73f15a698fff49e19a059d7ae7c176b3

Strategy into Projects

Mon, 12 May 2025 13:16:34 GMT

Strategy into Projects

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

Many of us lead organisations based on a clear purpose, vision and implied objectives and decision points. Some of our strategy delivery has to come through change - and we can use project and programme management to deliver change.

However - strategies exist at all levels within our organisation - strategy is not just top down - we must also take advantage of bottom up innovation.

Furthermore - much of our purpose and related strategy is achieved through business performance - not change - and we have to get on with the business of operating for performance while change happens. Are we being too narrow thinking of strategy to delivery as being focused on projects?

At this event, hosted by the APM and IASP , speakers (including myself) will be talking about - and panel discussing - strategic management and project management. My perspective will cover:

how we can cascade into projects to achieve strategic objectives
the challenge of aligning bottom up ideation & strategic flexibility
balancing priorities between operations, value creation and change

If you are a strategy professional concerned with delivery, a delivery professional concerned with strategy alignment - or simply the director that wants your objectives hit reliably without squabbling - why not attend?

If you would like to know more about the connection of strategy to delivery - and how to align maintain alignment between purpose evaluation, strategic envisioning, planning and prioritisation, and delivery against strategic and operational objectives - think BIG:

Previous Sessions with APM and IASP of interest:

Alternatively spend a few hours discussing this with us?

Deepteam is delighted to offer free half day consultations to organisations that want to explore their issues / opportunities, to visualise what an integrated operating model for strategy delivery will look like (one aspect of which is prioritisation), and how to build a roadmap and outline business case.

We offer the opportunity to increase strategic outcome delivery, with more agility, efficiency and effectiveness.

Learn about how we engage:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

What are you going to prioritise - and how?

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 12:40:00 GMT

What are you going to prioritise - and how?

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

From January to April, Deepteam is focusing on the process for setting targets and budgets for the next financial year. For many of us, business planning is about confirming the headcount each line manager wants to operate with, with perhaps some specific asks layered on top of that.

Other organisations have growth aspirations, or face competition and market change around their operation. Steady state is not an option. Their strategic leads have a developing view of which vectors the organisation should take and managers have ideas for improvement and see opportunities for innovation.

HOWEVER - There is always more to do than we can do. Out of all the things we currently do, the implications of our directed goals, and the innovations we see within our management teams - which ones should we do? Do we:

1. Try to do everything. While this laisser-faire approach seems to leave it to managers to do the right thing - perhaps all it does create an ongoing fight for resources, impede our ability to plan for outcomes and mean everything gets delayed?

Can we avoid conflicting our people and their relationships? Hence:

2. Command and control. Create a culture of approval for everything and keeping managers to task.

3. Delegate objectives and targets and empower functional groups / change programmes to score and balance necessary workloads so that our leadership time, funds and resources focus on that is important.

Most would suggest option 3. The answer is to:

ensure delegation of objectives to existing business units,
solicit responses
gather and tweak, prioritise
allocate resources coarsely into business units based on priorities
entrust accountable people to achieve objectives.

However, for some, the process can take so long that on day 1 of a business plan going 'live', objectives may have evolved already.

One spanner in the works is of course that key strategic goals may require cross functional support - which may confuse business units trying to focus on their performance objectives, their own innovation tasks as well supporting their part in strategic goals.

Furthermore, as we get on with business, we can find our performance isn't as expected (better / worse) and the environment changes.

How long do our business plans remain viable for?

Many of us suspect our business planning is flawed, but to be honest, most of us know what we are doing and should do. Perhaps the problem is we "fire and forget"?

The challenge seems to be establishing then managing shifts in priority and continuing to balance local function vs corporate goals.

While we put in super-human efforts to collate and interpret data for planning, the thought of regularly repeating the process is abhorrent, as we don't have available data (we have to go and find it), there is no support to collate / interpret information (and check the source / validity).

Furthermore - how do we compare 'apples and pears' across business as usual, value creation and change? Some of our investments may have a clear rate of return or net present value, but others may support our environmental and social goals (where ROI is not the driving factor) and strategic goals (where we have uncertainty and are taking a considered risk)?

Without a systematic, data-driven approach, repeating the extended opinion-driven 'discursive' prioritisation is 'unpalatable'.

Do we have the leadership capacity to recommunicate and re-establish accountability?

CALL TO ACTION - let's avoid the fighting!

There are many implications outlined above. One of them is to institute systematic prioritisation for the start of the impeding financial year. Are you serious about your strategic objectives or not?

Suggested steps:

1. Find out what professional, sustainable prioritisation solutions look like at the Webinar with the nice people at Transparent Choice - book on here for the 30th January, 4pm UK

2. Look at your business plan data from last year - create a prioritisation model for the objectives still in flight using a Transparent Choice Evaluation

3. Talk to us about the operating model that will sustain a systematic strategy across BAU, value creation and change.

4. Start to stir in your planned workloads - their value and non-financial benefits (e.g. strategic progress, social and environmental value)

Previous Sessions on Prioritisation:

Deepteam and Transparent Choice have previously presented on the prioritisation topic:

Alternatively spend a few hours discussing this with us?

We offer the opportunity to increase strategic outcome delivery, with more agility, efficiency and effectiveness.

Learn about how we engage:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Happy new year - time to start business planning?

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 14:13:37 GMT

Happy New Year!

Time to start business planning?

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

At this time of year, many organisations think about a business plan for the next financial year. Is this simply a budgeting process, a way to set a performance baseline, or do you drive strategy via a business plan?

Whether your business planning only or mostly happens once a year, or is completely ‘dynamic’ – there are many challenges – before we start ‘planning’, do we:

understand the goals of the business owners (and major stakeholders) for whom we are operating?
have a clear purpose and vision for the organisation?
have a clear perspective on the corporate opportunities, threats, and imperatives, can we incorporate innovation?

How can we expect our managers to operate and take the organisation forwards if we are not clear on these matters?

Furthermore - we are not starting our business planning from scratch - we are already mid-change on current initiatives, operating, and delivering / developing assets products. Do we:

understand the status of
business case for the current strategic change objectives related to current vision. Perhaps this is a time to accelerate or cull?
scope / service level of our business functions, and are they performing against objectives? Do we need to tinker with roles and responsibilities?
value streams performance against objectives? Are we considering investment / end of life activity?

What is your measure of strategy delivery performance? Are you on top of it?

If we are struggling to answer any of these questions – that is a result of our existing ‘ecosystem’ for strategy delivery. Perhaps it needs to change...

Options:

Continue into business planning as usual and make no improvement to the current strategy delivery ecosystem – and accept the strategy delivery performance, and the overhead of trying to manage it with current methods
Reflect on how you develop, cascade, prioritise, integrate, status and manage strategy delivery objectives – and implement components / capability which addresses obvious issues first?

3 thoughts:

This will have a cost – but what is the price of NOT hitting your strategic objectives (again?)?
Improving strategy delivery is not rocket science – we understand why, what, and how – it seems for many the challenge is GETTING MOVING!
This is FULLY – and ESPECIALY applicable to SMEs – as many have no SPECIFIC capability for strategy delivery

The BIG BoK and related material provides ideas for why, offers components for the what, and a lifecycle for how – and a community of colleagues to connect with:

We have shown that in many organisations – there is a gap in support for strategy delivery and evidenced the gap between strategy and delivery in many dimensions
challenged the PMO community to step up and take the lead to close the gap between strategy and delivery
clearly positioned Business Integrated Governance as a framework to connect strategy and delivery
presented the BIG CIC approach to engaging stakeholders on the BIG Journey and walked a workshop full of people through it

If you've looked at BIG as a means to improve strategy delivery, you may be wondering what it all means and what is applicable to an organisation of our size.

You may be in an emerging organisation that has not yet 'operationalised' strategy delivery - as your directors you have been able to remain 'hands on' - but sense it is time to mature the organisation - but how much?

If you would like to be invited to a session dedicated to preparing for business planning for SMEs, please complete the form (right).

Find out more about BIG:

Learn about how we engage:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Happy Christmas. Have a BIG New Year?

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:16:55 GMT

Happy Christmas!

Have a BIG New Year?

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

I've been looking back at what I've been up to over the last year explaining and evangelising the BIG Framework developed by the BIG CIC.

I've also been listening very carefully, and I've learned these 5 things:

Our organisations are led by people who can translate purpose into vision and into a strategic plan - but the translation and sustainment of that intent into clear objectives and targets is less easy.
Although technology to cascade objectives and related accountabilities exists, many organisations still favour capture and communication and control using stand alone documents
People think strategy delivery is only about change, when in fact it relies on product development and business as usual performance too - which has implications for prioritisation and delivery management
While many organisations have support functions for projects, few task their PMOs to operate governance for all aspects of strategy delivery
Even when an organisation generally accepts there are issues related to strategy delivery, there is a general reticence to 'poke' the strategic delivery process

What can we do about this?

The answer is, quite simply, NOTHING . Unless:

we recognise the issue and opportunity
we can make our own mental pictures of what the operating model for strategy delivery looks like
we understand the roadmap and business case for change

For small to medium sized organisations who are encountering the need manage strategy systematically for the first time, this can sound daunting - but it's all about building relevant capability for future scale, not imposing a stifling bureaucracy.

Hence - starting in January 2025, Deepteam is delighted to offer free half day consultations to organisations that want to explore their issues / opportunities, to visualise what an integrated operating model for strategy delivery will look like, and how to build a roadmap and outline business case.

We offer the opportunity to increase strategic outcome delivery, with more agility, efficiency and effectiveness.

What might this experience feel like?

I recently ran an open First Steps session with the APM Governance Interest Network , where we focused on HOW to get improving strategy delivery improvement on the executive agenda. This included a practical walk through of the process and group material creation based on example content.

what are your triggers to do something, who do you need to reach to get moving?
capturing current state - we will use the BIG Current State Canvass format to capture pains / gains, and explore the BIG Readiness model
defining the high-level vision for a BIG-based Strategy Delivery "solution" (it is not just IT) for attendees

What do I have to do?

Click here to register interest , and we'll be in touch to discuss details - or simply contact us for a chat. Why not?

Background on Business Integrated Governance

BIG is developed by a community interest company which has developed a Body of Knowledge.

More about Dee p team ?

Deepteam specialises in Business Integrated Governance - and all related services:

First Steps Discussion - Talk with us informally about your current situation. Understand possibilities and begin the engagement process. - Click me
Workshop - Take a deeper dive into relevant aspects of Business Integrated Governance and map solutions against opportunities and threats - Click me
Readiness Assessment - Take a holistic view of your readiness to exploit BIG for improved strategy delivery - Click me
Have a look at our new service catalogue (on GCloud 14)
More questions - Email us at info@deepteam.co.uk or Contact Us

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Transform Your PMO into a Strategic Business Function: The BIG Opportunity for PMO

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:36:38 GMT

Transform Your PMO into a Strategic Business Function: The BIG Opportunity for PMO

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 22nd November the The House of PMO hosted a morning workshop aimed at enabling PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

Background

According to a recent report from the House of PMO, "The prize for organisations who have established PMO as a business function is the ability to bridge the strategy formulation to execution gap.". I could not agree more!

However, the ceiling for a PMO within a business can be seen as portfolio of change and / or customer projects. BUT - our business purpose and related strategy ALSO rely upon BAU performance (selling, delivering, finance etc.) and value creation (assets / products) - NOT JUST achieving change . Hence, to bridge the strategy formulation / execution gap, organisations must look at more than an enterprise PMO and the Change Portfolio. Right?

At our previous strategy delivery events , delegates have told us there is a gap between strategy and delivery. At the recent APM PMO Conference , when asked who knew who supported the connection of strategy to delivery in their organisation - no one knew.

So while an organisation might have a PMO which gets involved in the change portfolio definition - where connections from strategic objectives to projects / programmes are established - WHO is:

- supporting parallel activity in business units / product groups?

- overseeing of how cross functional dependency / accountability works and how priorities are interpreted and achieved?

What is Covered

1. Opening and Introductions

2. PMO as a Business Function

3. Key Discussion Questions

4. Defining Strategy Delivery and PMO Scope

5. Key Questions to Explore

6. Introduction to Business Integrated Governance (BIG)

7. Portfolio Management Redefined

8. BIG’s Role in Strategic Accountability

9. PMO as a Strategy Delivery Function

10. Conclusion and Reflections

This agenda guides participants through a structured exploration of PMO alignment with strategic delivery, emphasizing practical applications and actionable takeaways.

Who should be interested in this topic?

PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes
PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy
Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery
Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities
Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

More stakeholder profiles here

After the event, we expect you will fully understand the needs of a Strategy Delivery Support Function - and how a PMO can become that.

What next?

Support with awareness of Strategy Delivery issues - event report and recording.
Core BIG Presentation - YouTube recordings
How to use BIG Resources - event report and recording

We suggest asking us to support a . First Steps Conversation which would provide you with a PowerPoint template we would complete at a 2-3 hour meeting to help get you started.

Trigger Moments - do you have a burning platform or a vision of paradise which will engage your colleagues to start a BIG Journey? Lets discuss!
How to build consensus on current state, and agree to do "something" - lets go through your pains and think about the relevant solution components to respond to them with
Vision - what would a simple illustration of this look like - lets mock up an example you can use
Roadmap - lets leverage the BIG BoK and mock up an example you can use

Clearly - in the space of an our or two, this is not going to provide the basis for an outline business case - but it possibly gets you a sponsor and funding to make one...

Please Contact us if you would like to do this .

To be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around these events please register for Alerts below:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Ability

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:47:02 GMT

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Ability

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 12th December, the APM Governance Interest Network hosted the third in a series of events aimed at enabling PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

Following on from the first 2 sessions, ( Awareness and Knowledge ) this session provided an hour long workshop for people to work through how to get improving Strategy Delivery using Business Integrated Governance onto an executive sponsor agenda.

This session can be re run as a short-sharp briefing, or a half day workshop.

Background

In today’s fast-evolving business landscape, delivering strategy successfully relies on integrating projects with operational and product management teams. Yet, no clear framework exists for this, leaving many project, programme, and portfolio (P3) professionals struggling to engage senior leadership in balancing ongoing operations with value creation and change.

Without an integrated approach, organisations face challenges with strategic alignment, accountability, managing dependencies, prioritising initiatives, and overseeing resources and funding effectively.

The first two sessions in the series established:

A worrying set of issues related to strategy delivery that attendees faced. These were not related to project / programme delivery, but more related to the mechanisms around strategy delivery themselves - which, in many cases, do not exist or are ad hoc.
Business Integrated Governance as a possible framework - free to APM Members - that change protagonists could use to address strategy delivery issues.
This interactive workshop introduced Business Integrated Governance (BIG), a framework to help elevate strategy delivery to the executive level. It combines presentations and practical sessions to provide actionable tools that support your organisation’s strategic goals.

Trigger Moments

There are many scenarios that can benefit from the application of BIG Key Concepts, Principles and Components. The BIG Body of Knowledge (BoK) offers some examples, and more detail is offered in The BIG Rationale .

Attendees at the session outlined some of their pain areas for which we had a BIG response:

Fragmented Governance - Governance is fragmented or absent across the business.
Engaging Others in Strategy - Engagement is needed to deliver strategic objectives.
Setting Up Governance - The organization is starting from scratch and wants to do it right.
Parochial Views on Strategy - Strategy is seen narrowly, with a focus on bonuses.
Common Strategic Issues - Vision is unclear; lack of understanding, too many contributors, and silo working.
Transparency Concern - Staff are frustrated by a lack of transparency.
Excessive Governance - Too much governance is delaying project delivery.
Engagement in Strategy Delivery - Need better engagement for strategy delivery.
Barriers in Programmes - Barriers to strategy exist, with ineffective decision-making.
Clarifying Strategy - What does strategy mean at the operational level?
Ignored/Mixed Governance - Governance is ignored or inconsistent.
Integrated Governance Across Programmes - An opportunity exists to integrate governance across three programmes.
Outdated Rules - Old rules constrain future progress.

What are yours?

The group identified potential protagonists and sponsors, including Exec Board, CEO / Director General, COO / Head of Ops, Department Heads. Plus anyone who holds the purse strings! BIG Beneficiaries are explored in the BIG BoK Appendix

Who are yours?

Building Consensus and Commitment

Tabling initial conversations with fellow protagonists or a potential sponsor enables the ball to start rolling.

A good first step is to develop stakeholder profiles in terms of the pains each stakeholder faces and the gains they might expect. This information can be used to build material for engagement and ot start the right conversations.

There are two schools of thought with respect to getting engagement - to identify a burning platform or to highlight a possible paradise. It is easier to gather information on a burning platform - as it exists - but the process may be disagreeable. It may feel more positive to paint a rosy picture - but establishing credibility at an early stage (with limited time available to status / option-eer) may be difficult.

This section split the Groups into 2 sets

Set 1 introduced attendees to the "Pains" and the "Solution" Canvasses from the BIG Services Taxonomy - which engaged the audience to develop their perception of strategy pains using some structured headings
Set 2 introduced attendees to the BIG Readiness Model - which started to walk the audience through principles-based challenge statements against which they could rate their organisation.
Both sets started to discuss the development of current situation to build momentum for change.

What will be the best engagements methods for your situation?

Vision, Outline Business Case and Roadmap

At some point, key stakeholders and a possible initiative sponsor will need to give credence to the BIG initiative, but they will want to see a solution outline. Assuming there is consensus to do 'something' - what might that be? What might the value be? What might the sequence and decision process look like to develop it and extract the value?

This session offered an example "First Steps" engagement which explained:

reliance on a key stakeholder to frame the problem and set up discussions with executive colleagues
the importance of preparation for interviews / meetings
the necessity to capture well and agree points raised with each senior interviewee
using the BIG Components to categorise playback and pains, and to build the picture of future state
translating implications out of "BIG Speak" and back into plain business language for executive consumption

Further content is available in the BIG Body of Knowledge for development of outline Vision and Roadmap to enable "Phase 1", and discuss Outline Business Case and Building a BIG Capability .

What will your next steps be?

Who should attend?

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

We recommend developing outputs from the session as the basis to engage your organisation to improve strategy delivery.

You may find further resources within our Strategic Themes - which outline a number of perspectives stakeholders have - from CEO / Strategy Team to the Corporate Governance Team, Product Groups and P3O. These are topics which may point at specific Blogs - all of which may help engaging stakeholders understand their current state and way forwards.

Can you establish:

Trigger Moments - do you have a burning platform or a vision of paradise which will engage your colleagues to start a BIG Journey? Lets discuss!
How to build consensus on current state, and agree to do "something" - lets go through your pains and think about the relevant solution components to respond to them with
Vision - what would a simple illustration of this look like - lets mock up an example you can use
Roadmap - lets leverage the BIG BoK and mock up an example you can use

Deepteam offers support for this Early Engagement - To help a sponsor define and build a case. Includes training and workshops.

There after, can can support organisations with:

Building Enablers - This activity provides the central capabilities underpinning integrated governance, and includes design / build of business support, information technology, governance framework and accountability maps.
Culture Change - Making change stick and sustainable needs adoption readiness, adoption support, training and sustainment (support) planning.

Please Contact us if you would like to have a conversation.

Access our new Services Catalogue here

To be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around the event, and be notified when the booking page is live - please register for Alerts below:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Not too BIG For Government

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 13:50:04 GMT

Not Too BIG for Government

As of the 9th November, anyone in UK Government will be able to access BIG solutions and services from GCloud 14.

At present, UK Government can access all BIG Related Products and Services via GCloud 13:

What is the difference?

Deepteam has added a number of services related to Business Integrated Governance based on the BIG Services Taxonomy developed by the Business Integrated Governance CIC.

Deepteam has sustained the generic Consulting Services previously listed under a Consulting Heading.

With respect to Technology and Data, Deepteam has sustained the listings for BIAdvantage - the data integration capability used to create the the Core Data Model and Demonstrator, and sustained the relationship with Meeting Quality - to enable Governance Meetings to be supported by the latest Artificial Intelligence.

Do I need to know what to buy?

Eventually, yes - but we can't work that our until we've spoken and done some form of Early Engagement (even if it is only a short conversation!)

We suggest asking us to support a First Steps Conversation which would provide you with a PowerPoint template we would complete at a 2-3 hour meeting to help get you started.

Trigger Moments - do you have a burning platform or a vision of paradise which will engage your colleagues to start a BIG Journey? Lets discuss!
How to build consensus on current state, and agree to do "something" - lets go through your pains and think about the relevant solution components to respond to them with
Vision - what would a simple illustration of this look like - lets mock up an example you can use
Roadmap - lets leverage the BIG BoK and mock up an example you can use

Clearly - in the space of an our or two, this is not going to provide the basis for an outline business case - but it possibly gets you a sponsor and funding to make one...

Please Contact us if you would like to do this .

How to use our Website?

The menus are designed to walk you through drivers to work with us and the process we can support you with. We can help in some or all areas - providing full service or simply fitting in to assist an existing team you already have.

Strategic Themes outlines a number of perspectives stakeholders have - from CEO / Strategy Team to the Corporate Governance Team, Product Groups and P3O. These are topics which may point at specific Blogs - all of which may help engaging stakeholders understand their current state and way forwards.
Early Engagement - To help a sponsor define and build a case. Includes training and workshops.
Building Enablers - This activity provides the central capabilities underpinning integrated governance, and includes design / build of business support, information technology, governance framework and accountability maps.
Culture Change - Making change stick and sustainable needs adoption readiness, adoption support, training and sustainment (support) planning.

This is high level, motherhood and apple pie stuff.

For now, the GCloud listings provides a good catalogue of what we could do:

Simplified Catalogue Entries for Services

Business Integrated Governance:

Full Service

Early Engagement

Consulting and Services

Data and Technology

Generic:

Consulting and Services

BIAdvantage

Background

Features and Benefits

Meeting Quality

Background

Features and Benefits

More details are of course available - but best we have a conversation first?

Who would be interested?

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

Contact us about a specific need - or simply to discuss your situation. Attend one of our events, browse our blogs and strategic themes.

Alternatively - register to be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around the BIG Topic.:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Knowledge

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 09:56:41 GMT

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Knowledge

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 14th November, the APM Governance Interest Network hosted the second in a series of events aimed at emboldening PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

This session presented the Business Integrated Governance Body of Knowledge from a PMO / P3 perspective - covering the key concepts, principles and components to build an operation that connects from purpose to vision to strategy and delivery - and back again.

Background

Change projects and programmes come in all shapes and sizes. From operational projects to support business operation, to the strategic that programme that supports objectives in a change portfolio. There is a widely held misconception that strategy delivery is only about change, and that all we need is a strategic change programme and we are covered. Wrong on both counts. Our business strategy relies on:

Business Performance . Our strategic goals CANNOT be met unless the business operates and generates results.
Product Development . If our product portfolio isn't / doesn't become what customers want - we will not achieve our goals
Strategic Change - while we need operational change to maintain BAU performance - there are cross functional strategic initiatives to develop reputation, operational excellence and culture goals.

So - strategy delivery is much more than just change . We need to develop and exploit our products (physical and service to generate value), and our business operation (grow and perform). The strategic objectives related to value and business performance typically are the focus for leadership time, resources and funds.

Therefore - our change portfolio does clearly not contain all the strategic objectives we need to achieve to meet our business purpose, AND it has to compete for leadership time, resources and funds with value creation and operational entities. There are also dependencies between portfolio items and elements of value creation and / or BAU / Product development.

At the APM PMO conference in June '24 we asked the question - do attendees knows who supports the connection of strategy to delivery across the organisation. Across c. 100 PMO professionals - no one knew. P lease see the event report here .

The implication is that in addition to not thinking of strategy as an integration of multiple strategic facets including change, our organisations are literally not supporting integrated strategic governance.

The Story So Far

In our first event in this series, we presented evidence that strategy to delivery does not work well for many organisations. We offered a framework for the reasons why not, and we will have engaged a significant group of 360 P3 professionals in the pains of strategy delivery - and we will understand the drivers to make strategy delivery improvements.

We addressed 5 question areas related to strategy delivery, and for each question, we received dozens and dozens of responses. The event report, including links to recordings, slides and response analysis can be found here . The responses very much reflected previous sessions which have delivered this kind of conclusion .

However, for a P3O to step into the broader realm of supporting strategy delivery, not just project delivery, there needs to be infrastructure to support that. In the same way the P3O will have built capability to operate P3 (governance framework, reporting, process / roles, people competence, tools...) the same job needs doing for strategy delivery.

Event Specifics

The second session in our series presented the building blocks for strategy delivery that an aspiring and empowered P3O will need to build in order to bring the order of a well-oiled change portfolio to the overall business portfolio .

We covered:

Strategy Delivery is vital for existence, and we are not good at it.
Recap our view of the strategic process, that it is complex and difficult (will be shared in advance to attendees)
A summary / analysis of the (550+) points raised in strategy delivery gathered at the last event
Recap the Introduction to Business Integrated Governance
BIG Principles - the key underpinnings of Business Integrated Governance - do we concur? - please find a recording which introduces the principles here.
What is the Body of Knowledge - and where to find it - e.g. Key Concepts and Components

Establishing Readiness (this is covered in depth at the next session)
Example 1 - Establishing a Portfolio Direction Group using BIG content
Example 2 - Defining the governance and accountability model for a cross government change portfolio

Questions Raised

Questions were taken - and answered - from over 230 engaged attendees over the course of the session, which delved into Accountability, Assurance, Case Building, Governance, Implementation, Information, Leadership, Organisation, Prioritisation and Strategic Process. Click on the image below to open the PDF details.

Who Would Find This Useful?

The proposition in the presentation is that our organisations are not good with strategy delivery (evidenced), there is little infrastructure to enable the integrated governance needed (also evidenced), and we don't support the process of delivering strategy with dedicated resources (evidenced).

Is it that all our organisations are doing so well we don't need business strategy?
Are our silos so strong that cross functional strategy delivery is just nigh on impossible?
Do our directors not recognise the strategy delivery issue?
Is there no perceived solution, or is it perceived to be impossible?

Who will be your protagonists in change?

