of course she shared those results with the rest of the organization. That helped her peers to feel even more positive about MVOC and the follow-on project results.

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, leverage all those practices you know have been proven and add value. Marshall the insights and support of your colleagues. Involve the affected stakeholders right up front. Do things quickly, in four to six week intervals. And measure and report how you’ve done. Finally, put these points on your checklist of things to do in future endeavours so you too can be a Great Leader. And remember to use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks right up front so you don’t overlook those key success factors.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.