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

As mentioned, this event is the first in a series of 3. The event series is introduced here.

The 3rd session will cover helping people start the conversation internally:

triggers to do something
clarification of current state
building a picture to engage people

To be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around the event, and be notified when the booking page is live - please register for Alerts below:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Driving Purpose with Projects and Integrated Governance – the path to a Resilient world

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:46:38 GMT

The path to a Resilient world: an effective framework connecting Purpose, ESG and Project Delivery

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On October 10 ^th the PMI hosted "PM4TheWorld Conference". It was organized by an international volunteer network who care about the world and the people living in it. The aim was to help those affected by disasters, whether man-made or natural, regardless of their race, culture, or religion. Their mission was to initiate, back, and promote events supporting all people impacted by ongoing or unique situations in partnership with not-for-profit organizations that share our objectives.

Within the conference David and Alex Shapley presented on a broader perspective than on the tactical responses for specific adverse events. Our presentation came from the starting point that ALL organisations need to have the will and ability to provide response to environmental and social challenges from the basis of their key stakeholder worldviews, and their own, wider organisation purpose. Our proposition was that the path to a Resilient world is contributed to by organisations which care about sustainable wellbeing for all humanity, have the ability to transition this into their strategies, and the means to prioritise all objectives for leadership time, funds and resources. Hence - 'doing good' is not just a downstream activity to be fitted in or sacrificed - it is instead baked into the organisation governance framework.

This presentation explored the critical role Project and Programme management plays in achieving socially and environmentally positive outcomes in a sustainable manner.

It suggested that the responsibility for driving these outcomes should not rest solely with project managers. Project managers are responsible for delivering outputs and outcomes rather than setting direction, and while they may be guided by personal values, they must adhere to their host organisation goals.

The key to achieving sustainable well-being for humanity lies in creating an environment where projects are inherently expected to deliver socially and environmentally positive outcomes.

The Problem - 1

The problem is of course that many of our organisations are commercially driven. They say they want to be purpose-driven and supporting of environmental and social activity - but only to a point. Self-interest motive leads to focus on capturing financial income. It is difficult to depart from the 1970s based business philosophy.

Quote 1 - It is said that “as long as an organization is operating in their own financial or survival interest, staying within the law and engaging competitively in the market, then market will automatically optimize society’s wellbeing.”. Many of us believe this is nonsense.

The best many of us can so is offer tactical responses through corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. A notable starting point is an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) framework aimed at managing non-financial risks and opportunities within organisations. However, simply adopting ESG practices is not enough, as organisations, which remain driven primarily by financial motives must decide to also make socially and environmentally positive goals a priority.

Quote 2 - “These tend to result in an ad-hoc series of actions which do good and may be comprehensive”… “but remain peripheral to the operation of the business.”

Quote 1 and 2 - Content extracted from PAS 808 - Purpose-driven organisations: Worldviews, principles and behaviours for delivering sustainability - Executive briefing

Data Backing us up.

As part of the presentation, we asked our audience 3 questions about how their environmental and social workloads were driven. Do they:

a. Hope workloads (projects, products, operations) do the right Environmental & Social thing?

b. Define programmes for Environmental & Social Goals that fit in with business priorities?

c. Include strategic objectives and provide business constraints that build Environmental & Social Goals into normal operation?

We also asked this to a wider PMI LinkedIn Group post - and the 172 responses from 16763 Impressions were split:

45% - People doing the right things, 23% - Corporate ESG Programmes and 32% - Purpose is built into strategy

While hugely unscientific this suggests that the largest proportion of people asked are in organisations where environmental and social goals are not part of the organisation Business as Usual and rely on individuals.

The Answer - 1

The solution lies in embedding ESG goals into the very Purpose of the organisation itself. This approach, outlined in PAS 808 (Purpose Driven Organisations), emphasises the need to build business purpose, vision, and strategy based on social and environmental values.

PAS 808 guides governing bodies and executive managers on how to: “provide the basis for an organization to develop their own strategies and approaches to enacting and embedding purpose in their policies, processes, practices, products, services and value networks”.

Find out more here :

However, having a great standard available does not solve anyone's problems.

The Problem - 2

If we can embed ESG goals into Strategy - what if we are not effective at strategy delivery?

There is plenty to suggest that our organisations are already not all that great at strategy delivery.

Our own events have gathered perspectives from many people, and Deepteam can re-run sessions privately to explore challenges for any organisation.

From amongst our audiences, we have found organisations which:

Do nothing much more about strategy delivery other than state the strategy to aim for. Organisations that have developed 5-year plans and shared with shareholders in a pretty PDF file. Where department plans show little response to strategic expectations, and projects are tactical responses to the current problem
Superimpose strategic programmes and expect them to achieve on top of the organisation workloads - leaving programme managers to scrap for attention, leadership time and resources with line managers primarily focused on their bonus driven targets
Have a clear cascade of strategic objectives and manage balance between strategic change, operations and value creation

We also asked this to a wider PMI LinkedIn Group post - and the 85 responses from 12k+ Impressions were split:

31% - just stating strategy, 22% - imposing strategic programmes and 44% - manage strategic objectives

Again, hugely unscientific, but this suggests that well less than 50% of people asked are in organisations where strategy management is identified as something to actively manage of itself.

The Answer - 2

Business Integrated Governance (BIG) frameworks are necessary to hold organisations accountable for achieving these goals in a balanced manner. Within the BIG model, Purposes (including ESG goals) are not superficial, but integral to the organisation’s identity - akin to baking chocolate chips throughout a cake rather than simply sprinkling them on top.

For the organisations which

Only have 5-year plans and shared with shareholders in a pretty PDF file, there is a vision and roadmap to get on top of strategy delivery
Have strategic programmes, there is the pathway to leverage the governance capability of a change portfolio for the integration of business as usual, value creation and change strategic objectives.
Have a manual cascade of strategic objectives to provide the operating model, information and data and support capability to drive strategic outcomes with agility, efficiency and effectiveness.

For more information - Access the

How Much Capability already exists?

There are 3 stereotypes which organisations can fall into:

No formal strategy delivery building blocks or facilities . These are characterised by disconnected governance bodies, no integrated information infrastructures, no specific support function - and stressed executives trying to fight priority battles!
Portfolio Management based. Characterised by focus on change portfolio, programmes and projects. There are facilities and controls to deliver outputs, outcomes and benefits. BAU and Product Teams are to be negotiated with to manage dependencies, allocate funds and resources - with constant alignment of projects to strategic objectives.
Integrated Strategy Management . There is a clear cascade and integration of objectives through the organisation. It is clear which workloads are accountable for which objectives (change, value creation or BAU performance). Objectives have clear accountable owners and measures which indicate progress (not just time-based milestones), and priorities are objectively balanced based on their risk / value / priority.

What is your situation?

We also asked this to a wider PMI LinkedIn Group post - and the 85 responses from c.10k Impressions were split:

33% - manual means with ppt, 20% - change portfolio management and 48% - integrated strategy management

Again, hugely unscientific, but this suggests that 33% of people are managing strategy by manual means with presentation slides.

According to simple polling, large numbers of us are relying in individuals to drive E&S Goals, manage strategy by just stating it, and use PowerPoint to manage with.

While many have some aspects to strategy delivery better organised, it does appear that many of us lack fundamental strategy management capability with which to push our Environmental and Social goals for a "Purpose Driven" organisation into reality.

Back to the Resilient world message

For project management, rather than hoping project managers do the right thing, the BIG framework is provided to ensure socially & environmentally responsible outcomes are prioritised (suitably) from the outset with a shift in culture and governance surrounding projects to:

- adhere to ESG guidelines

- build into the prioritisation approach mechanisms to take account of the project’s ESG goals

- establish and maintain alignment to (all) cascaded ESG goals throughout the organisation (operations and change)

Can organisations commit to such a transformation or continue to only pay lip-service to sustainability?

Messages for Stakeholders

Dear project managers

Within your organisation, if you don’t have a prioritisation framework connected to strategy – are you ever going to get the support and recognition from the top (to be able to finish an ESG project without delay, scope change and/or cancellation)? Think about it…?

Dear portfolio managers

How are you ever going to be able to prioritise, measure, report drive workloads to achieve E&S Goals if there is only a Finance / ROI based approach to prioritisation? Time to come out of the ‘70s….?

Dear executives (c-suite) -

How do you prioritise E&S Goals across competing priorities in run and change and communicate through the business? Who is providing the status on E&S Goals if there is no infrastructure to provide it? - How much do your investors care….?

Useful Links

Call to Action

Book this presentation privately for your organisation to highlight the challenges and benefits of a purpose-driven approach, questioning whether organisations can commit to such a transformation or whether they will continue to only pay lip-service to sustainability. The audience will be encouraged to reflect on their ability to influence their organisations towards adopting this integrated, resilient approach within which project management for the Resilient World can flourish.

By attending this session, you will gain insights into the key issues impacting strategy delivery and learn how to elevate your role in driving organisational success. This is an opportunity to connect, discuss, and share best practices on how to bring strategy to life through effective governance - and by so doing become more able to care about the world and the people living in it.

Who should attend?

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery and are inspired to ensure their organisation plays its part in assuring the sustainable wellbeing for the whole of humanity

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities and do the right thing where it comes to prioritising deployment of leadership time, funds and resources

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery including ESG goals and constraints

- Transformation leads who want to fit their delivery and change workloads into a prioritised (funded and resourced) business operation

- PMO/P3 Directors to cannot see how ESG strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling ESG strategy

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

Please watch for blogs and mini events in the run up to the session. To be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around the event - please register for Alerts below:

This session was originally part of:

PM4TheWorld - Project Management for a Resilient World - A 24-hour Global Online Conference October 2024

Imagine a world where an extensive network of professionals builds a community that is aware, prepared, and supportive of those in crisis. A chance for individuals to contribute and feel a sense of purpose.

PM4theWorld was founded in 2023 to meet that goal. We work with our sponsors, Project Management Institute, Care International, and Project Managers without Borders, among others, to build a community with a purpose and deliver our unique skills to the regions in crisis today.

Join us at the PM4TheWorld annual 24-hour global online event and stay connected with us year-round through our active presence on YouTube and LinkedIn.

We welcome you to be a part of our global community committed to making a difference. Together, we can support those in need. Together We Can!

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance - Awareness

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:51:44 GMT

Connecting Project & Strategy Management through Integrated Governance

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 11th October, the APM Governance Interest Network hosted the first in a series of events aimed at emboldening PMO / P3 Governance Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

The webinar provided insights into the key issues impacting strategy delivery, especially those from a P3 Perspective, including the gaps typically between support for strategy delivery and support for portfolios, programmes and projects (emerging out of the APM PMO Conference - see here .)

It not only inspired P3 professionals to learn how to elevate their roles in driving organisational success, but provided a language to use with others in the organisation trying to bring strategy to life through effective governance.

The event, presented by David, Greg Krawczyk and Martin Samphire highlighted the challenges organizations face in delivering strategies effectively.

This was particularly from the perspective of project management and governance professionals who provided dozens of reactions (which we are in the process of sharing) and offered a framework within which to develop operational solutions.

Agenda

The session included

some positioning statements regarding the process of strategy delivery, the complexity related to making it happen, and noted the success rates organisations are getting in strategy delivery
an interactive section to introduce typical strategy delivery pain areas(e.g. Communicating), then invited attendees to chip in their viewpoint live. This produced a word cloud of opinions from an audience of over 360 people)
immediate, live reactions from the presentation panel on the key points
a quick introduction to the Business Integrated Governance Body of Knowledge (BIG BoK), which provides the connection of all parts of the organisation, integrated governance, accountability, information and data, business support & assurance and leadership

Context

Challenges of Strategy Delivery Pre-read - this material was provided as the background to the challenges of strategy delivery. This material can be covered in a private session with any interested organisations.
what do we mean by strategy, and strategy delivery?
strategy delivery <> project delivery - do we agree?

A YouTube video which covers just this content is available here .

Issues in strategy delivery

This quickfire session posed a series of challenge statements, and asked people to retort with their comments/viewpoint. This enable us to build a word cloud, including:

Clarifying and communicating strategic objectives effectively.
Cascading strategy into actionable sub-objectives with clear accountability.
Prioritising objectives to optimise resources, leadership time, and funding.
Monitoring progress and performance through integrated governance.
Providing the data necessary for quick decision-making.
Access question details here and video explanation here

Please note - the write ups from this session are in progress. Please Contact us below to be notified of the results. Those available are given below:

Deep Dives

(YouTube Recordings)

Calls to Action:

The session urges PMO and governance professionals to rise to the challenge of improving the connection between strategy and delivery, integrating governance, and thinking bigger to meet both current and emerging demands. We suggest

Governance & PMO Managers, step up to apply what you do to projects to the organisation.
PM's - reach out and connect with strategy delivery to offer these services more broadly

To do this, we can support you to:

Look into the BIG BoK, to try to understand your organisation's status on the questions we raised, and to collate viewpoints on your organisation's success rate with strategic objectives (be careful probing that one!)
Attend the second presentation in the series to look onto Business Integrated Governance more (14th November)

Date for the diary - 12th December - where we will run a practical workshop for those organisation who want to engage their organisations to identify current state, envision the suture and build a business case for change.

Who should be interested in this content or the next sessions?

- PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes

- PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy

- Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery

- Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities

- Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

- More stakeholder profiles here

What next?

As mentioned, this event is the first in a series of 3. The event series is introduced here.

To be notified of the Blogs and online discussions around the event - please register for Alerts below:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Connecting PMO with the Business

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 10:51:54 GMT

Connecting PMO with the Business

as part of The Big PMO Adoption - Event Report

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

Introduction

On the 11th July, the APM PMO Interest Network held it's conference - with a theme " The Big PMO Adoption".

From a PMO perspective - there is typically much more a PMO can do for an organisation than it currently does. There is much talk in PMO circles about clarifying service offerings to take to an organisation. This is great proactive engagement from PMO professionals.

However - the Business Integrated Governance approach is to offer a different proposition. The proposition is to help the organisation deliver strategy - and, in fact, at the recent House of PMO conference, there was much talk of "adding value" and "strategic alignment".

In essence - this service would provide all the core capabilities a PMO could provide - but not just on a project, programme or portfolio level - but on a business-wide basis - and focused around objectives, not just projects.

This brings a greater definition to 'Big PMO' - a 'BIG PMO' - or as the BIG CIC calls it - " Business Support "

In essence, Business Support provides:

Support for alignment of purpose and vision with strategy development
Cascade of objectives and key results through a common information model
Operation of metrics to support measurement of key results related to objectives
Prioritisation support - at all levels
Governance Operation support - at all levels
Resource Management Support
Integration / dependency management
the hub for support offices enabling governance operation.

Please see the BIG BoK Chapter on Business Support and Assurance

To support the APM PMO Conference, the GO BIG Network and partners supported a presentation "Connecting PMO with the Business".

Agenda

PART 1 – Setting the scene with BIG, and challenge the PMO to step up – specifically by challenging your audience (in groups) to consider conundrums below - 5 mins

Background reading:

Is your PMO a Cost Centre or a Value-Generator?

Promote your PMO

PART 2 – questions for tables. Please come up with 3-5 key points from your discussion - 5 mins prep then 15 mins

Table 1 Connection to strategy – do we a. have cascaded objectives with accountable people that are creating projects to deliver, or b. are we more woolly, and have projects trying to find objectives to support?

We are looking to understand from our audience whether they are purpose and objectives driven - or are tactically supporting projects which might help strategic objectives. Is there clarity of how strategy cascades and how responses combine and perform?

Background reading:

Connecting Strategy to Delivery with VIVA Goals and BIG

The Backbone for Strategy Delivery

Using Business Integrated Governance to Improve Strategy Delivery

Table 2 Accountability – how does that work? What part does the PMO play in ‘Accountability’ – is it that a. accountability is a private matter between manager and employee or b. at the forefront of strategy delivery?

Of vital importance to strategy delivery is the identification of clear points of Accountability - or "Accountability nodes". An Accountability node may have one or many Objectives, Targets or Challenges to deal with and my be formed into a department, product group, project etc. Is it / should it be the PMO (Business Support) role to ensure the mapping of all points of accountability, their information needs / shares - to enable strategy delivery to work?

Background reading:

Accountability in the BIG Knowledge Outline

Accountability - impossible without systematic prioritisation?

Table 3 Integrated Quality Governance – how does the PMO fit? – is it a. trying to carry out governance support on project and programmes in isolation or b. an integrated part of the organisations operationalised governance framework?

There are many signs that project and programme governance is not integrated well with an organisation. Separate tools, local databases / reports, external meeting specific reporting. Do governance bodies use the same support, synchronise meetings, share RAID capability, work off the same Objectives and Key Results solution?

Background reading:

Purpose Driven Organisations

BIG Knowledge Outline

PART 3 – 5 mins Run through emerging points and offer my points too – mention the back ups

PART 4 – 1 0 mins PMO take way – Sell what you do – but there are areas of Business Integrated Governance that need xMO support. Can you get a sponsor to pick up the wider role with you?

PART 5 – final 5 mins Q&A – so we started thinking about the Big PMO adoption – but also possible the PMO adoption of BIG?

If you are interested in learning more about connecting strategy to your delivery, or would like us to repeat the presentation - please contact us and find out how to start the journey to improve strategy delivery:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Driving Purpose Driven Organisations Event Report

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:53:16 GMT

Driving Purpose Driven Organisations

Event Report

Do you want your organisation to tactically work on interesting but secondary priority social and environmental initiatives, or to stir in your genuine views on social and environmental responsibility to your organisations fibre?

On 9 July the Good Governance Academy hosted the second in a series of events about the implication of being "Purpose Driven".

In the first of the series, we defined what we meant by ' Purpose Driven ' using the new British Standard PAS 808 (Purpose Driven Organisations) as the basis for discussion. Within PAS 808, Principle 1 states that “ long-term wellbeing for all people and planet is the ultimate goal and all people and planet are the ultimate beneficiaries “. This is a key Purpose Driven Message . We explored audience perception of readiness, and looked at an example of the struggles a typical organisation might face in 'onboarding' with 'Purpose Driven' - please see the event report.

Purpose Driven Organisations (PDO) is rooted in the notion that to save the planet, people in organisations (private, public and NGOs) need to change what they do to (at least!) avoid destroying society and the environment. This is in the context of a capitalist world, where lack of focus on Return on Investment and profit might lead to the demise of organisations.

We face challenges::

Principle 1 of PDO implies that organisations will start considering new / modified goals and constraints within their purpose, vision and strategy development - to then cascade into the organisation in the form of Objectives, Targets and Constraints.
The further implication is that our processes of prioritising where to deploy leadership time, funds and resources need to become more sophisticated to include purpose driven objectives / constraints - throughout the organisation. For organisations that prioritise based on things like Return on Investment/Net Present Value/Payback – how will 'Purpose Driven' objectives and constraints be included in existing value systems when prioritising? How will we weight 'Purpose Driven' goals and constraints when making decisions - throughout the organisation ?
Our governance frameworks are not delivering on strategy delivery now ( for previous sessions which explore this - see here ). What makes us think that these frameworks will be fit for purpose to scope with more sophisticated Purpose expectations and prioritisation calculations?

The definition of 'what good looks like' for a Purpose Driven Organisation has been defined. The principles and 'should dos' for Governance of Organizations too. But that does not mean organisations will just start working towards long-term wellbeing for all people and planet. HOW will we

get 'Purpose Driven' onto the executive agenda
trigger the discussion necessary for changes at the right levels in the organisation
build the ecosystems to enable Purpose Driven Objectives?

If we assume it is possible to persuade shareholders, stakeholders, board members and executives to buy into the Purpose Driven Message ( see Event 1 ) - where next?

The start of the answer lies in Principle 2 of 'Purpose Driven Organisations'. It suggests that an organisation’s purpose should be its strategic and accountability anchor . It should provide the primary strategic guide for decision making across the organisation and anchor the decision making to long-term wellbeing for all people and planet.

We raised 2 questions:

How far into your organisation does business purpose and strategy visibly penetrate now? (the implication is that if Purpose does not today penetrate the organisation today - how will it tomorrow?)
What do we need to include in our governance operations (at all levels) to ensure the purpose driven goals and constraints are visible, actioned and progress / performance measured?

Hence the agenda for our recent event - which can be repeated on request.

Introduction. Recap / references to PAS 808 - Purpose Driven Organisations
PAS 808 - Principle 2 - purpose as a strategic and accountability anchor
The Challenges of Strategy Delivery - quick brainstorm and recap of previous work
Discussion - The implications of 'Purpose Driven' for organisations where strategy delivery is already not easy
- Strategy Formulation, Line of Sight, Prioritisation, Control
Discussion - the penetration of Purpose and Objectives into an organisation - how traceable is this?
Poll - how far down into the organisation is there clear line of sight?
Poll - prioritisation of objectives - is it done systematically (ROI, strategic value calculation, opining based...?)
Poll - are we working on the 'right' things - do resources, funds and leadership time demonstrably follow the prioritisation?
3 Implications
Strategy Information Model
Strategy Operating Model
Integrated Governance and Enablers
Conclusions

Discussion Panel:

Linde Grebe of the Good Governance Academy
Victoria Hurth who is the technical author of the British Standard in Purpose Driven Organisations : Background Reading here: PAS 808 - please also see “Quality Governance …will fix an un-sustainable world”
David Dunning - lead author on Business Integrated Governance (BIG CIC, Deepteam and CPS): Background reading: BIG Knowledge Outline
David Booth - lead author on Strategy Journeys . Background reading: Strategy delivery – Where does it all go wrong?

Key Messages emerging from the session:

PAS 808 and ISO 37000 give us a principles basis for a Purpose Driven Organisation, and the Standard for Governance of Organizations.
Strategy Delivery is not easy - even before we start to think about PAS 808 and our session identified issues within Leadership, Governance, Accountability, Assurance, Business Support, Information and Data.
Presently - there are common issues getting purpose to penetrate the organisation - basic clarity and communication are missing. Loss of connection to purpose at or below department level, lack of depth and breadth in penetration
Prioritisation and enablement - very much boil down to a financial basis. Strategic projects have to still align with operations driven budgets and reactionary allocations

What next?

Current State
Understand your strategy information model - do you have clarity from purpose to delivery - through the organisation
Understand your strategy operating model - how do you develop and manage strategy?
Understand your governance operating model - how do you prioritise and cascade objectives through the organisation, prioritise and hold people to account for accomplishment
(support is available to establish current state)
Read up on PAS 808, ISO 37000 and Business Integrated Governance - start here
Once you and key stakeholders are clear on current state, contact us to discuss art of the possible...

If you would like to discuss the meaning or application of 'Purpose Driven' principles - please 'Contact us' for a conversation below, or follow links for more information.

Please see our Purpose Driven Strategic Theme for more background. In essence - this goes beyond the traditional corporate imperative of having a commercial purpose to consider purpose in the broader human sense.

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Is your PMO a Cost Centre or a Value-Generator?

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 15:42:59 GMT

Is your PMO a Cost Centre or a Value-Generator?

Introduction

On the 12th June, David Dunning and the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) CIC supported our friends at TransparentChoice to pose this challenge .

People attended this webinar to hear a discussion on whether a PMO (project management office) is a cost centre or a value-generator - to enable the start of a journey from mostly the former to more of the latter.

The main question is - can you move your service level past tactical support (operational effectiveness and efficiency) to more instrumentally supporting value generation (strategic delivery with agility) - perhaps by enabling the (often broken) connection from strategy to delivery to succeed more regularly.

The webinar was aimed at directors, managers, and heads of PMO or transformation who want to better justify their cost and add value to their organisation.

The speakers include Stuart Easton , one of the founders of Transparent Choice, a software company that helps PMOs with portfolio prioritization and optimization; David Dunning , the founder of Business Integrated Governance CIC, a community interest company that developed a framework for connecting purpose, vision, strategy and delivery; Alexander David , the CEO and founder of Value Matrix, a consultancy firm that helps PMOs with portfolio management and value realization; and Dan Dures , the head of product at Transparent Choice, who demonstrates some of the software features that support the webinar topics.

If you are a PMO lead that feels like they are pushing on a rope - read on, forward this link to your Head of Transformation / COO - perhaps we can persuade them to pull on the rope too...

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

Event Summary

The webinar is about how PMOs can transform from being cost centres to value generators by improving their governance and aligning their portfolios with the strategic objectives of the business.

David Dunning offers a broad vision for where a current and developed PMO could add value.

The traditional role and challenges of PMOs : PMOs are often seen as the centre of excellence and support for project management, governance and compliance, but they may face scrutiny and pressure to justify their costs and value.
The evolution and expansion of PMOs : PMOs may grow from supporting a single project or programme to overseeing a portfolio of projects aligned to business objectives, and then to integrating with business as usual and product creation functions.
The value proposition and impact of PMOs : PMOs can provide greater value and business impact by focusing on objectives and key results within portfolios and beyond them - prioritising and deploying resources across different domains, and connecting from business purpose to vision to strategy.

Alexander David shares his experience of transforming a PMO at Direct Line, an insurance company, from a cost centre to a value driver. He explains how he created a case for change with the sponsorship and involvement of the senior leaders, and how he implemented a three-month sprint approach to deliver value quickly and gain trust. He also describes how he focused on improving the strategic portfolio management, the project and program execution, and the tool and data quality. He reports that the PMO transformation resulted in increased share prices, performance and productivity.

Anette Smith, a PMO manager at a manufacturing company, shares her journey of using Transparent Choice software to improve her portfolio prioritization and alignment with the business. She explains how she involved the business stakeholders in defining the value criteria and assessing the projects, and how she used the software to eliminate the cherry-picking and the squeaky wheel syndrome. She also mentions how she gained the executive sponsorship and support by showing the value that the PMO delivers to the business.

Dan Dures, the head of product at Transparent Choice, shows how the software supports the PMO value journey in three steps: organization, definition and optimization. He demonstrates how the software can help PMOs organize their projects in a Kanban board, define the value criteria and score the projects using a multi-criteria decision analysis method, and optimize the portfolio selection and sequencing using artificial intelligence and data visualization. He also shows how the software can generate a roadmap and a P&L projection based on the portfolio.

Questions Raised

Throughout the presentation, questions were raised - but due to time pressure - could not be answered. A summary of what was asked and the essence of answers that would have been given is summarised here:

• The difference between PMO and CPO : A PMO is a project management office that supports the delivery and governance of projects, while a CPO is a chief project officer that is a senior executive responsible for aligning projects, programs, and portfolios with the organization's goals and objectives. One will not replace the other.

• The importance of connecting project delivery to outcomes: Project delivery is not enough to create value for the organization, as it needs to be linked to the benefits and outcomes that the business units and customers perceive. The PMO can help to ensure that the project outputs are aligned with the business objectives and key results, and that the benefits are realized and exploited - but accountability lies with sponsors - not the PMO.

• The challenges and opportunities for PMOs to add value: PMOs often face the challenge of being seen as a cost centre, an admin unit, or a compliance function, rather than a value-adding entity. To overcome this, PMOs need to engage with the top managers and directors, and show how they can support the strategic decision making, resource allocation, and benefit realization of the organization.

• The difference between benefits and value : Benefits are the measurable improvements that projects and programs generate for the business, while value is the perception of the worth that customers have from the products or services. Benefits are not the same as value, as value may appear in a stream and depend on the customer's needs and expectations.

• The different aspects of governance: Governance is not just about compliance and reporting, but also about assurance and decision making. The PMO can support governance by providing insights, information, and recommendations to the sponsors and governance bodies, and by helping them to hold the project and program managers accountable for their performance and results.

• The distinction between product creation and product exploitation : Product creation is the process of delivering the outputs of the projects and programs, while product exploitation is the process of using the outputs to achieve the benefits and outcomes. Both processes have costs, but only the latter has benefits. It is important to avoid breaking the chain between cost and benefit, and to ensure that the product exploitation is planned and executed effectively.

Conclusion and Authors Comments:

I think the general thrust / call to action was to give a sense of where a PMO could develop – beyond offering day to day services to those that focused on value across projects, alongside projects and above projects. We heard from one person that had a story to tell on tacking step 1 of that, an example of technology that enables the identification of value in projects for step 1, and a testimonial from someone who has deployed software, and achieved a change tacking step 1.

Bottom up Message? - Talk to us if you want to upsell your PMO to support greater value from your projects as we have the vision, technology, change management capability and track record to make this work for you.
Top down message? - The connection of strategy to delivery is complex, and only part of that delivery is change – but with the right development of your PMO, and the introduction of a solid information backbone – not only greater tactical value can be achieved, but greater focus on strategic priorities is possible. Talk to us to discuss what the journey might look like.

If you are interested in learning more about connecting strategy to your delivery, please contact us and find out how to start the journey to improve strategy delivery:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Purpose driven organisations and corporate strategy

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:36:18 GMT

Bookable Event:

Purpose Driven Organisations & Corporate Strategy -

A Corporate Level Perspective

On 22 May 2024, Linde Grebe of the Good Governance Academy hosted the first in a series of events about the implication of being "Purpose Driven",

We were joined (led!) by Victoria Hurth who is the technical author of the British Standard in Purpose Driven Organisations :

Background Reading here: PAS 808 - please also see “Quality Governance …will fix an un-sustainable world”

We were also joined by David Dunning - lead author on Business Integrated Governance (BIG CIC, Deepteam and CPS):

Background reading: BIG Concept 1 - Strategy Information Model (data and documents)

In summary - the event discussed the concept, principles and challenges of becoming a purpose driven organisation.

The problem of profit maximisation : Dr. Hurth argues that the root cause of unsustainability is the assumption that profit maximisation is the best way to achieve well-being for all. She says that this leads to ignoring the social and environmental costs of business activities, and treating financial income as a proxy for well-being outcomes.

The role of governance in aligning organisations with sustainability : Dr. Hurth explains that governance is the system by which organisations are directed, overseen and held accountable for achieving their defined purpose. She says that governance should be based on the objective of long-term well-being for all, and that this requires a paradigm shift from self-interest to other-serving. She refers to ISO 37000, the first international standard on governance of organisations, and PAS 808, the first national standard on purpose driven organisations.

The three logics of organising the market economy : Dr. Hurth describes three different ways of organising the market economy, based on the direction and parameters of decision making. The first logic is short-term self-interest, where the goal is profit maximisation and the parameter is financial capital. The second logic is long-term self-interest, where the goal is still profit maximisation, but the parameters include environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. The third logic is purpose driven, where the goal is long-term well-being for all, and the market is one means to achieve it.

The audience was invited to answer several questions about Purpose Driven. Those that provided responses indicated overall that a purpose-driven organization is one that goes beyond the goal of making a profit and operates in a way that adds value to its stakeholders, takes into account the well-being of everyone, and prioritizes sustainability. Such an organization is built on values, principles, and a strong ethos based on fairness and acceptable behaviour. It seeks to achieve its goals without hurting people or the planet and takes responsibility for its actions.

Several informal surveys were conducted. Those that provided responses indicated overall they:

mostly disagreed that principles of purpose-driven organisations benefit only the environment and society and will contribute little to my organisation’s long-term survival.
mostly disagreed that significant alignment already exists between purpose-driven organisation principles and my own organisation’s purpose and goals

In summary - this small group broadly sensed that 'Purpose Driven' has merit , but that their organisations were not ready .

The example of a real organisation moving towards purpose driven : David Dunning presents an example of a real organisation that has a commercial goal and some environmental values, but wants to become more purpose driven. He suggests that the organisation should align its values with its purpose, and make them explicit in its governance and decision making. He also says that the organisation should measure and report on its social and environmental impacts, and use a strategy information model to cascade its purpose throughout the organisation.

The audience was invited to answer several questions about implementing Purpose Driven Principles. Those that provided responses indicated overall they:

substantially agreed that Implementing principles of purpose-driven organisations will require significant changes to my organization’s purpose
mostly agreed that implementing principles of purpose-driven organisations will require significant changes to my organization’s everyday activities.
some agreed, but mostly disagreed that implementing principles on purpose-driven organisations will negatively affect my organisation’s financial performance.

In summary - this group broadly believed that their organisations did not have a purpose that was 'Purpose Driven' , and that significant changes were needed to operation.

Further Commentary:

The first half of the conversation revolved around the concept of purpose-driven organizations and their importance in achieving sustainability. Dr. Victoria Hurth and David Dunning discussed the practical aspects of implementing purpose-driven organizations, while David highlighted the challenges of business as usual thinking and the need for a coherent culture to guide decision-making and resource allocation. Lindie discussed the importance of considering non-financial factors in financial reporting. The speakers emphasized the connection between purpose and long-term survival, and the need to align organizational goals with sustainable values. They also stressed the importance of governance in understanding how organizations make decisions and their impact on society, and the need for values, commercial goals, and governance in purpose-driven organizations.

The second half of the conversation centred around the tension between commercial goals and social responsibility in purpose-driven organizations. Victoria emphasized the importance of prioritizing social impact, while David acknowledged the challenges of aligning business goals with social impact. David and Victoria discussed the importance of prioritizing social and environmental impact alongside commercial goals, and debated the tension between commercial goals and social responsibility. The group also discussed the need to prioritize short-term self-interest to address unsustainability issues, while defining a clear purpose and values and encoding them into policy and governance to ensure consistency in decision-making.

Overall – Victoria and David discussed the importance of purpose-driven organizations, emphasizing the need for a unifying ethic and strategic delivery of purpose. Victoria highlighted the importance of a unifying ethic, while David provided practical perspectives on operationalizing purpose. David stressed the need for a systematic and integrated governance to make purpose-driven agendas work within organizations.

Analysis thanks to Microsoft Copilot and David Dunning.

If you would like to discuss the meaning or application of 'Purpose Driven' principles - please 'Contact us' for a conversation below, or follow links for more information.

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Using Business Integrated Governance to improve Strategy Delivery – Part 1 – a Strategy Perspective

Thu, 23 May 2024 12:46:19 GMT

Using Business Integrated Governance to improve Strategy Delivery – Part 1 – a Strategy Perspective

Introduction

On the 8th May, the GO BIG Network supported the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) CIC in presenting an overview of BIG, with several perspectives. The event is summarised here .

The first part of the presentation covers the Challenges of Strategy Delivery - and includes a specific Strategy Perspective. It is available on YouTube here .

Article prepared by:

David Booth, FStratPS – author, Strategy Journeys - a guide to effective strategic planning

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

The Challenges of Strategy Delivery

The presentation discusses the challenges of delivering strategies within organizations, whether they are not-for-profit, government departments, or commercial entities. It emphasizes the need for a clear alignment between the business purpose and the strategies of various departments and projects. The goal is to track progress and improve performance, ultimately maximizing value.

However, strategy delivery is complex and often fails due to poor execution. David Dunning identified several challenges, including:

Clarity of Strategy: The presentation underscores the importance of having a well-defined strategy that is directly linked to the organization’s overarching purpose. A clear strategy serves as a roadmap, guiding departments and projects towards common goals. However, formulating such a strategy is only the first step; it must also be communicated effectively throughout the organization to ensure everyone understands their role in achieving the objectives.
Communication and Accountability: Effective strategy delivery hinges on robust communication channels that allow for the cascading of strategic goals and the collection of feedback from various levels within the organization. This two-way communication ensures that the strategy remains relevant and adaptable. Additionally, accountability is crucial—individuals and teams must understand their responsibilities and be empowered to take ownership of their contributions to the strategy.
Agility and Integration: The dynamic nature of business requires organizations to be agile, ready to pivot in response to new opportunities or threats without derailing ongoing projects or strategic initiatives. This agility must be balanced with the need for integration, ensuring that all parts of the organization are working in harmony towards shared objectives.

David Booth developed this further:

Dynamic Strategy Management: The presentation advocates for a view of strategy as a living entity within the organization, not a static document. It should evolve with the organization, adapting to changes in the internal and external environment. This dynamic approach requires continuous monitoring, review, and adjustment of the strategy.
Leadership and Culture: Leadership plays a pivotal role in energizing the organization and embedding the strategy into the corporate culture. Leaders must inspire and engage their teams, fostering an environment where the strategy is not just understood but lived by every member of the organization.
Holistic and Tailored Approach: Finally, the presentation suggests that a successful strategy considers both the exciting prospects of change projects and the routine of day-to-day operations. It should be holistic, encompassing all aspects of the organization. Moreover, there is no one-size-fits-all solution; each organization must develop a strategy that aligns with its unique culture, context, and capabilities

Conclusion

Audience Comment - “Strategy - especially new areas to be addressed - often compete with the day to day ongoing business. How much energy is spent on each is usually not defined.”

In essence, the presentation calls for a shift in how organizations approach strategy—from a static plan to a dynamic, integrated, and living part of the organization that requires continual attention, communication, and leadership to thrive.

In conclusion, each organization is unique and requires a tailored approach to strategy. The key is to develop strategic capabilities, embrace a continual approach to improvement, and foster a culture of learning and openness. This philosophy is crucial for organizations to effectively embrace and advance their strategies.

If you are interested in learning more about connecting strategy to your delivery, please contact us and find out how to start the journey to improve strategy delivery:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Connecting Strategy to Delivery with Viva Goals and BIG

Wed, 15 May 2024 08:13:06 GMT

Connecting Strategy to Delivery -

with Viva Goals and BIG

Introduction

Strategy is the way forward for any organisation that wants to achieve its purpose and vision. But how do you ensure that your strategy is actually delivered, and not just a nice document that gathers dust on a shelf? How do you align your people, processes, and resources to your strategic objectives and priorities? How do you measure and monitor your progress and performance, and make timely adjustments when needed?

Many organisations struggle with these questions, and face common challenges that hinder their strategy delivery. In this blog post, we will explore some of these challenges, and how you can use Viva Goals, a powerful Microsoft technology solution, to facilitate your strategy delivery. We will also discuss how Viva Goals can complement methods for managing and aligning corporate governance within an organisation, such as Business Integrated Governance (BIG), to create a comprehensive and holistic approach to strategy delivery.

Article prepared by:

David Dunning - Deepteam Director, CPS Chairman and Founder of the BIG CIC

Lester Lovelock - Head of Practice - Modern Work Management, CPS

The Challenges of Strategy Delivery

According to a Harvard Business Review article, companies on average deliver only 63% of the financial performance their strategies promise. 82% of Fortune 500 CEOs feel their organisation is effective at strategic planning, but only 14% indicated they are effective at implementing the strategy.

The Business Integrated Governance CIC has offered this perspective of strategy delivery challenges:

The challenges of translating strategy into execution are pervasive today – MIT looked at survey data from hundreds of large enterprise companies, and while 97% of senior leaders say they understand the company's strategic priorities, only 28% of them could name their company's top three goals.

And you can imagine how this compounds as you move further away from the exec team - in Microsoft's Work Trend Index, we found that only 13% of frontline managers understand how their work contributes to the company strategy. This disconnect is costing the business every single day, and unfortunately, the current climate only makes things more difficult.

Why is there such a gap between strategy and execution?

There are many challenges inherent in aligning strategy and delivery within your organisation. This post focuses on three of the 7 themes outlined above that can represent challenges to strategy delivery: enablement, control, and integration. Let's look at each of them in more detail (Reference – the BIG CIC Services Taxonomy ).

Enablement

Enablement refers to the ability of the organisation to empower its people to deliver the strategy. This involves setting clear and realistic objectives, allocating sufficient time, resources, and budgets, and prioritising the most important and impactful activities. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine this enablement:

The organisation has too many competing objectives and related activities, which create confusion, overload, and conflict.
Leadership time, resources, and budgets are overcommitted. Prioritisation is ad hoc and academic, rather than based on data and evidence.
Strategic priorities are regularly overridden for short term expedience, which erodes the trust and commitment of the stakeholders and the staff.

These issues result in a lack of focus, alignment, and engagement, which reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of strategy delivery.

Control

Control refers to the ability of the organisation to monitor and manage its strategy delivery. This involves defining clear and measurable plans and indicators, collecting and analysing reliable data, tracking progress and performance, and making informed and timely decisions. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine their control:

Objectives are not supported with clearly defined plans and measures, which make it difficult to assess the feasibility, scope, and impact of the strategy.
Performance is difficult to measure with reliable data. Progress is reported on tasks, not objectives, which can obscure the actual value and outcome of the strategy by focusing primarily on the delivery.
Alignment drifts between objectives and activity, which creates gaps, overlaps, and inconsistencies in the strategy delivery.
Meeting agendas are not well controlled, which leads to unproductive and unfocused discussions and actions.
Assurance is not built into governance operation, which exposes the organisation to risks and uncertainties.
These issues result in a lack of visibility, accountability, and agility, which reduce the quality and speed of strategy delivery.

Integration

Integration refers to the ability of the organisation to coordinate and connect its strategy delivery across different domains and levels. This involves creating a big picture of how the objectives cascade, connect, and combine, aligning the governance approaches and practices for overall coherence, and enabling cross-functional support and collaboration. However, many organisations face the following issues that undermine their integration:

Low confidence that objectives are actioned within business planning, which creates a disconnect between strategy and operations.
No big picture of how objectives cascade, connect, and combine, which prevents the organisation from seeing the interdependencies and synergies of the strategy.
Parochial approaches to governance not aligned for overall governance, which creates silos and conflicts among different domains and levels.
Lack of performance baseline for governance operation, which makes it hard to benchmark and improve the governance effectiveness and efficiency.
No cross-functional support to enable integrated governance, which limits the sharing of information, resources, and best practices.
Information and data facilities not adequate to manage or provide assurance, which hampers the quality and availability of data for decision making.
Disconnected information sources not designed to aggregate upwards, which impedes the consolidation and communication of data for reporting.
Use of processes and tools not adequate to operate governance, which reduces the usability and functionality of the governance systems.

These issues result in a lack of coherence, consistency, and collaboration, which reduce the scalability and sustainability of strategy delivery.

How Viva Goals Can Help

Viva Goals is a technology solution from Microsoft that helps organisations connect their strategy to their delivery. It is a cloud-based platform that enables organisations to define, align, and track their strategic objectives and priorities, and to empower their people to achieve them.

Viva Goals can help organisations address some of the challenges of strategy delivery, such as:

All in all – these outcomes and benefits lead to greater value with more effectiveness and efficiency from strategy delivery.

How BIG Can Help

BIG provides a comprehensive approach to defining and operating governance through all governance bodies within an organisation – from (for example) corporate governance to department leadership teams, product groups and project boards. It involves integrating governance principles, practices, and structures throughout business operations and decision-making processes. BIG can help organisations address some of the challenges of strategy delivery, such as:

The BIG Body of Knowledge also contains guidance on:

How to get improving strategy delivery though Business Integrated governance onto the executive agenda
Definitions for the components of BIG Operating Model (i.e. what do you need to build and operate to enable BIG to work)
Implementing a transformation programme to build and sustain the BIG capability, and ensuring the change is managed and adopted.

How Viva Goals and BIG work together

Viva Goals is a backbone for strategy delivery - not a silver bullet that can solve all the challenges of strategy delivery. It is a powerful technology solution that can enable and enhance the management of objectives and key results within strategy delivery. It provides the core of information which is part of an operating model for strategy development and delivery – providing the basis for decision making and governance through the organisation.

Viva Goals is central to an organisation operating the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) necessary for effective strategy development and delivery.

Viva Goals and BIG can work together to create a comprehensive and holistic approach to strategy delivery, by leveraging the strengths of both technology and governance. Viva Goals can provide the platform and tools to define, align, and track the strategic objectives and priorities, and to empower the people to achieve them. BIG can provide the framework and methods to develop and sustain the vision and strategy, and to integrate and align the governance operation. Together, they can help organisations connect their strategy to their delivery, and achieve their purpose and vision.

Together, Viva Goals and BIG can help organisations enhance the performance and achieve greater value from strategy delivery:

Conclusion

Strategy delivery is a complex and challenging undertaking, but it is also a critical and rewarding one. By understanding the common challenges of strategy delivery, and by using Viva Goals and BIG as complementary strategies, organisations can improve their strategy delivery capability, and achieve greater outcomes and value.

If you are interested in learning more about Viva Goals and BIG, and how they can help you connect your strategy to your delivery, please contact us and find out how to start the journey to improve strategy delivery:

See where Viva Goals fits in the BIG Framework:

Enablers

Clarity of Purpose(s)
Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform - Viva Goals
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

Strategy Delivery: Strategic Process

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 12:54:20 GMT

Strategy Delivery - Clarity?

Deepteam sees Strategy as the pathway from a current state to a future state in which our organisation delivers more of it's purpose.

We see organisations containing many strategies - at the organisation level, within departments and cross-department endeavours. Strategy development is therefore a key busienss activity throughout the organisation.

For those involved in the strategic process - how can an integrated organisation help them?

Every strategic process is different, but they all need reliable information:

Clarity of purpose
Current organisation state - capability, assets, operating model - strength and weakness
Owner / shareholder / senior level expectations
Regulatory impositions and imperatives
Opportunities and threats

The challenge for the Strategy Development Team is to take in these drivers and produce a high level Vision which encapsulates:

The value will the organisation deliver
How it will deliver value
What are the key steps and decision points to enable it to deliver value

Clearly this is a huge simplification of a complex and iterative process!

The challenge for the Strategy Implementation Team is to turn the Vision picture into actionable items for the organisation in terms of:

Business as Usual expectations of performance - Targets for Busienss Units / Departments
Value Creation expectations - Objectives and Targets for Product Groups to drive future Value Generation
Change expectations - Objectives for change programmes to shape the organisation as it needs to be

The hard part is to deploy leadership time, funds and resources to accountable people to empower them appropriately, and to cascade the intent through the organisation.

Clearly - aside from the challenges of Strategy Development itself there are challenges in:

The basis of the vision for the organisation not being clear based on the opportunities, threats, imperatives and goals
Translation of the Strategy for the organisation into actionable items for the organisation

We believe the answer to these issues comprises of:

Enablers

Strategic Process
Integrated Governance Framework
Information and Data Capability
Business Support - to operate the Strategic Process and Integrated Governance

Technology

Corporate RAID
Document Library
OKR Platform
Prioritisation tools
Milestone Planning
Resource Planning
Finance Planning

RAID - Risk, Action, Issue and Decision

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Culture Change

Current State Assessment - of current capability
Periodic Review of Purpose, Business Drivers
Enabled people
Working Strategy Operating Model
Adopted Strategy Information Model
Operation of Integrated Governance
Fair Accountability

How does your organisation stack up in these areas?

If you would like to understand the Vision we have, and discuss your situation - please 'Find out more' or 'Contact Us' below.

Sustainable Strategy - do you believe in Magic?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 15:32:31 GMT

Partner Event:

Strategy Delivery -

Do we all believe in Magic?

Sustainable Strategy Conference - 22nd / 23rd June 2023 - on line.

Successful organisations are led by smart creative people who can listen, evaluate and imagineer. The details are often left to managers to interpret and translate the ask into a go-do - right?

When the go-do fits within controllable domains, we can expect results. But when our transformational change goes cross-business, value stream development and delivery involves several areas, often our business as usual effort is focused on bonus laden area targets - so how do we integrate, performance manage and make objective priority calls at the same time as our delivery context changes dynamically? Are we able to make accountability stick, do we have the objectivity of assurance, is good governance in place and do we have governance professionals and the reliable information sources we need for agile decision making?

Evidence from multiple public workshops tells us that generally our organisations are not very good at this. There are consistently-reported key challenges in strategy delivery, such as:

unsatisfactory strategy formulation
implementation planning, and delivery
difficulties in balancing and prioritising Business-as-Usual (BAU), change, and value creation
insufficient business support and assurance resources to effectively orchestrate governance operations
inadequate information infrastructure for agile decision-making
cultural difficulties in achieving accountability for strategic outcomes; and
underwhelming results from strategy delivery workloads

The presentation emphasises the need for a strategy operating model (SOM) and Business Integrated Governance (BIG) to enhance organizational performance and agility. It suggests that organisations often face challenges in strategy delivery due to unsatisfactory formulation, implementation planning, and delivery, as well as difficulties in balancing business-as-usual (BAU), change, and value creation. Additionally, inadequate resources, information infrastructure, cultural difficulties, and underwhelming results contribute to the overall struggle in strategy delivery.

The presentation raises the question of why strategy, despite its critical role in organizational success, often lacks the necessary processes, rigor, and tools compared to other areas like budget management. It suggests that organizations may rely on hope rather than effective planning and execution, almost expecting "magic" to happen.

To address these challenges, the presentation proposes a strategy operating model (SOM) and Business Integrated Governance (BIG) as solutions. The SOM would provide a structured approach to strategy formulation, delivery, and integration with business-as-usual activities, value generation, and local innovation. BIG would connect governance principles, such as those outlined in ISO 37000 (Governance of Organizations), to practical implementation.

The argument also emphasizes the importance of engaging senior sponsors and overcoming inertia within the organization. It suggests that by adopting a SOM and BIG approach, organizations can overcome common problems, achieve better strategy delivery, and enhance overall performance and agility.

In conclusion, the presentation highlights the need for a more systematic and integrated approach to strategy delivery. By implementing a strategy operating model (SOM) and Business Integrated Governance (BIG), organizations can address key challenges, connect governance principles to practice, and improve their ability to achieve strategic outcomes.

Listen to the argument:

Formulation – a 5 year fire-and-forget, or a process?
Strategy - formulation and delivery - top down, bottom up – both?
Delivery – isolated as a change portfolio – or integrated with BAU, value generation and local innovation?
Anecdotal and evidential problems - Why do we often ignore good practice?
ISO 37000 – principles for Governance of Organisations
Business Integrated Governance – connect principles to practice
Engage about the journey – overcoming inertia
Conclusions

Join us at the sustainable strategy conference to hear more and engage in panel hosted discussions.

Claim a Regular Entry Pass to the conference today, at a price you set. Contribute if you can. But don't miss this unique event.

With your pass, you'll be able to participate immediately. You'll receive:

a link to a strategic planning scheduling aid
complimentary access to a select number of past conference videos
invitations to attend webinars
plus more

Once the conference starts on June 22nd, you'll be invited to view a select number of pre-recorded videos, attend live sessions and join discussions.

Such live sessions include the panel discussion on Shortening the Planning Cycle

Some people argue that with unpredictable world events and volatility in business domains, the future is so uncertain that to 'plan' is at best nugatory, and worst a complete distraction.
What then is the answer? While fast adaption may not be open to all of us - we can at least make strategic planning less difficult, faster and more efficient.
UTC -5 - 2:30pm-3:45pm (8.30pm UK) - Panel: Shortening the Planning Cycle - discussion with Michael Taylor , David Dunning , Dionne Harris . We will attempt to unravel this!!

Plus, if you can't attend the entire event, we'll tell you about the Full Ticket which is a package of all the video content from the event. With your purchase of this VIP product, you can view all the pre-recorded and live summit videos for a year.

Product Management Vs Project Management

Mon, 22 May 2023 13:42:33 GMT

Partner Event:

Product Management and Project Management

Understanding parallels and intersections - 22nd June 2023 - PMI UK (South East) 5-7pm UK time

We all understand portfolio, programme and project as "P3" - an age-old acronym.

Some of us argue that Product Management should also be mentioned in the same breath as P3 - and believe that we should be using the acronym "P4".

What is the similarity between Product and Project (including programme and portfolio too) and why would we want to extend the acronym to P4?

How do they both fit strategy delivery?

Firstly, the similarities:

Point 1 - each of the P4 entities has a justification made from a promise to achieve objectives, generate value in return for spending funds and resources. The strength of the justification enables prioritisation.

Point 2 - they each may deliver cross functionally - using resources from outside their immediate lines of authority.

Point 3 - they each have an accountable person but may not have complete authority or empowerment to achieve their objectives.

Point 4 - each of the P4 entities may be controlled via scope definition, milestones, resource allocation vs actuals, budget vs spend, risk, actions, issues, decisions.

When put like that - what logically are the differences?

Point 5 - It is said of portfolio, programme and project that they are 'finite'. They are meant to end. The end point for each may be less clear, and further away for 'portfolio' and 'programme' than 'project'. Product is also finite, but some would argue for many product types, development and exploitation is more continuous delivery. Perhaps product is closest to programme, and product group closest to portfolio.

Point 6 - 'run' or 'change'? Many suggest that projects and programmes are about making changes to the busienss - but actually project and programmes are also used to deliver customer solutions - which can be considered business as usual. Products / value streams are often thought of as part of 'run' - but products are significant contributors to strategy delivery, and some say they are 'change'. How about we recognise Value Creation, BAU and Change.

Point 7 - 'benefit realisation' or 'value stream'? Finite deliveries - like programmes and projects work to deliver change into the organisation, and change brings resulting benefits - which may be savings, risk reduction of capability to generate value. Continuous delivery - like service functions, engineering functions, manufacturing etc. produce streams of value. It is products (customer facing or internal) that generate value streams with.

But how do both fit business strategy?

The question is - is your strategy emergent ot directed?

q.1. Are your projects 'aligned to strategic objectives' or do you form projects to achieve strategic objectives?

q.2. Are your products developed, then exploited, or developed to be exploited?

q.3 How do you make choices between funding/resourcing a new product and key business transformation?

What is the relationship between project and product?

q.1. Do you develop and sustain your products using projects?

q.2. Is exploitation of your products (generating value) 'Business as Usual' (BAU)?

q.3 Do you get your BAU ready for your products using projects?

Another perspective?

Some of us were brought up with project & programme management. We're 'wired' to 'create then handover' to 'business as usual'. We think product management is about ice cream, soap powder & computer games - nothing to do with business matters.

How about a rethink. Why? Recognise this example?

Finance System project - an old on-premise system goes out of support. A case is made to 'go to the cloud' based on assumed savings from lower running costs vs the cost of IT set up.

A 'Business Owner' is identified as the interface for an 'IT project manager'.

What happens?

- the Business Owner is too busy to properly lead from a customer perspective, & is not experienced in change

- the IT project manager focuses on tech & ignores business change

- the 'customer' is poorly engaged in analysis & needs are missed

- when the IT project manager is 'finished', the Business Owner & team spend hundreds of unrecorded hours to 'get it to work'

- a support contract is turned on with the supplier but IT stays at arm's length

- shortly after 'go live' an automatic update breaks several reports

- there are things the user base can't do - Excel work arounds start to proliferate

- the Business Owner loses interest

- no one seems accountable for estimated benefits, or has foresight for the 'Finance System', or has integrative overall oversight

We could have thought of the Finance System as a CAPABILITY which needs a PRODUCT MANAGER . Take 2:

- a Sponsor is appointed as accountable for overall ongoing capability - including initiation, change & sustainment

- the product manager ensures analysis is done with customer focus

- the product manager holds the IT project manager to account for competent delivery of what the customer wants

- the product manager has provisioned adoption support & avoided the finance team spending hundreds of hours to 'get it to work'

- a support contract is turned on with the supplier, and holds IT to account to manage

- shortly after 'go live' - an anticipated automatic upgrade is smoothly included

- the product manager listens to the user base & add minor additions to a small changes backlog which prevent the need for excel fudges

- the product manager is responsible for measurable value achieved

- the sponsor retrains interest as the sponsor, not as a 'mug'

- the product manager provides foresight & integrative oversight for the 'Finance Capability' throughout future operations

Have some Ice Cream and stop dropping balls - Put some product management into your business life!

Join us at the University of Reading to hear more and engage in panel hosted discussions:

Project Management Methodologies
Project Governance
Product Management Strategy
Product Governance
Panel discussion and Q&A

Maybe you can decide whether you want to say P4 not P3 from now on?

Corporate Governance, Strategy Delivery and BIG

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 16:22:07 GMT

Event Summary

Corporate Governance, Strategy Delivery and BIG

Following on from the session presented 12th April ( Improving Strategy Delivery - you have to think BIG ) David Dunning and Linde Grebe from the Good Governance Academy recorded a conversation to explore how Corporate Governance, Strategy Delivery and Business Integrated Governance fit together.

Agenda

Section 1:

Introduction - background on the series, and introduction to Business Integrated Governance. Integrating circles and spheres of governance working within an organisation.

Compliance Exercise? - we talked over Corporate Governance being about codes, guidance and principles - doing it for the record - and the need to change that! Connecting top level to operations - balance between direction and operation - to bake into the organisation cake.

Embedding Governance in the day to day - ISO 37000 has high level principled to run the organisation by - there are elements to cascade into the busienss - Value Generation, Strategy Focus, Accountability to name a few. Little hope of achieving purpose without accountability - whatever level of compliance applied.

Tone from the Top - Accountability = Look Forwards (not just back) - how to get the tone delegated for doing the right things the right way. But we have to look forwards to achieve, to project forecast. The Governance Framework has to help the future as well as report compliance in the past

Corporate Governance - Value Add - Not just looking backwards - governance is needed in strategic planning - making the right decisions. Listening to the right information and risks (opportunity / threat) so we deploy funds and people the right way. Use governance to achieve more strategic deliverables!

Section 2:

Linking Purpose to Vision, Strategy and Governance - corporate governance requires purpose (and all the factors under that) to be core to what happens - but how do the PowerPoint messages get out there? The cascade and recompilation needs to be managed!

Believable Line of Sight - is there a clear connection Purpose to Vision, Strategy to department plans / change portfolios and product portfolios - is the information traceable?

Section 3:

Governance of Information - strategy is a creative process driven by information. Do we understand where the PowerPoint has come from? How do I believe it? Have you made this up on a spreadsheet? Information Governance is key to strategy delivery!

Integration of REAL Information - valid information can be framed / and emphasised correctly - points of accountability are core and governance focuses on information and that it has mechanisms to assure the source.

Data Based Decisions - We make information out of data - and we have AI these days to help is with information - but - instead of piling information as high as a mountain and mining it - why don't we focus on what information we need to be accountable, to operate governance? Can we pull rather than push information? Collect less, achieve greater insight

Section 4:

Share rather than Send - can we move away from a scenario where we send interpretation / snippets and share it?

Accountability, Governance and Prioritisation - to be accountable we need to be empowered with resources and funds. Prioritisation gives us these. But how do we prioritise work items where the benefits fall outside our domain? How does the Engineering manager decide between workloads for BAU, product development and strategic change? We need a similar view of priorities - and act on them. Can we see where resource deployment is deployed in line with priorities?

Section 5:

Agility and Collaborative Strategy - How to cope with opportunity and threat? How do we use corporate governance to redirect priorities or supress variance from what has been agreed? Think BIG at all organisational levels - strategy is dynamic - we must be able to respond! And we have strategies at all levels - the challenge is aligning and spotting variance.

Organisation Structure, Flexibility and Governance Values - responsibilities are organised by line function to get things done - but in many cases, strategic change is cross business - we need to be able to prioritise across the organisation and apply governance values flexibly to help us make the right management calls when our function is not a direct beneficiary of strategic change.

Stakeholders - internal / external, legitimate or not. The cascade of strategic objectives needs to be mapped down to the person level. Stakeholders must have an input / consideration through the governance cake!

Top Management, Governance and Strategy - We must support our executives to adopt more strategic roles and capability when promoted beyond a job which may mostly only require operational skill. We cannot expect them to accept or understand compliance for the sake of it! Corporate Governance and BIG helps the journey to purpose!!

Wrap Up - BIG enables is to integrate corporate governance through the organisation to enable greater achievement of purpose!

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Lindie Grebe

Good Governance Academy

Send me a link to the full recording please.

Value Generation - Driving and Driven by Strategy

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 11:25:07 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Event Summary:

From Strategy to Value - and Back Again

Session presented 28th April

Many of us belong to organisations with a clear purpose and strategic approach to the future.

Some drive markets with innovation and wrap business strategy around creativity. Others attack the future by forging fantastic customer relationships. Most are somewhere in between, but in all cases product (items or services) people are the hot core of our value generation.

In response, our organisations are systematically defined and built to manage clearly defined workloads. We set up Departments for continuous delivery, Functions around a core processes, or multi skilled groups focused on shorter term objectives and projects.

Our product teams are often set up as a core of people with the challenge to integrate and coordinate the organisation. Their task is to get things done through agile development teams, functional units and suppliers often with no common approach to planning, prioritising, dependency / risk or performance management.

But how do product objectives fit within the business priorities?

It may be possible to show the value profile for a particular product – but what is the strategic fit?

For example, our sales team may be interested in selling an old product line as they know it and can make their numbers with it - but strategically the sales director may be wishing to move onto replacement lines.

Furthermore - what is the priority of the business objectives for a product compared to a replacement finance system? How do you compare apples and pears?

Understanding strategic alignment in addition to the commercial case for a product can further help prioritise efforts across the organisation. Prioritising products (and related workloads) may help selection of product options, but alignment to strategy enables functional leads to understand the importance of supporting products alongside carrying out their functional or change related commitments.

Furthermore, alignment to strategic objectives can help product leads work more easily within their organisations. For example, clear prioritisation can help a product lead face fewer battles for engagement, resources and funds in the complex matrix of responsibilities and dependencies.

Where to start?

Join David and Pam in this agenda:

Strategy & Strategy Flywheel
Information flow & OKRs
Organization around types of value
Getting the organization behind you
Work out where to start!

The session started by offering some core definitions for 'strategy' - as a common complaint is that there are many perceptions of what strategy is and is not.

" Strategy – a journey to the future while managing a balancing act along the way?"

We suggested that the challenge for our senior leaders is to manage the process to develop, implement and deliver strategy without getting lost in the murk of reality!

We offered our view on the process of 'Develop' and talked about a 'strategy information model' comprising of all the artefacts from 'purpose' to 'busienss case' and included a perspective on the relationship of strategy and innovation.

We asked the audience to comment on their view of how product management was included in strategy, and what came back wasn't a tale of systematic inclusion.

We proceeded to offer a model for how the cascade could happen from strategy to strategic plan, through strategic choices to implementation in BAU, Change and Value Generation workstreams. We illustrated how strategic and tactical choices where constantly needed. and suggested that the often-reported tension between BAU and Change was down to lack of framework for making strategic vs tactical choices.

We further proposed that the means to extract some of the emotional tension out of strategic vs tactical choices was to manage using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). In busienss there are clear targets for revenue and sales. In product management we can see product usage analytics on usage and adoption. In delivery we can see milestones or other flow metrics. OKRs are positioned as strategic metrics to enable us to track strategic accomplishment and compare the importance of different options / choices.

The challenge for strategy delivery is decomposing strategy into OKRs which can be

cascaded through the organisation,
updated as drivers behind them change,
prioritised so the most important ones receive funds / resources, and
tracked for progress on past / forecast achievement.

We positioned Business Integrated Governance to ensure that governance within and across Operating Models is aligned, so that choices are made against strategic rather than tactical priorities.

Call to action:

We can only improve product management so far
We can try to influence / collaborate colleagues so far
We need an ecosystem to effective work in…
Think BIG!

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Pamela Schure

Director

Association of International Product Marketing & Management Recording:

Improving Strategy Delivery – You have to think BIG

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 14:14:40 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Event Summary

Improving Strategy Delivery – you have to think BIG

Session presented 12th April

Strategy development and delivery is not perfect in many organisations. Why is this?

At two recent workshops, we asked "What reasons have you encountered for why strategies have not been delivered successfully?" - we have collated around 150 points from current practitioners.

It is almost as if some of us expect strategy delivery to happen just by magic.

It would be easy to suggest that more effective strategy delivery could simply be found with better project management, improved change capability, a PMO, some shiny software. But strategy delivery spans the whole organisation and many disciplines, not just some as delivery pulls on the same resources (people, money, leadership) as busienss as usual. The answer lies in Integrated Governance. So where can I look for guidance?

Recent blogs on the topic have included:

- Thinking BIG to improve strategy delivery

- Strategy - “It’s just impossible to steer"

- Keep pulling on the cape or don some brave pants?

- The REAL Iron triangle

- Do some of us expect strategy delivery to happen by magic?

- Dress our emperors appropriately

David and Martin ran this agenda:

Establish the case – strategy delivery is not perfect
Brainstorm audience experience of strategy delivery pains
Position effective organisational governance to manage and deliver performance and strategy.
Position ISO 37000 as the background principles to draw from
Brainstorm - audience experience trying to improve strategy delivery
Position Business Integrated Governance as the delivery means – logical model and readiness assessment
Summary

Event Summary:

David and Martin introduced the event and opened by pointing out that there is plenty of evidence on the internet that strategy delivery is not great.

We illustrated how strategy delivery is not integrated - and how information transfer and meaning losses at every handover point were problematic - compounded by the lack of ability to verify message transfer or to allow for meaningful discussion and feedback. It was further suggested that organisations may have objectives competing (or conflicting) for the same leadership time / funding / resources across BAU, value generation and change. The difficulty with trade offs for resources was illustrated with a simple organisation example.

The audience was then engaged for their view of strategy delivery pains. We got a lot of responses, and our considered answers are here for some. (which we related to outputs from previous events - and signposted the outputs making the case that strategy delivery is not perfect - access that event report here .)

We illustrated the difficulty in cascading and reconnecting the information around strategy through 3 example levels - board, directorate (sales) and team. The complexity on a simple example was obvious - so can it be any wonder that organisations struggle to connect strategy to delivery with no systematic support, governance framework operation or technology?

We positioned ISO 37000 - Governance of Organizations . It was released in September 2021 and provides language structure and principles to run your organisations by. Its principles underpin Busienss Integrated Governance (BIG).

We then asked attendees for their views on "What is your experience of trying to implement strategy delivery solutions?". We got a lot more responses , and our considered answers are here for some:

All these responses drive us to think BIG.

The Business Integrated Governance framework helps us organise ourselves for success. At the heart of BIG is Accountability and Governance, but it also covers organisation, data, information, business support, assurance, and an integrated strategy development and delivery model. BIG encourages collaborative strategy and objective setting at all levels of the organisation and enables a move away from rigid annual strategy plans and inflexible budgeting. A version of it has been integrated into the Praxis website , and can be used with tried and tested delivery methods out of the Praxis Framework.

The session explained that the BIG Model is developed by the Core P3M Data Club - a Community Interest Company, and introduced:

The BIG Operating Model
Components
Enablers
Culture
Key Concepts
Principles

The session then introduced the BIG Readiness model which can be used with stakeholders to understand their readiness for Business Integrated Governance - developing clear understanding of current capability and outline design of possible future strategy management fitting into Integrated Governance.

We concluded:

Strategy delivery is not great and it is difficult!
Too complex to rely on magic – we need solid engineering
ISO 37000 provides core principles
BIG provides a framework to deliver and operate
Principles based engagement is essential to get started

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Martin Samphire

Associate Director

Send me a link to the full recording once available please.

Accountability - impossible without systematic prioritisation?

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 10:16:39 GMT

Bookable event:

Accountability - impossible without systematic prioritisation?

Session presented 15th March

It is a simple fact of business life that the stuff that gets done is the stuff someone is accountable for. Does anyone disagree?

Our view is that without accountability working - it is impossible to deliver strategic outcomes. No accountability / poor management of accountability = things not achieved. It is that simple.

Secondly - accountability will not happen unless people are empowered - with allocations of resources, funds and leadership time - not just hollow appointments or impositions. Without allocations - sponsors have to go hunting, competing, beg-borrow-and-stealing. That is not a good culture (feudalism was outlawed in England with the Tenures Abolition Act 1660). To receive allocations for their strategic initiative - a sponsor must have some kind of priority in the eyes of the organisation.

But t he problem is - while we can prioritise any list of things - 'priority' can be somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and we may not have visibility of priorities - or how they have been established. And priority changes. And how do you know if team lead X or Y is prioritising workloads in line with your view (or ' the view') of priority? But what do you - or does anyone do with it?

An example. I have a strategic portfolio of projects to deliver shared services. The projects are dependent. We know the busienss priority for the portfolio, and the relative importance of each project. However - I need busienss engagement, and the department heads I need to work with have service targets they have to meet which is the focus for their time. Their priority is not my priority. Their prioritisation to local issues for some key resources has the ability to massively disrupt the overall portfolio benefit realisation. Yet project managers have to go into mortal combat with every team lead to get some attention...

How can we possibly improve strategy delivery if fundamentally we cannot prioritise systematically then act upon it - or manage visible priorities - especially when matters cut across an organisation like strategy delivery inevitably does?

Some would say - it is up to grown-ups to work the problem between them - but how many of us see the breakdown of sensible debate leading to the 'say so' of the most senior person and their value judgements?

How about instead - we take away the rocks and stones and knuckle dusters - and equip people with information?

Event Summary:

Dan and David welcomed attendees and set the stall out with respect to the importance of accountability to the achievement of strategic objectives.

We noted that to be achieved, we need to appoint accountable people. We noted that even at this high level, the organisation would be prioritising the objectives it had.

The presentation moved on to discuss the need to balance busienss as usual activity, value generation and change - and make choices on how to spend finite resources and funds in each of these areas. The discussion developed to explore how difficult this can be across an organisation which could have personal and departmental objectives to contend with.

The next discussion on prioritisation was then about how to deploy funding / resources at a macro level between BAU departments, product teams, and strategic programmes. For example, where a department has provided a service for years, the service level is known, targets definable, and resources are estimable. Department busienss plans can make the case, show what funds are needed to enable justifiable local innovation spending, and set aside resources to support strategic initiatives We referred to prioritisation and allocation of 'fist-fulls' of funds / resources.

What we identified as difficult was the prioritisation of emergent opportunities. Candidate projects that did not fit into the strategic portfolio, or appear in the budgeted local innovation spending plan. Moreover - some candidate projects may span several departments, and need resources from some, while delivering benefits to others.

We then asked our audience to give their view on how they can spot prioritisation isn't working - and we picked up 20+ points! A selection included:

Dan pre sented a techniques, technology and a scenario to illustrate the challenge. He signposted AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) as a method available to us, and highlighted the technology solution available from TransparentChoice to support this. In essence, it is a modelling approach that involves the identification of strategic drivers ('Increase Revenue', 'Increase Customer Satisfaction' etc.) which can be given relative importance. Options (e.g. projects) can be rated against each driver (against suitable guidelines), and the relative merit of each option can then be calculated - and the relation to cost and risk can be assessed - leading to a ranking of options. This can be helpful when selecting the right mix of project considering value, cost and risk - and bearing in mind funding / resourcing constraints. This data based framework can be very useful as it has unique advantages when important elements of the decision are difficult to quantify or compare, or where communication among team members is impeded by their different specialisations, terminologies, or perspectives .

In the scenario, we discussed the importance of good definition, realistic estimating (of value, risk cost) - and concluded that there is more to prioritising than simply the calculation - there is a clear need for effective business support, information, data platform, an effective governance operation and leadership (to drive and provide resources.)

The scenario included strategic objectives from a CEO, department objectives from sales and operations, and illustrated the challenge facing IT when deploying resources onto project workloads that would come from all of them. In relation to the introduction - the CEO would have the strategic portfolio - the initiatives that would be cross cutting - that would get funded out of the strategic portfolio. The projects for sales - those would be rated against their drivers and they would select which projects get done in sales - and escalate for more funding if a case could be made. Similarly for operations.

The challenge would be for IT - that had its service level to resource, and its background upgrade/maintenance programme - but work packages would appear from sales and operations to support their projects - so an understanding of the value of the projects would help IT management in deploying finite resources.

We then asked attendees what they had tried to get prioritisation working (14 responses), but most responses were further examples of prioritisation problems. Specific things people had tried included Weighted Shortest Job First (Scaled Agile framework for prioritising backing jobs) and pairwise comparison of projects. Some have tried to used balance scorecards, but found they could not react fast enough to changing / hidden priorities.

In summary - we had talked about the importance of accountability. We explained that to be accountable, we must be empowered. To be empowered means allocating resources / funds - and allocating has to be based on systematic prioritisation. We talked through a method and signposted tooling - then outlined a typical scenario that needs help. Asking our audience, there were many examples of how prioritisation was failing, and in asking what people had tried the answer to that was 'very little'.

Our invitation to the audience was then to consider talking to us about their situation - and we offered an engagement approach to build consensus on current state / capability before rushing to offer a solution. We understand starting improvement initiatives is difficult! We positioned Deepteam as a company that can help with support end to end for defining and delivering improvement, and positioned Transparent Choice as the provider of technology to assist with information-based prioritisation.

This session can be repeated privately for audiences that want to facilitate a similar discussion internally.

Agenda

The importance of accountability to strategy delivery, and the importance of prioritisation to empowerment.
Challenges in balancing the cascade of prioritisation and the challenges of BAU, Value Generation and Change
Spotting when prioritisation isn't working
Translating objectives and targets into a scoring system
Example scenario - IT, Sales, Operations and Leadership - prioritising to empower
Possible First Steps on your journey to greater strategy accomplishment (e.g. where to start, and tactics to get moving!)

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Dan Dures

Partner - TransparentChoice

Other events in the series here

Meet our Partners

Meet our Associates

To book a live event or access the full event recording and event slides / analysis, please register here:

What next? Speak to us about your situation...

The Backbone for Strategy Delivery

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 13:13:34 GMT

The Backbone for Strategy Delivery

Organisations often explain strategy to shareholders through documents, PowerPoint and beautifully designed materials published to their websites.

However - can you show how your strategic intent has been turned into actions that directors, managers and colleagues can track? Can you see your objectives mixed with expected key results to be tracked by enabling workstreams and projects?

Furthermore - what if you could make it simpler for you and your teams to manage this data, visualise this information and enable understanding of status in terms of change and performance - through an enterprise-wide system that is open to all?

Microsoft Viva Goals provides capability to manage Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for an organisation, providing the backbone for strategy delivery.

But ...

...we know technology alone is never enough – we know we need to combine people, process, information and governance in an effective operating model...

The Business Integrated Governance (BIG) model provides the framework to connect strategy to delivery and back again, including:

principles to help us understand our current strategy delivery capability and gaps,
components to envision / devise the building blocks we need for improvement,
reference to methods and models , for process, information and data
a model roadmap for culture change.

Event Summary:

Chris and David welcomed attendees and set the stall out with respect to the importance of information backbone to the achievement of strategic objectives.

David then presented an outline of the pains of strategy delivery easily discoverable on the Internet and from the 3 sessions previously run ( most recent here ). We than asked the group - "What are your pains in strategy delivery?" - this was an open session in Slido which received 18 responses. We discussed as responses emerged. Some are illustrated below with answers to the points:

David presented his view of the strategic process which took the organisation purpose, stirred in opportunities, threats, imperatives and goals (OTIGs) to drive a Vision. The vision would be the basis for a strategy to advance from current state to future state, with a strategy defining the method of approach - including Objectives, Targets and Challenges (OTCs) to be addressed along the way. We noted that to be achieved, we need to appoint accountable people. We noted that even at this high level, the organisation would be prioritising the objectives it had.

We offered a Principles based approach to engagement of stakeholders - which we covered in a previous event in more detail. We signposted the Maturity Assessment that can be done in support of this engagement.

David then introduced the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) Framework as a means to understand the current strengths and weaknesses in a strategy improvement situation - and as a tool to engage stakeholders in a future vision.

We then proceeded to signpost the technologies that need to underpin successful strategy delivery - highlighting that strategy delivery is ongoing - NOT just a one off exercise (well it is a strategic process!). More here about our view that Technology Alone is not Enough .

Chris also signposted the Microsoft Technologies available to support strategy delivery, and proceeded to introduce Viva Goals as a Microsoft Platform to enable the cascade, development and integration of objectives and key results

Chris then proceeded to demonstrate the Viva Goals capability by starting with high level objectives, breaking down into lower level objectives - ensuring there are measurable key results identified to validate / demonstrate the objective. ( The demonstration can be seen in the full event recording (please see the link below).

We then offered an outline approach to providing a technology solution into this area, and showed how technology and business change initiatives could be aligned.

We wrapped up by summarising the session:

Strategy delivery is not great – how is it for you?
There is a principles based approach to enable discussion / consensus
BIG Components enable current / future state envisioning
There are multiple technology / information / data elements
Viva Goals provides a backbone for strategy delivery
Getting strategy delivery change onto a table is difficult – yet not impossible!

This session is completely repeatable and can be provided within a single Organisation if required.

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Christopher Pond

Partner - CPS

Other events in the series here

Meet our Partners

Meet our Associates

More about our Technology alone is not enough theme

Access the FULL Event recording:

Strategy Delivery – Who really cares?

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 14:48:38 GMT

Bookable event:

Strategy Delivery.

Who really cares?

Session presented 7th March

We all talk a good game on strategy delivery – we sit up straight when it gets discussed. But if strategy delivery success rates are as low as reputed to be – does anyone actually really care about strategy delivery? Or - are we each just focused on our specific areas and our operational targets?

Is it the case that the only strategic activity that happens is that which aligns with each individuals own personal priorities? How would we know otherwise?

It is therefore vital we know about the different perspectives that key people might have about strategy, strategy delivery and the challenges they face in both.

How can you bring people together to consider common challenges and shared solutions from an organizational perspective as well as a personal one - and start to develop a plan to improve?

David and Andrey welcomed attendees to think about who they would need to engage to improve strategy delivery.

The session recapped the pains of strategy delivery - gathered from basic research and previous events .

We introduced illustrations of our strategy information and operating models to enable discussion. We then asked attendees to describe the clarity of their strategic process outputs - which have been captured into the recording (see below).

The next section suggested that the way to start improving strategy delivery is to quietly engage people about their perceptions and pains. A process was simulated to identify who, map their roles and responsibilities, then some example profiles for CEO / COO where we captured their reality challenges and expectations.

We also discussed the key roles of senior managers in addition to the director level, and went on to explore the role of these people in improving strategy delivery.

As an engagement tool we offered the 14 core principles in BIG to structure discussions and signposted the illustrations available in BIG which people can use to sketch around and scribble upon in workshops and 1:1 meetings.

We then proceeded to talk about the engagement challenges the audience had faced in trying to get improvement in strategy delivery.

In the leas section, we made reference to Kotter, outlined our First Steps service to help a sponsor engage their senior colleagues, and offered our lifecycle to make strategy delivery changes - using the Business Integrated Governance Framework.

Agenda

Recap on strategy delivery challenges - what have we learned from experience
Board level perspectives (e.g. CEO, COO...) on strategy delivery - the obvious path to the future distracted by the pothole filled path to the present?
Management level perspectives on strategy delivery - the obvious path to the present distracted by the pothole filled path to the future?
First Steps - Consensus building on 'the problem', unravelling the complexity of balance

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

Andrey Malakhov

Partner - PMLogix

Other events in the series here

Meet our Partners

Meet our Associates

To book a live event or access the full event recording and event slides / analysis, please register here:

What next? Speak to us about your situation...

Strategy delivery – Where does it all go wrong?

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 11:54:25 GMT

Bookable event:

Strategy Delivery.

Where does it all go wrong?

Session presented - 28th February

David and David presented our view that strategy delivery is not great. We presented some analysis which included quotes like it is reported “10% of organizations achieve at least two-thirds of their strategy objectives, with 36% achieving between 50%-67% and 54% achieving less than 50%”. - More here...

We are not the only group to believe it is time to focus on improving strategy delivery. strategy. The US based National Association of Corporate Directors also believes this is the case, with its 2023 The Future of the American Board Report suggesting that oversight of strategy development and execution were both rated highly important or important improvements for boards by 70% of its Trends and Priorities Survey.

We engaged our audience and asked them on what were their symptoms of strategy delivery performance. From over 30 responses, some raw examples include:

“Strategy is set in a bubble and disconnected from the running of the business”
“As a board member the board approves the strategy but has to constantly check to see if the executive is implementing it”
“There was a lack of or no agreement on the plan”
“no clear vision of where we want to get to that resonates with all levels of the business to keep us motivated”
“Strategy expertise at Executive level”
“A key problem is when staff see operational tasks as somehow separate to strategy”

We proposed back our distillation of the clear messages about strategy delivery we've been hearing at these events, and in our own experiences, covered in more detail in this blog and discussed core concepts and principles to address the issues.

We then asked the audience - What is stopping our organisations from improving strategy delivery? Many points came back!

"A key problem is when staff see operational tasks as somehow separate to strategy"
"Having a solid understanding of the baseline of running the business. Dare I say lack of clear prioritisation :)"
"They cannot define the word Strategy"
"Who's responsible for delivery- it must be a CEO role surely"
"Our egos and holding onto the now (fear of change to roles and accountabilities)"
"back to KPIs and measures - don't know if you are really delivering"

We then proceeded to talk about Tactics to engage, and suggested it is all about people - and in this scenario - very senior people.

We spoke about Nemawashi (Nema - around, Washi - roots), and explained the need for a discussion picture and principles based discussion tool. We discuss identifying stakeholders and a more detailed approach to them in another session .

We offered an example of what output from this engagement might be - with the goal clearly defined as getting consensus on the issues, and a high level vision for how to solve them - with agreement to do 'something'.

We closed by offering a roadmap for an improvement journey - but stressed that step 1 was to engage people in the opportunities and threats posed by their current strategy delivery operation before trying to build solutions (which people don't buy into!)

We closed by asking:

What are some of your strategy delivery challenges?
What views do people hold about these?
Is there appetite to improve?
Who do you need to talk to next?

Agenda

Introduction to the evidence - strategy delivery performance is not great!
Breakout: what are your symptoms of strategy delivery performance?
What we have learnt so far
Our experience from previous events
Breakout: what is stopping our organisations improving strategy delivery?
From our experience: tactics to engage with
Homework for you!

Session Presenters

David Dunning

Director

David Booth

Partner - Strategy Journeys

Other events in the series here

Meet our Partners

Meet our Associates

To book a live event or access the full event recording and event slides / analysis, please register here:

What next? Speak to us about your situation...

The Challenges of Strategy Delivery

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:06:09 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

The challenges of strategy delivery

(...and how to improve it)

Deepteam and our partners and associates invite you to participate in our spring and summer event programme around the subject of Strategy Delivery.

The goal of the programme is to help organisations improve strategy delivery, strengthening capabilities for the longer term.

We want to help organisations realise that strategy delivery is not something that can be improved from just one busienss area, through one particular perspective, or in one simple step.

At several previous events with organisations like the IASP, PMI, APM, APMG, Core P3M Data Club and Good Governance Academy, we have we uncovered many topics that people were concerned with. Some key concerns included:

Do we have the right strategy?
Can we improve the connection between strategy formulation and delivery?
Do we have the right balance between business as usual, value generation and change activity?
Do we have the operating model, support and information ecosystem to control and balance workloads?

What became apparent was that in many cases, that people perceive strategy as about change, and that a "strategic programme" was the answer - even though much of strategic attainment comes out of busienss as usual performance. The containment of strategy in such a box means it has to be 'fitted in' as opposed to being a natural part of busienss.

It also became apparent that each stakeholder group involved in strategy would often focus on improving how it perceived the problems to be. Each would focus on its own conclusion of 'solutions'. We would see engineering management solutions for product developers, KPI platforms for Sales, PPM systems for "project delivery", finance solutions to enable accounting / purchases / invoicing etc. Nothing for strategy delivery.

It is easy to understand therefore, why organisations see strategy delivery as difficult!

It is hard to develop and manage strategic planning and management processes across such a mish-mash
With no common communication or planning processes, implementation of strategy with roadmaps, priorities, busienss performance, programmes and projects can become a disconnected squabble
Without clarity of responsibilities and accountabilities, risks and their management means governance would become not much more than a periodic attempt at compliance management
Information would become an industry based on Excel and PowerPoint, "Strategic alignment" had become metadata

We have therefore started the " Challenges of Strategy Delivery " programme to help organisations:

1. Engage in the process of strategy delivery improvement - using principles as a constant key reference

2. Understand how their own ecosystems currently support strategy delivery, to track down and align strategic information

3. See how to address the situation rather than continue to ignore it

4. Position ourselves, Partners and Associates as agitators and assistants for stand-alone and integrated solutions

5. Have the bravery / confidence to start the improvement journey

What does the programme consist of?

Launch with ‘White Paper’ - " The challenges of strategy delivery – and how to improve it "

what organisations have told us about their problems with strategy delivery
the different aspects involved (e.g. strategic management, implementation, governance, information) – illustrating with examples that relate to the specific areas of expertise within the collaboration
BIG Principles
each organisation is different, and has its own context and areas to improve
how to make a start (develop a shared understanding of this, and get the collective commitment to tackle it

Initial event: the challenges of strategy delivery - " Strategy delivery – where does it all go wrong? "

key messages: there are many aspects to the effective delivery of strategy, each organisation is different and will have its own context and areas to focus on first. Getting a clear shared understanding of this, and the commitment to tackle it, are how you start
essential to communicate: BIG Principles statement; Events programme
panel discussion; participant (booked/live) invited to state their strategy delivery problems / areas for improvement (simple questionnaire)

Then events covering the various aspects of strategy delivery:

Strategic management
Implementation
Governance
Information

A programme is being created - There are initial ideas for events, with a backlog of events to take shape. All will be problems-led topics.

#2 - " Strategy Delivery – who really cares? "

#3 - " Accountability - Impossible without prioritisation? "

Our view is that without accountability - it is impossible to deliver strategic outcomes - as strategic outcomes don't always align perfectly with departmental or personal targets. No accountability / poor management of accountability = things not done. It is that simple. We can't expect to achieve accountability of we don't empower people. Key to empowerment = realistic prioritisation.

#4 - " The Backbone for Strategy Delivery "

Organisations often explain their strategy to shareholders through documents, PowerPoint and beautifully designed materials shared on their websites. However - can you show how your strategic intent has been turned into actions that directors, managers and colleagues can track? Can you see your objectives mixed with expected key results to be tracked by enabling workstreams and projects? Many can't....

#5 - " Improving Strategy Delivery – you have to think BIG "

Many of us are serious about the development of strategy - but less are quite so serious about making it happen. It is almost as if some of us expect outcomes to happen just by magic. Well the reality is it won't happen by magic - and - evidentially it isn't happening by magic - so we need some Honest Engineering - specifically around getting our accountabilities managed.

The Spring programme will be finished off with a recorded interview with lovely people from the Good Governance Academy - to make the connection between the challenges of strategy delivery and good corporate governance.

Many people see strategy delivery as what is handed to general managers and project managers to crack on and do. But the reality is - it can't sit in a vacuum, and success / failure depends on the tone from the top (to set attitudes correctly) and organisation culture (the real way we do things around here). Good corporate governance is integral!

...more to follow - please see our events page for background and placeholder ideas and to suggest events.

Conference

Our intent is to finish the programme with an in person conference. This would:

present the programme sessions in a more discursive forum
enable attendees to network with people having the same issues
allow attendees to access the programme partners and associates

Who will benefit from engaging in the programme?

Senior managers / Executives who:

see an opportunity to improve their organisation’s effective implementation of strategy
are struggling to engage the organisation and get issues recognised and proposals for change on the table
are finding the inertia against change too daunting at present

Programme Leadership

David Dunning

Director

Martin Samphire

Associate Director

David Booth

Partner

Andrey Malakhov

Partner

Dan Dures

Partner

Stuart Easton

Partner

If you would like to receive reminders / invites to events in the series, please register here:

Something else?

Digital Transformation - Line of Sight

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 18:56:25 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Digital Transformation - Line of Sight?

Demand for digital is increasing. All of us realise there is benefit in bringing digital to our organisations. The trouble is - "digital" is a means to an end, not an end in itself - and most of our strategic plans are characterised with expectations of business outcomes, not just IT service levels.

What do we mean?

For example, an organisation may believe there are cost savings and wellbeing benefits from enabling " hybrid meeting rooms" where people can attend in person and gain the same experience remotely. This is an IT project to create a (clearly useful) facility with measurable benefits. In this case - the project is arguably an 'innovation' rather t han something initiated to address a strategic objective and it can be completed as part of the Digital Transformation as a project that stands alone.

In another example, for a local authority, its 5-year plan contains " keep the Borough clean with more recycling and less waste " with a programme to " transform household recycling and waste collection ". There may be no obvious IT input to more recycling and less waste , but the data and performance management IT platforms the authority has will provide key enablers to track collection data in real time. How much of the benefit from the transform household recycling and waste collection programme should be attributed to the invisible IT platforms, and how much cost for the IT platforms development should the transform household recycling and waste collection programme bear? Does it matter? Some will argue it does from the point view of creating the case and prioritising if nothing more. The IT platform is an example of a good "digital bet" that will come off for this and more possible positive outcomes.

Another example is the provision of cloud based shared services (e.g. payroll, HR, purchasing) for companies within a group as part of a (strategic) finance cost saving initiative, with Group IT function bearing the cost of the core platform. However, the emerging benefits would be secured by group companies leveraging the simplified processes with headcount redeployments. In this case, the business case justification goes across legal boundaries (despite being in the same group)

In all these cases, the business programmes are relying on the Digital Transformation Programme (set up within the IT function ) to enable them to achieve their objectives. The first case is clear innovation, the second a side benefit form doing the right technology infrastructure, and the third, response to a direct strategic goal.

3 things should becoming apparent:

The Digital Transformation Programme is accountable for few strategic goals directly - benefits emerge within the 'customer' organisation units through change programmes
Candidate projects within the Digital Transformation Programme may be justified based on benefit estimations that the IT function will not be accountable for and will not be able to hold the other programmes accountable for either.
The Digital Transformation Programme workload will need to be prioritised - which will be difficult as there are apples to compare with pears. Should I spend tomorrow working on Hybrid Meetings, IT Platform, or Shared Service?

Further questions then follow about prioritisation and justification :

Who does the scoring? Is it the CIO? Will they arbitrate between CFO and COO sponsored projects? (when they probably work for the COO)
How are the benefit claims justified / tested? Tough when benefit realisation and enablers are in separate organisation units.
How does this stop from becoming a complete bunfight for finite resources?
How is strategic alignment driven - or is it just 'claimed' in optimistic busienss cases?

This scenario is at risk of becoming uncontrollable without several things:

An integrated picture of the breakdown of objectives and sub objectives into measurable key results form all Outcome Delivery Plans (the business programmes), including how Digital transformation outcomes help. A centrally based approach will enable double benefit counting to be avoided, and strategic alignment claims to be verified
A clear Accountability Map - showing which organisation unit is accountable to which for what - above and beyond it's line reporting - to enable accountability to work through the organisation and connect with the Digital Programme.
Clarity on the enabler 'bets' being taken on infrastructure - as needs for some future capability may not materialise to the extent their provision suggested. (how many bets do you make and what do you stake on each?)
A systematic approach to prioritisation, which is independently supported and subject to assurance review - to ensure the right objectives get the right leadership time, resources and funds.

Have you even thought about these things - or are you letting this scenario sort itself out?

The BIG Readiness model shines a light on how your overall governance ecosystem is working, to enable to you define how it should work - enabling a roadmap of improvement to be quickly and simply started.

Open our discussion document covering 'Strategy to Delivery - objectively statusing readiness to achieve'

Access the BIG Readiness tool - how ready are you for strategy delivery?

Want something more?

Talk to us about connecting strategy to delivery - and harmonising the programmes you run rather than set them against each other?

Strategy Delivery - senior perspectives

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 16:10:26 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Improving Strategy Delivery - Posts and Perspectives

We recently ran 2 webinars on this subject from slightly different viewpoints:

The first 'Improving Strategy Delivery - All together now!' was aimed at relating to a business leader who could see strategy delivery was not working, but was finding it difficult to engage their organisation. The Event Summary is here .

The second 'Strategy Delivery - how is your gearbox?' was aimed at offering a model to a business leader who wanted a mental model and threat-free analysis with which to engage their organisation. The Event Summary is here .

The third series is in progress - Challenges of Strategy Delivery - find out more here

In the run up to '...all together now' - we used a series of Posts on LinkedIn, we have examined several CxO perspectives on strategy delivery.

More to follow:

Chairman, PMO Director

The aim with these is to kick off a First Steps process to help us understand the capability of our strategy to delivery ecosystem.

In the run up to '...gearbox' - we used a series of Posts on LinkedIn, and used emotive animal metaphors and similes to get a point across.

Headless Chicken

Elephant

Ostrich

The aim with these is to kick off a BIG Readiness Assessment to help us understand the capability of our strategy to delivery ecosystem.

In the run up to Challenges of Strategy Delivery , we shared our 'Mike' series. Mike is a fictitious name for someone banging their head against a brick wall. He is not to far from reality.

Example 1 - Mike trying to improve project delivery but the organisation doesn't get the importance of it for strategy delivery

Example 2 - Mike realises that he has to do some fundamental stakeholder engagement to build consensus to do something - not just offer a boxed answer

Example 3 - You want people accountable - but you don't manage priorities? Time for a fight then?

Example 4 - Achieve golden line of sight with Viva Goals and BIG as your Backbone for Strategy Delivery

The aim with these is to encourage people who think they have no way of improving strategy to delivery to engage with us through our strategic themes .

More to follow - see here.

We hope you'll find them useful in grabbing attention to the important task if improving strategy delivery

Deepteam has a presentation that fits around each role, and analysis of previously collected pain points.

The message is - We can look at strategy to delivery from your perspective.

Want something more?

Strategy delivery - how is your gearbox?

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 14:52:26 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Strategy delivery - how is your gearbox?

Whether you drive a Lamborghini or a Lada - however powerful, however great the sound system or engine note - the drive will be ruined by a whining transmission, a crunchy upshift - and a worry that you'll break down.

What does this have to do with strategy?

Many organisations have functions to focus on strategy development, others on strategy delivery through change. Finance exists to oversee investments. We have BAU functions keeping the business alive. Product development teams enriching our future. How does this all work together? Are all the cogs/gears in the strategy machine working in themselves and meshing together? Can you feel rattles, is there noise - do you worry the machine might seize up and break down?

The Business Integrated Governance Model (BIG) gives us a set of fundamental principles and a video with which you can sanity check what you are currently doing on the highway from strategy to delivery.

Strategy is necessary to achieve purpose
The organisation has structure
Strategy management is ongoing
Governance is integrated
Governance facilitates information-based decision making
‘Run', 'change' and 'value generation' are prioritised and balanced
Governance has a specific operating model

Accountability underpins governance
Those accountable are empowered
Data underpins information
Information underpins governance, accountability and assurance
There is dedicated management for governance processes and orchestration
Independent assurance provides check and balance
Lifetime executive sponsorship

The BIG Maturity model shines a light on how your overall governance ecosystem is working, to enable to you define how it should work - enabling a roadmap of improvement to be quickly and simply started.

The model provides two layers of facility - one for use with exec level management to gain their engagement, the other a deep dive facility covering all the components of BIG and its enablers.

The workshop presented by David Dunning and Andrey Malakhov covered:

Strategy Delivery is a problem - it offered a summary of key points out of previous sessions and simple research anyone can do in Google.
Introduction of the BIG Model as a framework to assess readiness for strategy delivery with
A walk through of the BIG Principles which can be used to engage stakeholders around
Discussion of the need to engage high level stakeholders because of the depth and breadth of strategy delivery
Introduction of Nemawashsi as an approach to deal with sensitive, business wide subject matter - and our First Steps approach to building consensus to do something - not necessarily immediately attempting to define what exactly
A walk through of the BIG Maturity model itself, an example and an outline process for using it - with Example outputs
Explanation of a possible engagement lifecycle - talking about early engagement, building enablers, culture change and sustainment
Summary and what to do tomorrow

DAVID DUNNING

Deepteam

Chairman of the Board and CEO

Lead author on Business Integrated Governance

BSI G1 Governance Committee Member

ANDREY MALAKHOV

PMLogix

Managing Partner (consulting company). Over 20 years of experience in enterprise change and IT PPM & PMO management. 5 years of experience as a leader of strategic project management offices re-start and development.

We asked:

What do you want to get out of the session?

Ask - "Tips in being able to engage with stakeholders who have the vision but may not be able to join the dots to execute it well."

Response - The session was mostly about engaging stakeholders to create an ecosystem within which people who have a vision and are defining strategy can be enabled to join the dots and execute it well. The strategy was not about strategy development, portfolio management or change delivery - but about creating the environment into which these disciplines would fit.

Ask - "I was directed to this by a colleague - keen to use the session to learn about BIG more generally - although in the context of transformation programmes would be useful"

Response - The session provided a high level outline of the BIG Model, introduced the components, and outlined the principles. It was offered as the basis of a 'mental model' with which to engage people about their current readiness for strategy delivery.

Ask - "To review recent developments/directions in BIG and find out what I feel about them"

Response - The session covered the principles and introduced the BIG Readiness Model which is soon to be publicly released. It offered a very good application for the BIG Model.

Ask - "understand how you see the assessment working in terms of simple and BIG versions"

Response - The session introduced the BIG readiness model to be used at a high level with executives. We went through a simple example - and showed the Maturity aspects related to the simple example. We signposted a more detailed BIG Model for use in more in-depth discovery sessions.

Ask - "Absorbing best practices on ensuring strategy and PMO are aligned"

Response - The session did not go detail about the role of a 'PMO' in strategy delivery - but we did cover a principle under which busienss support (one form of which would be PMO). There are more detailed sessions available on the relation of busienss support and BIG, where the needs of support for BIG were contrasted with what a traditional PMO provides.

Ask - "Hear the current state and challenges of strategic alignment"

Response - The session was about creating the ecosystem within which strategic alignment would be managed - from the origination of strategy and the setting of objectives and targets - to the alignment of 'bottom up' initiatives / innovation to existing strategic direction.

What is your situation – your role and main challenge faced? (are we in the same boat?)

Ask - "Implementing a major transformational digital program and some stakeholders whilst see it as important some expect it to be handed on a platter without being engaged and thoroughly supporting through resource allocation. Challenge is getting them to see change is not a one-way street"

Response - A key aspect to BIG is getting visibility of all workloads related to all objectives and targets (BAU, value generation and change). BIG is about making prioritisation key to setting empowerment which enables accountability. In the example mentioned in the 'ask' those stakeholders would know how 'important' an initiative is in relation to other workloads and would be engaged as to what aspect of an initiative they were accountable for and go through a process of resource allocation. Hence the 'two-way street' is a norm, not an exception.

Ask - "Having run very big and truly Transformation programmes, am sure that the plc board do not have a fully agreed strategic approach - makes my job much harder, and impacts on value provided by the programmes"

Response - one of the goals of a BIG approach means that a strategic approach is agreed, which will make the jobs of all those trying to manage BAU, change and value generation easier.

Ask - "We have been working with organisations to 'cascade' strategy for more than a decade so I think people are recognising and addressing many of these challenges today, as well as emergent challenges"

Response - There are organisations that are systematic with their strategy delivery, but there are enough that are not. Where organisations do not have clear line of sight from purpose to vision, through current state to strategy to strategic plan to operational plan to department / portfolio plans - the cascade - and re assembly of the strategic model is at risk - and hence the organisation is not maximising.

Ask - "Building PMO in start up environment at the same time that strategy is being developed and implemented"

Response - it will help an organisation to think of it's strategy information and strategy operating models, and to keep development separate. This is covered in more depth in other sessions. The transition of an organisation from the entrepreneurial state to a more stable delivery state is a challenge through the organisation, not just a PMO.

This session can be repeated privately for your organisation

Who should attend? Senior managers / Executives who:

are finding the inertia against change too daunting at present
are struggling to engage the organisation and get issues recognised and proposals for change on the table
see an opportunity to improve their organisation’s effective implementation of strategy

Find out if you are flying or falling?

Access the our discussion document covering 'Strategy to Delivery - objectively statusing readiness to achieve'

Please feel free to try using the model

Want something more?

Improving strategy delivery - all together now!

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 16:10:14 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Improving strategy delivery

- all together now!

Is your organisation not as good at strategy delivery as it needs to be? Do you want to improve your organisation's strategy delivery, and are wondering how to convince others and make a start?

Tuesday 22nd November 12 pm GMT (UK) David Dunning and David Booth presented this discussion.

The workshop covered:

how we transition from collected pain points to conclusions, responses and solutions based on common sense concepts
multiple board level perspectives show how conducting the strategy to delivery orchestra isn't about coping with a cats' chorus
a step-by-step approach, to build strategy formulation and delivery into our thinking.
the approach to what we will need to do to improve our Strategic Management and Strategy Information Models.

Specifically, our agenda was:

Delivering strategy is a challenge! We referenced our previous work
Understanding perspectives - we referenced the post we had made before the event introducing perspectives
Shared views and common understanding - the importance of building trust and gaining consensus
The improvement journey - the importance of a First Steps process before jumping to solutions
Summary & next steps - please contact us for more information

We made the case that strategy delivery is not easy – and referenced our previous workshops where we gathered evidence to add onto our own experience. We suggested that before trying to engineer solutions in this space, we should listen to the perspectives of our key stakeholders – and perhaps help to bring them closer together (not just for the duration of meetings) and we outlined an engagement approach.

The approach talked about establishing a common mental model of current and possible future states and suggested that there was a place for independent readiness assessment using principles and related maturity aspects. With shared views and common understanding (perhaps having dealt with our elephants!), we can confidently move forwards to address challenges with good understanding of the benefits of doing so.

We know good lifecycles for this kind of change, we understand the themes we need to work in, and we can support organisations taking first steps and making sustainable improvements. We explained we understand every organisation is different, and that getting on the agenda is probably the hardest step – but we think we can help organisations getting over typical reservations / objections to initiate a change journey.

In essence, we discussed HOW to engage our organisations for change through a First Steps process that builds the will to make change before significant spending on detailed business case or design process.

There were some interesting points raised in the session:

“Alcoholism” – getting an organisation to recognise it has a problem is hard
Absence of strategy and strategic plan – there was even discussion that some boards (one in particular) had not grasped that it needed a strategic plan
Getting the organisation leads to buy into creating a response plan in their areas
There was constant fighting between the strategic agenda and the comfort zone of the day job
Strategy is not just top down – we have strategies to integrate / align (top down and bottom up)
There is difficulty in cascading and tracking the strategic goals and their related actions through the organisation

PDF Event Summary

(Access the slides and we'll also send you a link to the recording.)

It was co-hosted by David Dunning and David Booth , and it can be REPEATED on demand.

Who will benefit from attending - Senior managers / Executives who:

are finding the inertia against change too daunting at present
are struggling to engage the organisation and get issues recognised and proposals for change on the table
see an opportunity to improve their organisation’s effective implementation of strategy

Further information? You might like to review our previous blogs where we have:

presented concepts, principles and approaches we can use to develop high level solution components.
shared workshop findings about issues in strategy delivery.
drew conclusions and discussed them
discussed the concepts and approach to use for addressing issues and shared discussion
talked specifically about the influence of strategy design on delivery
discussed the dual pathways (Strategy Operating Model and Strategy Information Model) to deliver change.
talked about setting and getting out of the blocks

We believe this material is very useful to engage stakeholders on what needs to be done. Read our publication on how organisations can improve their ability to achieve their strategy:

Strategy delivery: meeting the challenge

Want something more?

Strategy improvement - first steps

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 09:20:35 GMT

Strategy improvement -

Setting and getting out of the blocks

In pervious blogs, we shared workshop findings about issues in strategy delivery. We drew conclusions and discussed them here . We discussed the concepts and approach to use for addressing issues and shared discussion here . We talked specifically about the influence of strategy design on delivery here , and in our recent post, discussed the dual pathways (Strategy Operating Model and Strategy Information Model) to deliver change.

In the final article in this series, before the Improving Strategy Implementation workshop - we offer specific advice about how to approach change. We recognise the difficulty that many face in getting improvements in strategic management and strategy implementation off the ground and suggest a different approach to 'First Steps'.

With all the insights provided at the workshop - all that is left is to choose the colour of the brave pants you want to pull on.

There is no getting away from it, changing an organisation – especially changing it across domains, at a strategic level - it will be complicated. We have choices:

Get the boss to buy in and drive top down.

Classification: Possibly fast and effective, Difficult, Unlikely.

Let’s be honest - unless you have a well thought through, compelling business case that somehow gains air-time – this is just not going to happen (unless you are the boss of course) – but - get lucky and you’ll get the driver and resources needed

Build a step at a time among lower-level stakeholders.

Classification: Slow, Difficult, Unlikely.

Building a consensus across a larger community then getting agreement on design decisions means progress is inevitably slow, and will take a lot of effort, and perhaps only deliver an imperfect partial solution.

Build an exemplar solution then sell the success.

Classification: Fast (step 1), Easy (step 1), Unlikely.

You may get a solution you want and be able to control it – but if everyone does this, you still must integrate it – and you will have to deal with parochialism form the start. ‘Let me build a pilot’ = ‘let me avoid engaging and make what I want’?

Looking at improving strategy delivery, the solution components for that are ‘ up and down ’ the organisation levels, and ‘ left and right ‘ (and ‘ backwards and forwards ’!) across the organisation in reach.

So, unless a CEO engages their exec level peers, they are unlikely to achieve an integrated approach. Unless there is Executive Board agreement, there cannot be a bottom-up solution, and to be parochial by avoiding engagement will just store up adoption issues. So realistically – how would I – as a potential sponsor of an improvement initiative - get something off the ground?

It just sounds far too hard!!

It is hard, but it doesn't have to be that hard. In the series of blogs we’ve posted, we believe we have signposted the right approach:

we’ve seen the strategy delivery issues presented in this series and can recognise most of them as relevant to our organisations
we’ve understood the Strategy Journeys approach to strategy and the BIG and ISO 37000 approach to integrated governance and can see there is a way to improve strategy outcomes and business performance
we understand strategy formulation cannot be done in a hermetically sealed bubble - strategy must be conceived and managed for delivery
we understand that there will be a strategy information and a strategy ecosystem to improve

The proposition in this blog is that instead of trying to drop a perfect lure right into the CEO’s in-box, or chipping away for years with people who have their own agendas, or thinking that your ‘pilot’ solution will work for everyone – take a different tack? How about establishing first whether there is appetite to improve?

Within the Toyota Production System – and Japanese culture itself – the word Nemawashi has come to mean an informal process of laying the foundation and building a consensus of opinion before making formal changes to any particular process or project. It starts before any requirements, any vision, any build - yet it is a step that so many miss out before significant change projects.

Instead of trying to solicit requirements, galloping into a design, and trying to make business case based on guesswork – how about first engaging relevant stakeholders on pains and possible gains?

We will, of course, at some point need a requirement and a solution design - but firstly - can you establish the will to make one? Can we establish a (coalition of) sponsor(s) to start an initial conversation ? Before we dive into the details of what how or why - can we understand if there is simply appetite to do something?
You’ll need a simple current state picture which you can talk around with stakeholders and use to tease out the issues as they see them. You can scribble in the diagram and tease out their viewpoints of solutions and specific expectations
Can you collate those into a holistic picture that all stakeholders can recognise, and use that to gain consensus on priority ?

If we have that, as we have seen in this series of blogs, there are concepts, principles and approaches we can use to develop high level solution components. Can you use that vision to engage your stakeholders with what needs to be done?

Perhaps all you need now is a pair of ‘Brave pants’ to wear? Where can you find those…?

The Improving Strategy Implementation Workshop illustrates how we transition from collected pain points and expectations to conclusions, responses and solutions based on common sense concepts and a step-by-step approach, build in strategy formulation and delivery to our thinking and help us start to form the approach to what we will need to do to improve our Strategic Management and Strategy Information Models. Ultimately – we discuss HOW to engage our organisations for change through a First Steps process that builds the will to make change before significant spending on detailed business case or design process.

So - which colour suits you best?

Strategy improvement - dual pathways

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 09:19:43 GMT

Strategy improvement -

Dual Pathways

In pervious blogs, we shared our workshop findings about issues in strategy delivery. We drew conclusions and discussed them in video here . We also discussed the concepts and approach to use to addressing these issues and shared that discussion here . We talked more specifically about the influence of strategy design on strategy delivery here .

In the penultimate blog in the series supporting, improving strategy implementation - we offer specific advice. This article covers two two areas within the journey to improve strategy implementation in an organisation, addressing organisational ecosystem, strategic management, integrated governance and information flows/systems.

Let us know what you think!

In any transformation approach, we need to understand our ‘as is’. What is our current state or situation? We then need to form a picture of our desired future situation / operating model in response to the issues and risks that we see and the strategic direction that we choose. We agree our roadmap to get from A to B – which can be prescribed, or iterative, depending on our circumstances. We prepare, change, then evaluate – and may re-steer (to get back on course) or even course correct (if the direction needs to change).

The first of the dual pathways to consider is our strategy itself . For this dis cu ssion, we consider ‘strategy’ as the complete set of information which captures:

The drivers for strategy (in our purpose, mission, goals, imperatives, opportunities, threats).
Understanding the many dimensions of current state / situation, strengths and weaknesses
A vision for how the current state / situation needs to achieve or cope with our drivers
A roadmap for the objectives, targets, challenges and decision points to achieve change, value generation and business as usual performance
Decomposition of the roadmap into accountable / responsible entities. Clearly, some of the major entities (departments, product groups, change portfolios – depending on your terminology) may themselves have drivers, current state roadmap and subordinate entities

The question is – what does the current state of this look like for the organisation wanting to improve its strategy delivery? There are several levels of information to understand:

Are the core organisation documents for purpose and mission clear, goals for the owners accepted? Does the organisation appreciate its imperatives, opportunities and threats? Is it clear on its strengths and weaknesses? Without these, strategy cannot be well founded.
How good is the vision and roadmap in responding to purpose and drivers? Many see this as the core of ‘strategy’ – but we are suggesting it is only one part.
Does the organisation have a strategic plan driving current operating plan and budgeting?
How clear is the decomposition of objectives, targets and challenges into accountable entities? For example, how does the operating plan drive department plans, product and change portfolios (depending on your terminology)
Is the organisation clear on how lower-level responses and progress within department plans connects back up again?

The point is – what have you got - is your current strategic information fit for purpose?

The second of the dual pathways considers the ecosystem in which strategy information is being managed. For this discussion, we consider ‘ecosystem’ the operating model, governance regime, support infrastructure, information and data capability, tools and practices. This will look after:

The documents and data stores for our purpose, mission, and analysis of current state or situation (strengths and weaknesses), vision and roadmap
The corporate risk system for opportunities, threats, imperatives and goals
The operating model for how the vision and roadmap can be maintained in a changing world
The data models for objectives, targets, challenges and decision points to achieve change, value generation and business as usual performance, and decomposition of the roadmap into entities to achieve change, value generation and business as usual performance
The operating model for how objectives, targets, challenges within entities are managed and balanced based on business priorities for leadership time, funding and resources
Data model for the key performance and key results indicators that enable the business to demonstrate performance and strategic accomplishment
The local operating models for delivery across run and change

Again - the question is – what have you got - is your current ecosystem fit for purpose?

Mechanics - Is there innate capability to run and change? Is governance integrated? Is there tool, data, information and business support infrastructure to enable strategy delivery?
Culture – is there ongoing empowerment for accountability with reward and consequence, and has strategy management been built into our operation or ‘sprinkled on top’?

Is your current Strategic Management process / model fit for purpose? If not, what does this mean for any initiative that wants to improve strategy delivery or to reboot strategy delivery?

It means there are two integrated workstreams:

Strategy Operating Model (SOM) and Strategy Information Model (SIM) that informs and supports this dynamically

How do you go about establishing these effectively within your organisation? The process begins with a ‘First Steps’ based approach which considers both challenges: what is the current Strategic Management process in the organisation and the Strategy Information that supports this; and what are the issues that the organisation has encountered that have hindered its effective strategy delivery? Is there high-level appreciation of the opportunity to improve, and the threat in not improving? Is there the ‘organisational will' to improve?

This is clearly vital – and is covered in our next session in the series – 'First Steps'

The Improving Strategy Implementation Workshop illustrates how we transition from collected pain points and expectations to conclusions, responses and solutions based on common sense concepts and a step-by-step approach, build in strategy formulation and delivery to our thinking and help us start to form the approach to what we will need to do to improve our Strategic Management and Strategy Information Models, and ultimately – engage our organisations for change.

Strategy formulation - build for manufacture

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:49:07 GMT

Strategy formulation –

build for manufacture

In the remaining sessions in the series, we move onto specific advice, but before that, this blog highlights the importance of strategy formulation. We argue that the approach to, process and results of strategy formulation may constrain deliverability.

Do you prefer your chocolate chips baked into your muffin, or just sprinkled on top?

Here's the latest article by David Dunning and David Booth about our work to help organisations improve their strategy implementation (with engineering as well as baking analogies!). Let us know what you think!

We all know that if we conceive and design something we need to be able to manufacture it. If we design with thoughts of manufacturability in mind, we will get better results. If we design for manufacture but also engineer our build process at the same time, we’ll be able to bring our concept into reality alongside all the others. We further know that this design will not be our last one, and we will have to adapt our design based on changing market conditions, regulatory imperatives, and innovations we think of. Our design offices do not make a design then pack up. There is much to learn from our engineering colleagues when we talk strategy.

Extrapolating this thinking, strategy is not just about formulation - we have to design for delivery, and integration of that delivery and ongoing strategy adjustment!

Hence - strategic management, organisational eco-system and integrated governance need to work together to enable an organisation to develop and manage its strategy for effective delivery. Building and sustaining these capabilities is key.

Over the last 6 months we have explored the status and perception of strategy implementation within organisations including discussions with senior managers from a wide range of organisations: it is clearly an area of great concern, and one of the problems that is mentioned frequently is the gap between strategy formulation and strategy delivery.

In many organisations it seems as though a disconnect occurs between the development of strategy – the often intensive process of analysis, evaluation, decision making and articulation – and the much longer, more sustained effort that needs to be invested in the effective delivery of the strategy. There could be several reasons for this – which we can envisage if we think of strategy formulation as on ongoing design process, with design for manufacture closely alongside it:

insufficient focus during the formulation of the strategy on how strategy can be achieved
it can be delivered (the resources and capabilities required) and progress can be assessed, changes included, and additional drivers responded to
responsibility for delivery being passed to different parts of the organisation - from the strategy team to the programme management office, for example – with limited ongoing connection
integration of strategy throughout the organisation. For example, sales strategy and plans needs to be aligned and contribute to the overall corporate strategy
the challenge of balancing resources to achieve both strategic change initiatives and operational business-as-usual requirements
limited communication, understanding and motivation: the objectives might be specified but the reasons behind these are not explained, so when something changes there is no dynamic adaptation and adjustment, either to the strategy or its implementation
so when organisational energy levels dip after the initial momentum of the new strategy, and senior management focus on the strategy ebbs as new operational challenges take their attention
If strategy is seen as a ‘one off’ that ‘trumps everything’ so ‘just get on with it’ – this posture / culture will not enable the organisation to be ready for ongoing strategy delivery, to sensibly prioritise BAU/Value Generation/Change or to deliver what it has agreed to do effectively.
there can also be a drift away from focus on strategy goals and outcome progress to focus task status. It is important that delivery teams focus on task, but this must remain connected to the more important bigger picture where management focus on outcome, and then directors can focus on strategic benefits to the organisation – not on reviewing line-by-line RAG [red-amber-green] progress charts on individual projects).

There can be many reasons – and each organisation, each situation will be different. However, there are some key principles that apply:

Strategy is dynamic. Strategy formulation is not a periodic one-off exercise: things change – externally (markets, regulation, pandemics!) and within the organisation (resources, capabilities, stakeholder priorities). Opportunities, threats and challenges arise: organisations need the ability (the attitude and processes) to be able to sense and respond to these, and to adapt accordingly. We also have to be clear - strategy needs to be integrated across every part of the organisation.
Strategy involves the whole organisation . Communication, explanation and understanding are vital. Engaging people - taking their ideas for innovation and their viewpoints on achievability when formulating strategy, and enabling them to understand how they will contribute to implementing and realising this – is as much a part of effective strategic management as is analysis and decision-making. All parts of the organisation - from corporate and functions to departments and teams need to be engaged and aligned, with their own objectives, KPIs, plans and resources integrated - and with the means to adjust these dynamically as the situation changes.
Effective strategic management involves both formulating strategy and working out how it will be delivered. Resources, funds and leadership time has to be balanced across the organisation for performance today and performance tomorrow – and deployed between entities with accountability to achieve ‘run’ and ‘change’; and any changes in the drivers of the strategy can mean that objectives, priorities and resources need to change accordingly.
Building capability is key. As we heard from so many of those we talked to, many organisations experience challenges in strategy delivery. We know strategy is not one-off, and we know it is dynamic. Investing time and effort to strengthen the organisation’s strategic management capabilities, establish an integrated approach to business governance, and ensure that its ecosystem and culture supports these is essential – but the capability is not just for strategic management – it is capability within which strategic management can also flourish alongside business performance. It is the ability of an organisation to accept, understand and commit to strengthening these capabilities within which strategic management can operate that will most improve its ability to develop and deliver strategy and resultant performance effectively.

Finally - Think of this – would you prefer your chocolate chips baked into your muffin, or just sprinkled on top?

(Are you gong to approach strategy as something to do to your organisation, or to get done within it ?)

Next Session – 2 strategy pathways for strategy improvement

Achieving strategy gains - core concepts and approaches

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 09:48:29 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Achieving Strategy Gains -

Core Concepts and Approaches

In pervious blogs, we have shared our findings from workshops where we have asked participants about their issues in strategy delivery. We drew conclusions from what those sessions surfaced, and shared those findings here .

We also discussed them in a short video here

While these conclusions were generic, and were typical of what might be drawn out of issues surfaced by an organisation looking hard at its strategy delivery issues, they do not cover all the principles, concepts and approaches we might use in helping an organisation start its strategy journey.

So what is there we can examine our conclusions against?

Firstly, there are many strategy publications which contain concepts, principles and approaches. David Booth has written " Strategy Journeys " - which provides a strategy development and delivery perspective.

In any strategy journey, it is vital to review the current strategy: the content itself and the information model that has generated but also the ecosystem within which that is manged. The ecosystem is covered in principle by ISO 37000 - and in practice by Business Integrated Governance (BIG)

ISO 37000 provides principles for Governance of Organisations - which includes Strategy as a principle of Governance. ISO 37000 provides principles to govern an organisation by.

BIG provides principles, components and approaches to create, adopt and sustain the ecosystem that connects the busienss purpose to strategy and delivery (whether that is busienss as usual, value generation or change). The material has been generated by over 100 voluntary contributors and is also published here in the Praxis Website (for Portfolio, Programme and Project Management) .

Once an organisation has teased out its issues, drawn its conclusions - there is guidance on principles to follow, components to use, and approached to take.

The workshop 20th September will illustrate how we transition from collected pain points and expectations to conclusions, responses and solutions based on common sense concepts and a step by step approach.

Next Session – deeper exploration the strategy itself – formulation and ‘build for manufacture’

Strategy pains

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 10:13:06 GMT

Strategy Pains

- Where are we failing?

Strategy implementation is difficult: we know this from personal experience as well as the many published articles that highlight how often this is where strategies fail. Over the last 6 months we have explored the status and perception of strategy delivery within organisations in workshops and discussions with senior managers from a wide range of organisations – and it’s clearly an area of great concern!

Our Evidence - At our participative event in March, Your strategic wish is my delivery command , we uncovered a whole range of topics that people were concerned about. Using the categorisation framework below there were over 100 issues raised

Exploring these further in an extensive discussion identified the following key concerns:

Do we have the right strategy? Are we on top of the opportunities, threats, imperatives and goals our business faces, and are the objectives targets and challenges we are working on still valid?
Can we improve the connection between strategy formulation and making it happen? How can we improve the process?
Are we communicating, and continuing to communicate expectations?
Are we taking into account ability to lead and deliver change in the business context? Do we have the right balance between business as usual, value generation and change activity?
Do we have the operating model, support and information ecosystem to control and balance workloads? Or are we treating strategy as a short-term programme?

At another of our webinar events hosted by PMI Ireland we asked senior project and programme management specialists, “What reasons have you encountered for why strategies have not been delivered?" The responses were revealing:

Unresponsive or uncommunicated strategy formulation
Multiple strategies difficult to integrate
Inability to set up and manage accountability
Absence of framework for prioritising Business as Usual (BAU), Change and Value generation
Lack of assurance capability to check the right things are being done the right way
Limited business support resources to orchestrate decision making
Information infrastructure just not prepared for integrated governance

Specific concerns that were mentioned ranged across several areas.

Our Viewpoints - What is very clear from all our discussions is that whilst many of the issues affecting strategy implementation are shared widely there is no single area that defines the ability of an organisation to implement strategy successfully.

It is also obvious that any ‘strategy solution’ will be driven from multiple perspectives and will consist of many components which will need to be integrated – so there is therefore no magic wand or universally applicable ‘solution’ (or framework, or model) that will achieve this.

There are some very clear messages about how organisations should approach strategy and strategy implementation that have come out of our work over the past few months, which have resonated with those who have participated in our workshops and webinars:

With respect to strategy itself

Thinking of strategy as a one-off exercise rather than an ongoing task is not conducive to keeping strategy planning current or building core capability to deliver it.
Need a strategy destination for the organisation, but with the flexibility and adaptability to change it
It’s a learning journey for the organisation. People and the organisation can grow and strengthen from this
How an organisation views and treats its people is key: investment vs cost, values and culture
Boards need to focus on the value vs just the progress of delivery, changing the roadmap when necessary (and understanding the implications)
This is a collective endeavour across the organisation: it’s not strategy vs delivery, projects vs business as usual

With respect to the performance and strategy delivery ecosystem

Need an organisation-wide approach – strategy implementation is cross-functional
Understanding the organisation’s context and having a clear picture of this is important – and having an operational model to hold this together, understanding how all the parts fit
Commitment of CEO/Board to embark on this journey is vital (and to show this by their actions). It takes time, sustained effort, and support
Need to be clear about the business benefits before starting the delivery

The challenge is to change from having each business unit define its own answer that it offers up for integration to a scenario that defines the overall integration and sets guidelines for how business units need to fit. Indeed, each organisation is different (as is its situation at various times): it is the ability of an organisation to accept, understand and commit to improving how it develops and implements strategy that is the key.

Taking the first steps on such a journey can be challenging. The Improving Strategy Implementation Workshop illustrates how we transition from collected pain points and expectations to conclusions, responses and solutions based on common sense concepts and a step-by-step approach, build in strategy formulation and delivery to our thinking and help us start to form the approach to what we will need to do to improve our Strategic Management and Strategy Information Models. Ultimately – we discuss HOW to engage our organisations for change through a First Steps process that builds the will to make change before significant spending on detailed business case or design process.

© David Dunning and David Booth 2022

Improve your strategy delivery – but you have to think BIG

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 15:53:33 GMT

Event Report:

Improve your strategy delivery – but you have to think BIG

Strategy development and delivery is not perfect in many organisations. Why is this?

There are many well documented reasons, but many of them boil down to ineffective organisation governance failing to hold our innovative excitement together.

At events on the 17th June and 7th July 2022 hosted by Mark Constable of the APMG, David Dunning presented a viewpoint in discussion with Carolynn Chalmers from the Good Governance Academy.

We could have talked about what we have to stop doing and avoid, about the compliance we need – but instead talked about the integrated approach to governance that we can achieve greater strategy accomplishment and greater business agility with.

We don’t have to wait for magic to happen anymore - we have Honest Engineering!

We explained that we can leverage ISO 37000 and the Business Integrated Governance model to help us organise ourselves for success. We can use tried and tested delivery methods out of the Praxis Framework.

Target audience:

Strategic Leadership and Support Functions
Change Portfolio Leadership and Support Functions
Transformation Professionals

Contents:

Establish the case – strategy delivery is not perfect - google search, recent workshop evidence
Brainstorm to capture audience experience of strategy delivery not being perfect
Position effective organisational governance as the framework to set, manage and deliver performance – and develop it through strategy. Magic doesn’t just happen
Position ISO 37000 as the background principles to draw from
Explain the delivery options – BAU delivery and innovation, Projects and Programmes (e.g. Praxis), agile delivery, product management
Principles are great – methods are great – but we need to implement an operating model. Again - Magic doesn’t just happen
Brainstorm to capture audience experience of trying to implement strategy deliver solutions
Position Business Integrated Governance as the delivery means – lifecycle and logical model

During the session, we held a couple of feedback sessions where we asked:

What is you experience of strategy delivery not being perfect? We offered some categories to guide responses:

Sensing and listening - do we keep in top of the changing drivers for strategy (in a turbulent world)?
Formulation - is the process for defining strategy good enough?
Integration and Alignment - are all the activities and sub strategies configuration managed?
Prioritising delivery and accomplishment - can we allocate leadership, resources and funds to get change, BAU and value generation all accomplished?

In summary:

A key point suggested was that "organisations hurry the listening and sensing". There were also suggestions that the listening can be sporadic - so that changes in the turbulent world do not get translated into strategy adjustments. There is also a view that leaders only listen to other leaders, and one suggestion was that executives don't really want to hear what is happening.

There were a number of points raised with respect to formulation. Too many objectives, not enough engagement. While there have been points in other sessions about coming up with the wrong strategy, this session was more about lack of business connection, communication and deriving achievability. We did not explore whether organisations maintain a cross business resourcing model which would illustrate the resources deficiency or incorrect prioritisation, but this appears to be an issue.

There were several points raised around Integration and Alignment. Some realised that this is about effective communication and communicators, and having the good material to deliver that upon (which is not always the case). One comment suggested there was a team in their organisation to make the alignment between strategy team and change portfolio - but they did not mention alignment with BAU and value generation. Others lamented that some blind and vocal stakeholders could hamper this activity, as would lack of ability to translate aspiration into specific actions.

Prioritising delivery and accomplishment had the most points raised. Most of the points were about the lack of ability to prioritise and balance resources between BAU and change, the lack of appreciation of the leadership, resource of funding implications for change, with poor communication and by implication - no information model integrated governance approach or support body or assurance to enable this to be managed.

What is you experience of trying to implement strategy delivery solutions? We offered some categories to guide responses:

Ability to change way of doing things
Agreement of key stakeholders
Operating model suitability
Strategy information model

In summary:

There were many comments that questioned their organisations ability to change the way they do things. Remarks suggested it was a challenge to provide a robust change management intervention, control framework, or provide capacity to enable change, while others questioned the ability / will to prioritise systematically.

The point about agreement of key stakeholders was to do with getting consensus to make a change to the strategy delivery ecosystem - as during the presentation - it was made clear that an integrated approach was required. Parochial approaches would help - but only to a point and some suggested senior 'rogue players' contravened the strategy. Some questioned the willingness 'to be bold enough' to address difficult issues at senior levels.

Some comments arose about Operating model suitability. Some recognised the importance of portfolio management - but that was in relation to project portfolios, not a portfolio of portfolios including BAU and Value Generation workstreams. There was a question about the relation of expectation to realistic achievability. It was not clear that many had integrated governance models presently

Some comments arose about Strategy information model with a suggestion that 90% of employees do not know the strategy. It was implied that personal objectives were about achieving operational performance rather than higher level. Others implied that bad culture would affect strategy delivery rather than be part of the scope to improve.

Within an hour, the session had started to offer answers to these issues out of ISO 37000 and the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) Model.

Please watch here for the session recording, or contact us for a more detailed analysis of the issues raised and specific responses to the points made above. Slides are available on request .

A follow on session is also being prepared (tentative agenda below) - watch this space!

Why is strategy delivery such an issue (recap - we can link to previous session)
Intro to ISO 37k and BIG as the 'Honest Engineering' basis (recap)
Deeper look at ISO 37000 & BIG
Introduction to Praxis (as in - what is it)
What’s in this for me?
Roadmap
“First Steps” and engagement approach example – overcoming inertia

Useful Links:

APMG - More events are available here

ISO Standard

Good Governance Academy (GGA) - Integrated Organizations Research Forum

On line GGA ISO 37000 Course

BIG Introduction (Search for “Core P3M Data Club” in YouTube)

Changing Strategy Delivery – Event Information and Registration for 13/9/2022

Praxis - BIG Pages

If you could not attend, but would like to know more about running a session like this for you?

Elevating Business Strategy using PMOs with High Maturity Levels

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 17:08:23 GMT

Deepteam Blogs

Event Report:

Elevating Your Business Strategy by Utilising PMOs with High Maturity Levels

It is clear from well-documented experience that delivering a Business Strategy is not easy.

Suppose you don't believe all the articles on Google?

In that case, we can at least believe specific evidence collected at recent sessions which asked, " What reasons have you encountered for why strategies have not been delivered? ". Those sessions collated around 150 points from current practitioners, and in essence, the key reasons included:

Unresponsive or uncommunicated strategy formulation
Multiple strategies can be challenging to integrate
Absence of framework for prioritising BAU, Change and Value generation
Inability to set up and manage accountability
No standard approach to managing dependencies or resources/funds across BAU, Change and Value Generation
Information infrastructure just not prepared for integrated governance

The sessions also noted

Lack of assurance capability to check the right things are being done the right way
Limited business support resources to orchestrate decision making

But this doesn't talk about PMO – it mentions Business Support. What's the difference?

PMO is business support, but in reality – not much of what we do is projects; mostly, it's business as usual (BAU). Like projects, BAU needs planning, has dependencies, risks, resource allocations, tracking, reporting and governance – but PMOs don't support this as it's not projects.

Moreover, PMOs don't often get involved in strategy development or planning; they don't exist at that level – as strategy is not just 'projects'.

So is anybody doing this other support work – well, anecdotally, not, and certainly not looking across it.

Could Higher Maturity PMOs cover this off? Well – maybe, but if they did, then by implication, they would not be PMOs. And what does maturity mean - and why do we need to measure it? How is it relevant to strategy? Consulting various definitions of maturity , maturity defines the journey from doing something to doing it repeatedly to having it defined, measured and optimised. So this doesn't help us when we are trying to extend the Scope of a PMO to provide business support.

Secondly, looking at the P3M3 maturity model, there is nothing specific about PMO – or the wider and deeper functions of Business Support – and this does not cover all aspects of strategy. The P3M3 model is not all that useful for this discussion.

The PMI chips in with “ PMO Maturity, and Lessons from the top tier ". It provides a valuable set of specific elements grouped into tiers – but again – it doesn't cover the support needed in strategy formulation and business as usual. The problem is the "P".

So, where is this going? Well, PMOs provide critical support to successful projects. APM refers to them recognising effective support (e.g. a PMO) contributes to project success/avoidance of failure. Still, to elevate your Business Strategy, we need to get them broader in organisation scope, not limited to the 'P', and engaged to support business strategy governance.

Well - try here: For a P3 view of Business Support , there are these definitions in the Business Integrated Governance Models.

So - does your PMO have delusions of grandeur about strategy? Can it truly step up to operate strategy formulation and delivery? The session we presented with CPS on 28th June 2022 tackled this subject matter. We explored what we mean by PMO and what the ‘P; stands for. We suggested that Business Support is a core delivery support function that is more than just a temporary 'O". We discussed what does maturity mean - and why do we need to measure it and how it is relevant to strategy. We explored what is a Higher Maturity PMO is, and presented some of its challenges. To wrap up, we offered implications and conclusions and suggested that help is at hand….

Access the session recording here

If you would like to repeat a session like this for your organisation, don't hesitate to use the contact form below, or reach out to Derek Strachan or David Dunning for more information.

Or read more on this strategic theme here .

Your strategic wish is my delivery command

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 14:27:55 GMT

Event Report:

Your (strategic) wish is my (delivery) command

(If only it were that simple!?)

Implementing an organisation’s strategy successfully is often a challenge: keeping on top of changing drivers, balancing priorities and resources, achieving longer term ambitions vs operating day-to day. Strategic initiatives can falter, and desired changes fail. There is plenty of evidence to suggest this – simply ‘Google’ “strategy delivery success rate”.

This online event has been presented twice - initially in March 2022, and then again June 2022 for the ROI Chapter of the PMO - PMO Community of Practice.

We presented what we think – but it was primarily offered to host discussion of how organisations can become more effective at maintaining and delivering their strategy. There was opportunity for participants to share their experiences, contribute to the discussion, and most importantly – to step back from what you see every day to realise what you don’t.

We covered:

Introduction
Problems and Solution Outline
Stakeholder Engagement
Issues and Responses
Benefit to roadmap to programme
Outcomes and Expectations
Next Step

There was significant participation in the discussion, which surfaced over 100 key points. Attendees had roles such as:

CEO
Director
Head of PMO
Head of Strategy
Head of Transformation

In the March event, we surfaced areas of concern within:

Information
Integrated Governance
Operational delivery
People and Culture
Resources & priorities
Strategic Management

Link to the YouTube content (5 minute chunks) here

In the June event we surfaced areas of concern within:

Delegation and Delivery
Roles and Responsibility
Strategy Integration
Communication
Prioritisation and Resourcing
Strategy Formulation

Link to the YouTube content (5 minute chunks) here

A full event report and analysis ware prepared for both events and is available on request (Contact us below).

We were able to liken each workshop to the initial engagement within individual organisations, where we could build trust with key strategy players in an organisation and tease out their perspectives and priorities on pain points through interview. We showed how the interview process would be supplemented by a more structured readiness assessment – which would identify areas that the interviews could not reach.

We offered attendees 2 paths as a follow on:

to review the strategic information it holds and iss managing to – with an offer to support the organisation validating its strategy
to review the strategy formulation and delivery operation – to ensure is fit to operate the strategic process and balance that with business as usual and value generation activity

We believe that attendees left with some key take-aways:

The problems I see in strategy formulation and delivery are not just my view
There is a framework I can use to frame the situation and a vision for the future with
I understand there will be inertia to overcome, but that there is an engagement approach which will build trust, enable consensus to be built, and decision to do something to be made

David and David can repeat the session within your organisation to help you engage stakeholders on an improvement journey.

Healthy Governance Rule 3

Tue, 24 May 2022 16:15:54 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

In the introduction to this topic ( see here ), we asked how do you ensure, or assure, that you have purpose, vision and strategic roadmap? We stated ten golden rules - this blog concentrates on the third of these rules:

Accountability and Delegation

In the first and second of our blogs, we considered the importance of Alignment and Relationship of programmes to organisational strategic goals and Purpose, Vision and Roadmap. We now consider how we ensure accountability for outputs and outcomes and how we delegate an appropriate level of decision making to the key leaders and managers involved in the business and programmes. As well as individual roles (see below) there are normally governance bodies that support the key decision makers, e.g. Steering Committee, Programme Board.

The overriding objective of good governance of change is to ensure an organisation achieves change successfully with confidence, transparency and control. It should ensure that the organisation is aware of risks, minimises project failures and maximises the beneficial outcomes (value) from their overall portfolio of projects in a sustainable and transparent manner. Ultimately an organisation’s main Board has the ultimate accountability to shareholders or other ownership bodies. But it is unreasonable (in a large organisation) for the main Board or its members to have a detailed involvement in all decisions at all levels in order to execute their responsibilities. Therefore, there must be some delegation of those responsibilities. However, this needs to be carried out in a structured was to avoid overlaps and gaps – and to ensure an individual is fully aware for what the main Board is holding them accountable.

It is therefore vital that each key governance role aligns with another for accountability and that there is a hierarchy of delegation. Does your organisation have a systematic and documented corporate governance policy defining where (body or role in the organization) each type of project decision can be most effectively made, by whom and to what authority level (often defined by financial limits)? And are they specific by project or programme role, e.g., sponsor, programme manager, stage review panel, business user, rather than a person’s organisational job title?

The Sponsor is effectively ‘borrowing’ money from the business (represented by the Main Board) to create value by investing in a programme which will produce a business performance enhancement greater than the cost (outcome and benefits) in line with strategic objectives. Does the Sponsor get held to account by the Main Board in your organisation for value creation – to realise the outcomes and benefits of any investment?

The hierarchy of delegation then extends to the delivery team, led by the Programme Manager who is accountable back to the Sponsor for delivery of outputs and desired changes.

The APM publication Directing Change shows that golden thread of delegation.

Each role is supported by appropriate boards or committees of key decision makers.

Healthy Governance Rule 2 - Purpose, Vision and Strategic Roadmap

Mon, 09 May 2022 10:40:12 GMT

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In the introduction to this topic ( see here ), we asked how do you ensure, or assure, that your project or programme has been established with healthy governance in mind – and is still appropriate for this stage of the journey? We stated ten golden rules - this blog concentrates on the second of these rules

Purpose, Vision and Roadmap

In the first of our blogs, we considered the importance of Alignment and Relationship of programmes to organisational strategic goals. But that may not be enough for some stakeholders to fully understand the outcome and end state being sought from this programme. Most people need some breakdown of the organisational goal into more granular clarity of the purpose (the ‘why’), vision and “end state”. To give real meaning we need to clearly define the destination, outcome and benefits (e.g., Market positioning, Target Operating model, profitability, reputation, etc.) and the journey (the steps needed to achieve the outcome)? The purpose (‘why’) and desired outcome and end state vision should drive all key decisions and delivery at all stages. Ok so I recognise that for complex projects/programme then the vision, journey and definition of success might be a bit murky at the outset, but that’s ok. The clarity can evolve over time.

For your specific programme Is there a clear purpose that makes sense to you, is there a vision that is articulated in a concrete way (e.g. enterprise target operating model) and an overall method for the journey that is clearly articulated and understood by the team and stakeholders? Has the project / programme adopted an appropriate delivery method for the type, complexity, complication, stakeholder environment, technology, politics? For example, choosing a traditional ‘waterfall’ or linear / predictive approach might be fine for a simple project over a short timescale. However, delivering into a rapidly changing and complex stakeholder environment where the objective and method of getting to the result is uncertain is likely to lead to failure.

In these more dynamic situations, the rate of change, stakeholder objection and technology change can sometimes outpace the rate of progress on the programme. In this circumstance you might consider the merits of using a more ‘adaptive’ approach for the journey – adopting a programme of projects, or Agile approach where early partial delivery can deliver value, help gain stakeholder support and reduce uncertainty regarding the outcome success.

A key feature of this adaptive approach is to keep the elapsed time (schedule) to a minimum for each delivery / product / phase / sprint. It was well recognised in APM’s research into Factors for Project Success in 2015 demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between short project timescales and success. Carrying out programmes with short ‘projects’ or stages also enables best ‘positive’ learning as the delivery cycle is repeated quickly many times throughout the programme.

Most people have heard about the example from the US space programme back in the 1960s and 70s when during a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said: “Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor responded: “I'm helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”

Having real clarity about purpose, vison and a clear (even not complete) journey route map enables people to gain meaningful purpose to their own work, build self-confidence in the journey and ultimately define and measure success.

Do I Have to Keep Upselling My PMO to Take it Forwards?

Thu, 05 May 2022 12:54:56 GMT

Event Report:

Do I have to keep upselling my PMO to take it forwards?

Perhaps there is a better way than repeatedly offering the same old business case?

Are you in a PMO that suffers from the business not taking you seriously? Can you see opportunity for the PMO you direct to add value to change, BAU and value generation that colleagues cannot see? Are you a COO wondering why you need a proliferation of disconnected support functions? Are you a CEO that is exasperated by how ‘well’ your strategy gets interpreted and carried out and ‘progress reported’ by lower levels within the business?

Strategy delivery cannot happen in a vacuum. Business Integrated Governance is a set of ideas, principles and facilities to deliver integrated governance to enable greater strategy accomplishment with greater agility, efficiency, effectiveness and control - in balance with BAU and value generation. Published in the Praxis Framework, developed by the Core P3M Data Club, and implemented by Deepteam.

Why not find out how you can drive a PMO to a greater value perception by leading a BIG initiative instead of repeatedly telling the business about the services you could perform for it?

2pm BST 7th June

Watch the preview here

Agenda here

Full video recording here

If you can't attend, but would like to know more?

Healthy Governance Rule 1 - Alignment and Relationships

Tue, 03 May 2022 16:06:40 GMT

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Alignment and Relationships.

A 2014 PwC survey found that “Companies with high degrees of alignment (between organisational strategy and projects) have more successful projects (69%) compared with companies with low alignment (45%)”.

I have seen business cases that provide lots of data on the problem being solved, return on investment, NPV, etc. but with little content addressing the real purpose, vision, and link to strategic goals. Surely the most crucial part of a business case is articulating what impact the specific project will have on furthering the achievement of a strategic goal. In many cases the reason for the lack of clarity is that the overall strategic objectives of the organisation are themselves not well defined or articulated or shared.

At the programme or project level the delivery team benefits from a strong alignment with strategic objectives as it gives them real purpose (and importance). Team members can more easily resist challenge from external sources and proceed with the minimum interference and readjustment. And they will very quickly notice if the context of the project changes and threatens the business case.

If you do not understand that strategic relationship, then one should ask as others may also be in the dark. If you are the Programme Sponsor you should be passionate about the reasons for the programme and the desired outcomes and its impact on corporate strategic goals and the subsequent impact on business performance - and be able to articulate this vital linkage to all stakeholders. Ideally the link to strategic business goals should be displayed and articulated at every opportunity, e.g. monthly board meetings – and certainly understood by all key players. If possible, the programme should have a high level of impact on the business strategic outcomes sought.

If you are the Programme Manager, how well do you believe that your Sponsor understands and articulates the project purpose and link to strategic goals? Also is the programme title suitable? Does it relates to the goal / impact of the project rather than the output? How many times, for example, have I seen titles such as “SAP xyz Project” as opposed to “Finance transformation Project”, “abc Bridge Project” as opposed to “Capacity Improvement Project”?

Having a clear alignment of the programme with the business goal also makes it easier to define the crucial outcome KPIs that will be the yardstick to measure progress towards and achievement of those goals. The KPIs should demonstrate a good balance between financial and non-financial goals (e.g. market growth, compliance, sustainability, customer, process, innovation, people)

How healthy is your project or programme governance?

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 12:45:01 GMT

How healthy is your project or programme governance?

Introduction

Ok so you are involved in a major project or programme – maybe you are new onto a project already running, or you have been brought in at the start with a group of others new to it. Andrew Bragg, the former Chief Executive of the APM often stated that “there is no such thing as project failure, just a failure of governance”. And still 80% of projects fail - the 2015 Association for Project Management (APM) survey confirmed that governance is a key factor in project success. It is thus a key component of Business Integrated Governance (BIG) (see Praxis and Business Integrated Governance - Praxis Framework ).

So back to your project (or programme) - how do you ensure, or assure, that it has been established with healthy governance in mind – and is still appropriate for this stage of the journey? One answer may be “is it following a bible and rigorous framework”. Another might be that “it’s the same as I put in place on my last project”. But beware, good governance is not a “one size fits all” cloak. Much of good governance is neither about structure nor process – yes they have a place but. It also depends upon less rational and more emotional responses. Whether you are the Project Sponsor, Sponsor Delegate, Project Manager, Independent Assurer, here are some questions, tips and hints that you could use to effect better governance.

The overriding objective of governance is to ensure an organisation achieves change successfully with confidence, transparency and control. It should ensure that the organisation is aware of risks, minimises project failures and maximises the beneficial outcomes (value) from their overall portfolio of projects in a sustainable and transparent manner. Most organisations do have policies, processes and structures for governance of projects (the harder aspects). But how flexibly they are applied to individual projects that have particular needs and drivers is the key to success. The softer aspects of mindset, attitude and leadership, along with having a supportive organisational culture will make all the difference.

Good Governance of change is a key element of the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) framework (see Praxis and Business Integrated Governance - Praxis Framework ). The aim of this model is to integrate project, programme and portfolio governance with strategic and tactical Business as Usual governance. Each element of BIG is described in detail both in Praxis and on the Deepteam website DeepTeam .

Let’s just concentrate on the governance aspects of this model, albeit it cannot be divorced from the other components as it is an “integrated” framework. Here are ten golden rules for healthy project or programme governance.

The Ten Golden Rules for Healthy Project Governance

Alignment and Relationships
Purpose, Vision and Strategic Roadmap
Golden Thread of Accountability and Delegation
Single, Truly Empowered, Governance Structure
Clearly Allocated Roles and Accountability
Requirements - Keeping the End Destination in Sight
Framework, Process and Decision Gates
Capacity and Competence
Transparency and Assurance
Leadership, Collaboration and Supportive Culture.

Over the next few weeks, we will explain and give examples of how you can improve each component on your project or programme such that your governance is healthy.

Consultants sell maturity models to scare me witless

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 17:58:13 GMT

Consultants sell maturity models to scare me witless – or to make my leadership team a battle ground

What do you think of this viewpoint from the CEO of a mid-size engineering company who wants to drive their business forwards?

“Consultants sell maturity models to scare me witless".

The last time I had someone in to do a current state review of our strategic process, they probed many areas which just didn’t need probing. Challenges were far too contentious to break down at that point in time. They said the senior team needed to be interviewed individually for their perspectives. ‘No’ I said – ‘we have good relationships – let’s go through it together and we should focus on important stuff for now, not those other distractions’.

During the session, there was lots of arm folding, very little desire to share opinion, and so many attempts to go off agenda. Perhaps the other areas were not just distractions after all? The summary the consultant made at the end of the session was so negative and kicked us all over the place.

"Complete waste of time in progress terms”.

We believe initial engagement around the possibilities offered in the BIG model, and a non-threatening maturity questionnaire would have got this process off the ground without tears at bed time….

Find out more about the BIG Maturity model

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 10:08:56 GMT

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

Many of us work in parts of the business where we can exert a level of influence and control. We make sure our objectives and targets are addressed. While we all understand the ‘greater good’ – how much of our own selves are we willing to sacrifice in a professional setting for that good?

As team players, we live and die in our teams. Brothers and sisters. We’re in it together, not competing.

As managers, we’ve had some success, and have risen. We’ve beaten others to something they want, we have learned to compete. We have our targets and we focus. Our kids want Nike at Christmas, not Umbro. We can see the greasy pole to seniority. Not so much about brothers and sisters anymore?

As directors, at the peak, life can be more brutal, and we are bonused on the company as a whole.

We’re fending off the young pretenders. How much are we willing to flag up deficiency or opportunity for the organisation if it won’t lead to good for ourselves? Our team members – perhaps we start to ignore them. Other managers (competition?) are they flagging up a self-interest issue? Directors – perhaps there are games going on to maximise my influence, benefit or reputation here too?

People are all rational and community spirted up to a point – but we can’t really tell where that point is with some.

This is why the BIG maturity model is so vital. BIG is cross domain – so issues / drivers that could be called out as politicking / self-serving are that little bit less likely to emerge. The BIG Maturity model takes parochialism out of understanding current state and founding a vision for future state.

If you really do see the greater good first when perhaps others don’t, look at BIG as a way to do business and the BIG Maturity model to de-personalise the issues around making it happen.

Find out more about change and the BIG Maturity model

Delivering Change - we need to focus on that capability, right?

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 17:49:24 GMT

Delivering Change - we need to focus on that capability, right?

Many of us work in organisations that put responsibility for delivering change into a group of business analysts, project managers and change specialists. We hire good people, train them, heck - we may even give them some tools. But in many cases – that is it.

Do you have a change delivery team? Are you being looked at for why ‘your’ change performance has dropped off since the energy surge at the start of the pandemic OR has your organisation become so agile it is chaotic? Are ‘initiatives’ popping up all over the place and sucking the life out of you? Is everyone staring at you to sort your life out and get on top of change again?

I hear this sort of thing a lot. Not just in change but in PMOs, product teams, and even in programmes.

The capability some of us provide is expected to be provided out of the wits we possess, and the influence we can make ourselves. Many organisations only want to look at you for your fixes of their problems. But the real problem is – the answer lies beyond you – in areas you can’t reach, or areas that don’t want to engage. Your wider ecosystem.

For example – how can you deliver the right changes if the path from strategy to business plan to project is non-existent? What if there is no change portfolio to enable priorities to be set? What if your organisation has no way of recording internal or external expense on change? Perhaps your customer business units have ineffective sponsors, no accountability or resource for business change and adoption? What if you have no benefit realisation / measurement scenario? What if you are working on a change that no longer has any priority – but you don’t know that yet?

Quite frankly – looking at just your change delivery function is not going to fix change on its own.

So what can you do? You’ll be expected to look into yourself, obviously. But maybe you can evaluate the organisation against a model which will expose the gaps that are making your existence almost futile? Maybe we can lift our heads up and get the organisation to realise that change delivery is not just about setting up a bunch of people you can lob those hot potatoes over to?

Find out more about change and the BIG Maturity model

Want Agile managed-growth post pandemic?

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 09:43:01 GMT

Want Agile managed-growth post pandemic?

Many of us have realised in recent months that while facing immediate challenges, we have no time to do ‘design and build’, and we have had to work closely with our stakeholders and customers on incremental delivery.

Take for example unified communications and collaboration – the speed of innovation, decision making and delivery has been amazing.

In many cases this has demonstrated we can devolve chunks of strategy delivery into empowered teams, give them a remit and let them solve problems. This has clearly worked for some kinds of organisation, with some cultures, capability and maturity. For others – this has left a mess of abandoned initiatives and lost progress where we’ve had to refocus to survive.

Rather than chop up objectives into serial, finite programmes or projects, in some cases we have instituted continuous delivery teams. These focus in areas that require multi-disciplinary collaboration to achieve, using self-contained teams with fewer cross domain dependencies to manage. They are agile, customer focused, motivated and productive. These ‘accountability nodes’ form points in our governance framework within operations areas, or even in product portfolios or groups.

However, the organisation still has the challenge to deploy its resources and funding to the point of greatest value. While internally perhaps we leave teams to operate freely within remit – they are still accountable – so still need to be measured and forecasts shared to enable business priorities to be adjusted where needed.

So, when hearing the word ‘agile’ – we need to think of more than just agile delivery. We need visibility of each domain with respect to its workloads and value projection on business-as-usual, product/asset development and delivery and change so we can respond to (for example) ramp up in operations, urgent needs for change, or fast customer responses to product campaigns.

Therefore, the ‘agile realisation’ requires reliable information to enable it to work. And assuming we apply agile delivery methods the right way at the right time – accountability nodes using agile methods still have to fit the business’ decision making process. Completely autonomous they are not.

The decision framework to knit these elements together – we refer to as Business Integrated Governance (BIG – which doesn’t mean it has to be large).

How ready is your organisation to accommodate these various workloads, their relation to strategy and organisation level governance, risk and compliance needs? Are you realising the freedom you gave people has worked to deal with the emergency – but the ecosystem that remains – is it in any state to enable agile managed growth and operation post-pandemic?

You've just coped to come through the pandemic - now adapt to grow

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 09:16:14 GMT

You've just coped to come through the pandemic - now adapt to grow

Some of us have not had to worry about the pandemic – nothing has changed, and maybe we’ve even seen our business rise a little bit!

For some of us who rely on face-to-face contact – selling and engaging, delivering service for example – we’ve had to find a whole new way of business. All of us have had to find new ways of communicating so we can function and exist.

Lots of energy has gone into coping and adapting. We’ve had to develop fast analysis of our current situation, focus on the most important things, imagineer solutions, make fast decisions, bypass bureaucracy and throw ourselves into innovation like never before. For some this has been stressful, others liberating!

As we are emerging, we have a lot to think about. We’ve proven that we can be agile, make quick decisions and apply resources where needs be. But now, how do we take the energy to survive and turn it into the behaviour of survive. As business picks up our product development may need to accelerate, and the strategy adjustments will need to percolate into the business.

While recently it has been obvious what we HAVE to do – our thoughts will return to what we would like to do. All of those things we dropped in order to cope – we can’t do them all. And would you say that the crisis management ecosystem will really work when there are many more choices to deal with?

What does your strategy to delivery ecosystem now look like, where has it improved, where is it still problematic, and how will you get it back to an operational, as opposed to a crisis management state?

The Business Integrated Governance model provides a framework to make decisions across business as usual, products / assets and change. It provides a framework to reharmonise around. It is free and in the public domain. There is a maturity model which introduces organisations to the model, and how they are fixed to operate using it, to achieve the benefits it provides.

You want to adapt and grow? Start here?

CxO - Pilot or Rear Gunner?

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 19:27:43 GMT

CxO - Pilot or Rear Gunner?

CxO - Pilot or Reargunner?

Enabling insightful and forward-looking data and information

Many organisations have a strategy (some do not) and attempt to plot a course to implement that strategy successfully. But how many CxOs and the Board truthfully know how well they are doing and whether they will achieve the outcomes sought? Does the rest of the organisation understand the strategic imperatives, the key projects, the overall roadmap and the success factors? And when things in the market or environment change, do you as CxO, have confidence in the progress and ultimate outcome? Or are you shocked when sub-optimal outcomes present themselves or you are left clearing up a mess after the event? The concept of Business Integrated Governance (BIG) can help you achieve strategic outcomes with confidence and control – being the pilot rather than the rear gunner.

Successful outcomes of change projects, and ultimately strategy, relies on insightful data and forward-looking information, accountable active and effective individuals, an organisational culture that supports effective sponsorship that, in turn, relies on Boards creating the right culture, ethics and leadership tone to support effective implementation.

Board members (including CxOs) have two crucial roles in the governance of change and achieving strategic objectives:

as the Board collectively and as the apex of governance, to create the right culture, ethics and leadership tone and foster the capability for effective implementation. In addition, to delegate to and hold sponsors to account for their project success (the outcome).
individually to undertake the role of the sponsor on specific programmes and projects to ensure a successful outcome, benefits realisation and value add to the organisation in line with strategic objectives.

BIG pulls together several essential ingredients to provide organisations with the opportunity to ensure successful strategy achievement with confidence and control. It provides an integrated response covering the following components:

So, by example let’s take just one component, Accountability. In simple terms the Board is accountable to the owner or shareholders for successful outcome of the overall organisational strategy, which is usually broken down into individual programmes or projects for implementation. The Board can delegate responsibility for delivery of individual programme or projects to an accountable executive, the sponsor (and effectively lend the sponsor corporate funds to invest and provide a successful outcome). So, the sponsor is accountable to the Board for the successful outcome of the project or programme (and passes on the funds – the budget - to the Project Manager to deliver a successful output or result).

Projects often don’t meet their outcome objectives and the reasons for failure are evident early in the project. Why wasn’t the sponsor helped and challenged so they could understand and face their responsibilities to avoid failure? And why didn’t the organisational board hold the sponsor to account? Too many times, neither the board nor sponsor understand their respective responsibilities and good governance principles go by the wayside.

Some of the issues that get in the way of effectively holding sponsors to account include:

The business case was developed primarily to gain funding – and then hidden or forgotten
Confusion over who the sponsor is. The expectations for the role are not made clear nor personal performance criteria set and agreed
Vision and success criteria being unclear so different people assume what these are. Often time, cost and quality are the default criteria, which are output focused
Board reports being voluminous and too focused on (historical) delivery progress rather than (forward-looking) outcome or predicted benefits; the sponsor just forwards the project manager (delivery) progress summary
Individual performance incentives not aligned with project success criteria
The organisation not supporting good project governance or practice
Too little time devoted to key project (strategic) performance at board meetings
Sponsors not staying in role for the duration of a project thereby avoiding accountability for the project outcome and / or formal processes for a proper handover of responsibility not carried out.
Reverting to prioritising BAU problem solving comfort zone instead of pushing the strategic change

BIG provides a comprehensive and coherent framework for mapping out accountabilities and ensuring they are correctly allocated. It also enables the appropriate insightful and forward-looking data and information customised separately for the Sponsor role and Board (and any other governance roles) to ensure Boards and the CxOs are ‘pilot’ looking forward rather than rear gunner looking backward.

For more information on this and other components of BIG and how you can achieve strategic outcomes with confidence and control, visit www.deepteam.co.uk

Accountability Map

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 07:31:30 GMT

Accountability Map

A lot of you will know that delivering projects and programmes involves a lot project collateral, whether that’s risk logs, plans and schedules, business cases, change impact assessments, procurement strategies and the like. And yes, all of this is needed to give the best chance of success.

Success is rarely a product of the amount of collateral you develop as part of building out the programme and travelling through the lifecycle of the stages.

There is another layer, an almost invisible but powerful layer, one that taps into the emotions and status of people in and around the programme. It’s the key to unlocking progress, making connections and achieving success. Some people call it the stakeholder layer, which I don’t think gives it the right gravitas. Others call it the ‘wetware’ that wraps around the programme and operates in complex organic ways.

For me, I call it the accountability layer. It’s the layer that not only includes the people in the programme who through their connections, influence and role make things happen but also the people in the organisations around the programme who through their role, personal power and influence are able to get things done.

This is kind of an accountability map across the landscape that helps identify the pools of activity and leads you to the people that can help clear blockers in those areas.

I found a method that actually has the ‘accountability map’ as a core part of its delivery - it’s called ‘Business Integrated Governance’ (BIG for short) and I’m using and growing my knowledge of how useful it is every day.

To learn more about how you can use Accountability and to get the BIG model get it touch by clicking the button below.

Governance Model for the ‘Matrix’ Portfolio

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 10:05:06 GMT

Governan ce Model for the "Matrix Portfolio"

Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy - BEIS

In February 2021, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy engaged Deepteam to develop the Governance Model for the ‘Matrix’ Portfolio . ‘Matrix Portfolio’ is the name given to an initiative to combine shared services provision across 8 government departments. This complex, multi-year initiative was already taking shape from a vision and scope perspective, but the portfolio team wanted support to accelerate governance and accountability readiness.

Deepteam consists of a network of like-minded individuals who provide expertise in Business Integrated Governance (BIG). One of its founders was lead author on the BIG chapters in the Praxis Framework , and it was clear the Model had many elements available for use in the Matrix Portfolio scenario. Deepteam was contracted to provide:

Definition of the overall Governance Strategy and model for the cluster portfolio
Clearly articulated accountability map across the departments within the cluster
Terms of references for proposed governance forums.
Escalation and approval thresholds for time, cost, change, risk, and benefits.
Working with the BEIS programme team to establish the approach to business cases.
Defined assurance processes.

This work was carried out after a fast start up and at a fast pace to support Department expectations. Initially, we gained understanding of current state and expectations through background reading, group discussion and workshops. From there, we shared good governance design principles and proposed a high-level strategic governance framework which included potential portfolio roles and governance accountabilities (the core of our work, and the core of the principles taken from BIG). With the governance framework outlined, it was possible to create terms of reference for each accountability component, and offer each backbone standing agendas. Work remained (at time of writing) to derive information needs and thence Portfolio data model, and thence the information management regime across the departmental participants.

As the Matrix Portfolio is to provide a shared services platform, much delivery is common, with transformation and some benefit delivery being department specific. Hence, a pragmatic approach and timetable to business case development and approval was proposed to enable effective oversight but to provide a faster process than normal to deal with pressing department needs and necessary interfaces with key stakeholders. We covered options for Portfolio delivery shape which led to approvals and related escalations, funding and tolerances recommendations.

Work was undertaken to frame the assurance regime, with further work necessary to develop specifics once the final Portfolio scope, business cases and operating model are finalised. Next Steps are pending Portfolio direction decisions.

Zoe Kitchener, Governance lead on the Matrix Portfolio from BEIS says “the Matrix Portfolio is complex and its governance and assurance regime must span departmental boundaries. Our team needed a burst of expertise to help us make ready for the work to come.”

David Dunning, Deepteam says, “ We believe that by adding the BIG model wrapper to our traditional governance and assurance expertise, we are able to offer organisations a fast solution to scenarios that conventional wisdom does not have an off the shelf answer to – especially in relation to governance framework, accountability mapping, data modelling and translation to information management for complex cross domain initiatives .”

Find out more about Deepteam and using a BIG model to simplify your connection of strategy to delivery here.

APM Assurance and Governance SIG Conference

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 10:09:00 GMT

APM Assurance and Governance SIG Conference

The recent Governance and Assurance SIG Conference had the theme " Project ring of confidence - Data driven governance and assurance ". See the conference report here .

David Dunning of Deepteam presented the opening session, where he provided an insight to the drive for the Business Integrated Governance - questioning - is Governance and Assurance baked into our operation or sprinkled on top ?

Many organisations understand governance, assurance and data independently, but make assumptions ‘these just happen’. We may have good intentions at the ‘top of the shop’ by setting great strategies but we are often disappointed when delivery of change doesn’t match the strategic goals. Poor accountability, poor infrastructure and limited capability to paint a picture anyone finds believable make systematic, effective governance and assurance very difficult. Any wonder why 54% of us achieve less than 50% of our strategic goals? So time to change the game... think BIG…

BIG is Business Integrated Governance - Deepteam uses the BIG model to transform governance, accountability, assurance and information throughout the organisation, delivering strategic alignment, effectiveness, efficiency, and ROI, all by utilising the existing systems and tools.

It has been shared into the Public domain within the Praxis Framework , and is developing within the Core P3M Data Club - a network of over 530 volunteers

David explained why he developed BIG, how it integrates governance, assurance and an organisation Data model to ensure decisions are made rapidly, by the right people and with confidence and control.

Best presenter of the day: “David Dunning. Why? Every thing he outlined had a synergy with me. He covered all the issues I encounter and the solutions were spot on.”

Click here to access the presentation slides and here to access the session recording

A three-time parent is a Portfolio Manager

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:32:29 GMT

A three-time parent is a Portfolio Manager

Governance in a family of many

I am a parent; a three-time parent. I still remember the thrill of the first steps – registering the moment on a note pad and taking as many pictures as possible to send to the grandparents. These were proof of success – the baby’s for achieving an important milestone, but also recognition from the “Council of the Elders” (the project Sponsor) that I had passed my test as a Parent (Project Manager?).

The strategy was clearly defined and properly communicated by the Council of the Elders – your son is older than your brother’s, therefore you have to ensure he will be the first to walk, with no fear or accidents along the process. Pretty clear, hein…?

The tactic to implement the strategy was also simple: [1] teach the baby what to do and gain confidence and trust, [2] show him what not to do as it can cause distractions, unbalance, etc, learning how to face danger without fear, and finally, [3] perfect the walking technique – 1% improvement each day, represents two times better after three months.

Mastery is achieved when the child becomes effective (does the right things) and efficient (does those things right). This is similar to a silver sphere in a pinball machine – highly energetic, autonomous, resilient, and always beating me to every corner of the house.

In the PM world, I would call this a very Productive child, with the right combination of Effectiveness and Efficiency.

If you are a three-time parent (or more) you have a Portfolio to Manage. You’ll have a seat at the table that issues the Strategy to raise lovely children into happy and successful grown people. Seating next to you will be your partner and … the Elders. Some “Boards of Management” may include older brothers and a great-grand-mother. One of the Elders will be your Sponsor and approving authority. You are responsible for outlining the delivery tactic to implement the strategy, which will be sanctioned from time to time by the Board. Frequency of the oversight activity will depend on results delivered previously.

Here is for each “project”, a list of stakeholders I can think of – the board of management, the other brothers, their friends, the neighbours, the soccer club, the music academy, the secondary school, and a French bulldog called Napoleon. This is not easy to manage! So many conflicting interests, so many different interpretations of what “raising happy and successful grown people”. The Principal recommends more studying time and the Coach encourages practising 5 days per week for better results.

How to govern such a complex “organism”? I’ve tried transforming the fridge on a Kanban board, fully covered with yellow post-it notes. Nobody reads them. I also tried “one-to-one” sessions with the most relevant stakeholders. I abandoned this approach as well, as I spent more time in meetings than working. The major problem is when stakeholders start to self-organise themselves and form groups according to their interest in the portfolio. Silos are so annoying – very unproductive, disconnected from the overall objectives and incredibly hard to dismantle.

Then I tried to think outside the box – communication of all the stakeholders and the project members is far from perfect, when communicating with each other. Moreover, as physically apart, some living on different time zones and others extremely busy, it is difficult to encourage decent “face-to-face” events to promote communication. However, they all (with no exception) communicate well with their personal assistant, via their smartphones.

In the Group, there are the “Bixbi”, the “Siris” and the “Google Assistants”. Regardless of the preferred technology, they all have a point in common – a Gmail account and access to G-drive on the Cloud.

The Strategy for the school year was presented and stored in the Cloud. The Mission and Vision are sent to all “Users” once a week, together with a motivational quote.

There is an implementation tactic for each of the children, as they have different requirements. The respective Operational Plan is also stored in the Cloud, in a folder under the child’s name. This plan has been automated to email tasks and objectives for the week, to each of the members of the team. A shared calendar allows everybody to know their own and everybody else’s diary.

If events are missed and milestones not achieved, a red alert email is sent to the User. However, if these are achieved and all goes well, celebrating messages are sent to all the team.

Friday afternoon and Saturday morning are the periods to summarise the week, identifying what went well and what can improve, as well as plan the following week (a lot of planning can be developed on a Saturday morning during soccer practise – plus, all the dads are there, to seek advice if needed (peer review?)

We strategise, we develop tactics and we plan implementation phases. Does it all go as planned? Pretty much never. We are wise enough to monitor results and benefits, compare with the initial plan and flexible enough to pivot to something different if needed. Who hasn’t planned a picnic on a Sunday of torrential rain? Did you lock the kids in their rooms? Of course not – some other idea always comes along to save the day. Do we plan the whole year? Hardly. We have an overall objective for the school year, but we plan month by month and monitor the results. If it works, we repeat the following month, if not we change and adapt.

What are the fundamental keys of success? Everybody must be taught and developed to be accountable for their own acts. Swift in the interpretation of the tactics, trustworthy on taking upon him/her the role and responsibilities assigned and committed to delivering results planned. Moreover, the governance rules must be clear to all and represent the same to each one. All my sons know exactly what they can decide on and what are the topics they must escalate to me or their mom. The rules are clear to all. And if they change (because they do, frequently), they are properly and timely communicated to all, via the “family management system” in place (FaMaS).

Can all this be implemented in one weekend? Absolutely not. It took me over six months. We grew the system incrementally, allowing every member to get to grips on the new module and start using it correctly. Did I force a new system on any of them? Not at all. The iPhones are still there, and so are the Androids. They all co-exist, with FaMaS sitting on top of them, seamlessly. And the Users like it because of that – no major change, evolution with no revolution, just added functionalities.

In a nutshell, all this is Business Integrated Governance (BIG) – a unified and streamlined Governance framework, supported by a user-friendly Data Management system and a set of Accountability principles, integrated in a unique model developed by the Core P3M Data Club to increase ROI and performance of Strategy Implementation in organisations, which is delivered by implementation partners such as DeepTeam .

NEWS - APM Governance and Assurance SIG Conference 2021

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 15:12:46 GMT

David Dunning presented the project ring-of-confidence at the Data-driven Governance and Assurance Conference.

David Dunning presented the Project ring-of-confidence at the

Data-driven Governance and Assurance Conference

Title: Business Integrated Governance - Chocolate chip on top, or baked through the cake?

Many organisations understand governance, assurance & data independently, but make assumptions ‘these just happen’. We often just sprinkle them on top of our organisation and assume that ‘good’ runs all through the organisation.

We may have good intentions at the ‘top of the shop’ by setting great strategies but are often disappointed when change delivery doesn’t match the goals, & often find out too late.

Poor accountability, infrastructure & limited capability to paint a believable picture are all symptoms of the problem.

So time to change the game, think BIG?

The Core P3M Data Club created the BIG model to transform governance, accountability, assurance & information throughout the organisation, delivering strategic alignment, effectiveness, efficiency by utilising the existing systems & tools.

David explained why we developed BIG, how it integrates governance, assurance & an organisation Data model to ensure decisions are made rapidly, by the right people and with confidence and control.

Best session attended during the day: - "David Dunning. Why? Every thing he outlined had a synergy with me. He covered all the issues I encounter, and the solutions were spot on."

Is your main board out of focus?

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:35:27 GMT

Is your Main Board out of focus ?

It is hard to challenge senior people on matters they so publicly say they have in hand, or are so thoroughly expected to be on top of.

Take 2 very sensitive areas – strategy formulation and strategy delivery.

Strategy formulation – easy right? Look at your strengths and weaknesses. Consider the opportunities and threats in front of you. Consider the imperatives you face and the goals of your owners. Understand the importance of all those things. Be clear on your constraints and risks. Draw out what Objectives that need to be defined what Targets for Operation and identify the Challenges for innovation.

Create a couple of versions of that with different mixes with alternate value judgements applied. Pop those into a timeline interspersed with check points and decision points – write a bit of blather on top – job done? Well yes – but there is then the job of getting peer agreement, and getting those objectives targets and challenges off the paper and into execution.

Then we have strategy delivery. To do this of course we need to set priority so that funding resources and leadership can be applied in proportion to the value each item warrants. We then need to decompose the high-level board objective, target and challenge into smaller elements that people can deliver against – and maintain priority. Then we must ensure that from within all work, and all the progress – we can decipher the ‘blather’ we get on progress to determine if we are achieving the right accomplishments or not.

So where does focus come into this? By focus we mean attention and clarity to enable decision and action.

Can we keep focus on our strengths and weaknesses? If they change – are we missing a possibility to exploit a situation, or losing to a customer? Are the Opportunities and Threats the same – in terms of scope and scale? Might the importance of these have shifted? Might we need to adjust our Objectives, Targets and Challenges. This can, of course be hard, so perhaps we lose focus on our drivers a little bit more than we should?

Secondly, can we keep focus on the translation of objective into the deliverables that will enable them? Have a look at the list of strategic projects your organisation runs. How are they described – as verbs (e.g. CRM Solution) or as nouns (Shorter sales cycle). It is easy to lose focus on intent. Can the board not only retain its focus – but also that others focus too?

Third. As actual execution becomes more distant from Board members, can they retain focus on the need to provide facility, leadership and culture to enable those distant matters to happen? Perhaps board members only see PPT and simple data presentation – but there has to be an ecosystem underneath that. Aside from pressing matters within day to day delivery, and key future strategic planning – can Board members maintain focus on the ecosystem that provides them information to function with?

If we have these matters in focus – then perhaps we will be able to focus on the matters that arise in the information we use in our decision making processes. Lose focus on the preceding three – how can your board apply focus to this most important one?

Is execution in your board a bad word?

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 14:32:29 GMT

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Is "execution" in your Board a bad word?

We have a very sharp set of directors. Clever, knowledgeable. Different levels of creativeness, practicality, and diligence through the team. All in all – it is looking outwards and forwards – which is great.

However – it seems a bit insulated from change delivery to provide the strategy execution. Our domain heads are really focused on their domain Targets and how to achieve them. For example, the Head of Sales and Marketing is driving our brand and growing sales. Head of Engineering is developing and deploying excellent people. Head of Manufacturing has a world class facility and efficiency. Innovate and improve – we can do locally, quite well!

The problem seems to be anything cross domain. For example. the Head of Products is innovating and sustaining our core offerings. We have good working teams consisting of reps from S&M, Engineering and Manufacturing – but coordinating delivery – let’s just say the integrated plan is a PowerPoint slide deck. Common priority? Well – it’s hard to tell, and I’m pretty sure that each domain head makes sure their Targets are met before helping other areas.

So back to the Board. Strategic initiatives are mostly cross domain. For example, Digital Transformation. There is a great set of wording on our Annual Business plan for shareholders. Sounds great - lots of good ideas from innovation platforms to meeting management solutions to data and analytics capability for manufacturing to automated testing in engineering and greater work from home facility for all staff. But it seems that directors lose interest once a goal or an imperative have been agreed. One even said “we hand over to our managers and let them get on with it”.

For example, finding an executive sponsor to really engage in delivery is hard. I don’t know if sponsors understand what sponsorship is. They begrudgingly attend meetings and often send deputies who won’t make decisions and say ‘this is not their day job’.

Another example – integrated plans. With all domains planning differently, with resource planning ranging from ‘hope’ to allocation spreadsheets to detailed project plans – it is hard to know if the right priorities have been applied to deployment of people on this initiative or that – as a whole yet alone domain by domain. Every date presented is inherently unreliable and accountability avoidable. How can this be culturally accepted?

Another example – direction change. Our directors look outside the organisation, and are planning shifts in strategy emphasis long before we hear about it. Months can go by before something is communicated, and even then – it is not clear where we need to slow down to enable us to speed up in other areas as our planning models are so unreliable. And crisis management? Out teams have dropped everything recently seized the challenge to modify how we work internally, with customers and suppliers – but where do we pick up where we left off?

So is execution a bad word? Within director domains, probably not – but on cross domain initiatives – lack of sponsor interest, lack of investment in coordination toolsets, late in the day priority change communication - it seems to be! Worse still, I have no way of tracking stats on outcomes from our strategic initiatives. Funny that – or is it?

Ever rocked up to the Board and you're the clown?

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 09:53:01 GMT

Ever rocked up to the Board and you're the clown?

Ever rocked up the Board meeting and you're the Clown?

I like to think I run the office for the CIO pretty well. The boss (CIO) negotiates budget and is smart enough to come up with lots of good ideas he implemented at the last place he worked. Seems to have persuaded the CEO he’s capable with imaginative ways for how we can collect process and use information. The directives are pretty clear – which is good.

Alongside the big idea stuff, we have a raft of improvement ideas, problem solves and must haves that come from various business areas. Some have business cases, others are givens that this director or that just wants to ‘spend some of their budget on – so just sort it out please’ projects.

I can pretty much tell you what we have going on, how much the larger ones cost, and how much budget they have left, but it’s hard to predict completion as in some cases the scope is a bit ‘agile’ and some of the key resources are a bit pulled from pillar to post, and we have fires to fight most weeks. I think – all things considered, I do pretty well keeping a reasonable picture of what is happening.

Unusually, I got invited to attend last month’s Exec Board meeting with the boss. He said something about the new COO hiring their deputy from their previous role, and that the COO was bringing their #2 to that meeting, so I’d better put my cufflinks on.

So, we hear the financial position and projections, all good. We hear sales and marketing status, all good.

Then the new COO deputy starts to present their performance vs operational Targets – as expected but then he starts talking about their ‘Change Portfolio’.

OK, new kid, new jargon. But its more than that as he then starts to outline his understanding of the current corporate goals (the fluffy words we have on the website) and imperatives (as understood from recent regulatory changes).

OK, so imperatives I get – but the goals – well – we try to align to those in business cases but his spin is very different. He’s mapped those to known Objectives within Operations and flagged up there are a couple of objectives not getting much attention – so has asked for more funding!

He’s offered some implied new objectives which he wants ratified at the meeting, and has asked that my boss and the CFO as well as his boss can have their annual objectives extended to include one of the Objectives!

WHAT? He’s also suggested a couple of OUR projects that are using CIO resources that could be re-prioritised to support the enabling projects and has explained when he wants completion of the new CRM system by so that the new European Operation can start (well that is just pie in the sky – but apparently my Boss promised last quarter).

Finally – he’s flagged up an ‘Innovation challenge’ that HE wants to set for the CIO to investigate use of shared data for Product Management to enable their refocus on new product development.

He then goes through just his ‘in-flight portfolio’ – each with a completion and benefit confidence figure and confirms progress on completion and accomplishment (why he used 2 words I don’t know) and suggested a couple of ‘strategic’ projects to cancel because he says they are not strategic and not going to deliver!!

Then he finishes to complete silence. And all I hear is my Boss’ chair swivel slowly around to face me. Sadly, I hadn’t brought the red nose and the big red shoes….

Are you the only one shocked by how many ‘priorities’ the board thinks it has?

Sun, 23 May 2021 18:15:53 GMT

Are you the only one shocked by how many ‘priorities’ the board thinks it has?

Are you the only one shocked by how many "priorities" the Board thinks it has?

I sometimes sit in board meeting deputising for my boss the CIO. Our domain does have innovation ideas, but we’re primarily a servant of the business.

I can see the list of initiatives by functional area, and I can see the governance level they are being overseen at (platinum, gold, silver), and the method they are being delivered by.

There is a RAG status (current and previous). But there is no priority listed. I can’t tell which ones are most important. More worryingly – I can see descriptions of what each initiative is to DO, but there is little to indicate what each will ACHIEVE.

I stupidly piped up the other day in a moment of carelessness and asked about the priorities. “They are all priorities” was the reply. Even more stupidly I followed up – “surely, some of these are more strongly strategically aligned than others – aren’t some of these local initiatives?”.

No one replied. I later found out the alignment on initiatives is laid out in programme and project business cases, almost as ‘claims’ to alignment but no one actually aggregates all that stuff to make sure it's all coherent.

The CFO only cares if the business case makes sense, the COO thinks he knows best anyway and only sees the need for business cases on stuff others do.

The CEO seems to almost assume that everyone is working to that lovely strategy paper she maintains – or perhaps she has no illusion of the multitude of priorities that there seem to be?

I can see why some aspects to our employee engagement results show change exhaustion, and why sponsorship seems to be nothing anyone really wants to do except for their own ideas.

Is it just me that sees the impossibility of all we seem to have on, and the almost deliberate vagueness of priority setting? It's like a form of gridlock no one seems able or willing to get out of!!

Why can't you rely on colleagues in other functions to deliver for you?

Sun, 23 May 2021 18:15:50 GMT

W hy can't you rely on colleagues in other functions to deliver for you?

Why can't you rely on colleagues in other functions to deliver for you?

As board members, most of us have an executive responsibility for a key component of the business but are all in it to bring success to the company.

However, most of us are paid bonuses on achieving Objectives and Targets. Some of these are corporate, some are related to how our functions relate to corporate, and some are on our functions.

Some of us know each other well, but the majority of the board are just colleagues, and prefer to keep it that way.

We are all professional and are happy to extend goodwill to support each other when it earns a favour.

The trouble is – that when any of us have something to lead which his cross domain – it can get a bit sticky of things aren’t going perfectly.

For example, Business Services had a key customer problem which sucked in a whole load of testers from IT. As this was ‘customer facing’ we drop everything, right? Well yes, but this meant that the new CRM system for sales will now go live a month late, as the resources window just got gobbled up and the finance solution upgrade also has to get attended to.

The problem for me as Sales Director is that I now miss my milestone for Sales Improvement, so I lose my Q4 bonus. And rather than slip the testing to delay the finance system upgrade a month – my initiative got kicked out a quarter so the FD gets her bonus. Oh, and yes, we can turn on the ‘new features’ for Purchase order issue (not exactly business critical.

And yesterday – I found out the critical customer issue is on a client account worth a measly £20k per annum – but keeping it meant the Services Director and their team hit target for the year.

Why can’t we be a bit clearer on all the options and impacts before we are all a little bit parochial?

Why is it I dread the next Board meeting?

Sun, 23 May 2021 18:15:48 GMT

Why is it I dread the next Board meeting?

I can’t help it, I like to be organised. It doesn’t make me dull or uncreative, but unless we align gears and oil them once in a while, we get horrible gridding and painful jams.

So - why is it for half of the agenda items we spend debating the information not the meaning?

I’m also one for effective meeting management. So - what is the point of having a meeting and making no decisions?

And what is the point of setting actions if people ignore them. I’m fed up of hearing “do you want me to do these actions or run xxx?” – well – we need both I’m afraid.

And – strategic projects. We all agreed the strategy, and we published the business plan to shareholders in our names.

So why is there so much lip service done to implementing common change? It's almost as if the “Head of…” layer will only get serious about strategic transformation if it fits with their opinion.

And – maybe it's because I’m an engineering graduate – but it feels like many aspects of direction are set based on the gut feel of some directors rather than from opportunity and threat-based considerations?

It feels like some are very happy to jump to conclusions from “their experience” and “don’t ask me to justify, I’m paid a lot of money to take this sort of risk”.

I’m sure we are spending millions on projects the cause has gone away for.

We could be so much better organised…..

Is your Board meeting laser-focused?

Fri, 07 May 2021 11:27:04 GMT

Is your Board meeting laser-focused?

My organisation board meeting is split into 2 parts, with performance review as part 1, and strategy review part 2.

Performance review is progress against targets by department head and forecast to end of year. There is a discussion of risk and corrective action – the team work well as problem solvers together, and we solve the odd cross domain issue. Commentary, decisions and actions are recorded in minutes.

With respect to strategy – this is far less simple. While as a group we are clear on what we want to achieve, domain directors lead delivery in their areas against their personal targets, so priority for the same corporate objectives in different domains can be clearly interpreted differently.

As a main board, we don’t have line of sight from objective to key result expected to the enabling entity that will deliver it. We can’t see that priority implementation is as we set it. So - the board meeting may be focused – but past the numeric simplicity of performance numbers, board meetings are very murky indeed, relying on opinion and position more than analysis and conclusion.

How can we resolve this?

Why are Board meetings like wading through mud?

Fri, 07 May 2021 11:24:05 GMT

Why are Board meetings like wading through mud?

I’ve been in post as new CIO here now for 3 months, but I’m finding Board meetings tedious and unhelpful.

We have a great new sales director, laser sharp person. At performance meetings, there is simplicity – the targets are…, the issues have been…, we are addressing by…, I need…. Similar in supply chain.

So why is it that when it comes to strategy and change, we are told a complete list of confusingly named Projects (what is Project Falcon?)?

We can see that they are ‘Red Amber or Green’. We are given a summary of what the project is going to do, and whether it is agile, and whether it is governance level A, B or C. We sit through a commentary about all the milestones progress, how much has been spent, and how much ahead or behind we are.

Why do we have to debate this project alignment to that ‘strategic driver’ every meeting? I have no idea how initiatives relate to opportunities, threats, imperatives and goals, or who is accountable for which objectives and challenges.

Maybe I’m just wondering because I’m new, but how have some of these things got on our agenda? Why are we into the weeds on these things? Why are we wading through all this mud?

I’m sensing it has been forever thus, because surely we wouldn’t design our strategy progress board meetings on this basis?

73f15a698fff49e19a059d7ae7c176b3

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Have a BIG New Year?