Many organisations struggle with managing more than one change initiative. This presentation provides insights from research and practice in leading organisations in Australia.
This presentation was delivered at the October 2014 Change Management conference in Canberra, Australia.
5. The Research Shows…
$100 billion were invested in projects in the
State of Victoria over the past decade without
any evidence of improvement in their strategic
goals
Leading organisations admit
that as few as 10% of their
strategies are implemented
¾ of mergers and
acquisitions never
pay off
Projects Success: On-time On-budget
Standish
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2009
Successful Challenged Failed
Project governance in
Australia is highly
dysfunctional
Low performing organisations
complete only 36% of change
initiatives successfully
40% of an organisations resources
are spent on strategic initiatives yet
top executives pay little attention
6.
7. P3M3 Maturity Levels
0
1
2
3
4
5
Control Governance Benefits Stakeholder Risk Financial Resource
P3M3MaturityLevel
AVERAGE Project mgt Program mgt Portfolio mgt
2013 Maturity Levels – 2nd best agency
0
1
2
3
4
5
Control Governance Benefits Stakeholder Risk Financial Resource
P3M3MaturityLevel
AVERAGE Project mgt Program mgt Portfolio mgt
2013 Maturity Levels – large agencies
0
1
2
3
4
5
Control Governance Benefits Stakeholder Risk Financial Resource
P3M3MaturityLevel
AVERAGE Project mgt Program mgt Portfolio mgt
10. Ideation
Customers
Partners
Markets
Scans
Open Source
Business Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence
Internal Database
Staff
Idea Generation
Ideation
Events
Data
Mining
Individual
Input
Initial
Screen
and
Review
Ideas Portfolio
Management Idea Transition
Strategic
Fit
Meets
Current /Future
Customer
Needs
Competitive
Position
Concept
of
Operations
Revenue
Potential
Feasibility
and
Risk
Analysis
of
Alternatives
Investment
Cost
And
Funding
Streams
Enterprise
Capabilities
Business
Plan
Virtual
Prototype
Worthiness
Partner
Alignment
Opportunity Pipeline
Business Unit Pursuit
Source: Boeing Corporation
Your resource
capacity
11.
12. The best organisations
PfM3 - Management Control – Level 4 PfM3 - Organizational Governance – Level 5
1. Robust organizational framework for categorizing
initiatives, measuring and monitoring
organizational performance, and measuring
contribution from portfolio
1. Governance of investment management has
moved from a programme/project-centric
process to organization-centric
3. High-level reports on key aspects of portfolio
made available to Executive Board to support
informed decision-making
4. Prioritization within portfolio based on priority of
strategic objectives
6. High levels of operational engagement with
decision-making and direction of portfolio
5. Executive Board has clear accountability for
stability of the organization and actively
manages portfolio to ensure sustainability and
realization of strategic objectives
7. Decision-making based on maintaining
alignment and balance within portfolio,
and its optimal configuration, to achieve
strategic objectives
6. Organization proactively enables, supports and
achieves business process improvement
9. Trend reporting on progress, actual and
projected cost, level of risk, and initiative and
stakeholder confidence, are routinely collected,
reviewed by Executive Board and used for
decision-making
10. Quantitative and qualitative measures and
lessons identified are routinely used to improve
effectiveness of portfolio management
13.
14.
15. IT Investment process
(2011->2012 from $50Mpa -> $27M pa)
The theory … The practice …
‘decibel-driven’ processes
More productive and inclusive
Australia
Employment
projects
Schools
projects
Early
childhood
projects
Help …
16. Key Changes
From ‘tunnel to funnel’
– Concept Definitions (3p)
– Detailed Proposals ($20k-50k)
– logic needed to cull earlier in
the process
• Analysis
– 4R, 6Q Governance
2 template changes
• ValIT Categorisation vs ‘Essential’
1. Doing better things
2. Doing more things
3. Doing things better
4. Keeping our promise
5. Keeping lights on
6. Keeping our job
• Value Risk Assessment (Existing)
– Policy
– Strategy
– Savings
– Risk
Timing 2012-13
Cluster Employment
investment category (Multiple Items)
Value Assessment
Count of cost pa Column Labels
Row Labels
Policy Strategy Savings Risk
Grand Total
implement govt policy 3 3
support govt policy - clear & measurable benefits 2 2
support govt policy - intangible benefits only 4 4
No clear linkage to govt policy 1 1
implement dept strategy
support dept strategy - clear & measurable benefits 6 6
support dept strategy - intangible benefits only 1 1
No clear linkage to dept strategy
ROI > 200%
ROI > 150%, <200%
ROI > 100%, <150%
ROI > 0%, <100% 2 2
no ROI
will reduce dept risk rated High or Extreme
will reduce op risk rated High or Extreme
help reduce dept risk rated High or Extreme 1 1
will reduce dept risk rated Moderate or Low 1 1
help reduce dept risk rated Moderate or Low
help reduce op risk rated Moderate or Low
No linkage to risks
Grand Total 10 7 2 2 21
Timing 2012-13
Cluster Employment unaligned:
Alignment with investment priorities45% 26% 6% 19% 3%
Count of cost pa Column Labels
Row Labels
Policy Strategy Savings Risk
#VALUE!
GrandTotal
0 1 1
1. Doing New Things (Transform) 0%
2. Doing more things (Grow) 2 1 3 10%
3. Doing things better (Enhance) 8 6 2 2 18 58%
4. Keeping our promise (Compliance) 4 1 5 16%
5. Keep lights on (Core) 1 3 4 13%
(blank)
Grand Total 14 8 2 6 1 31
22. Key Take-Aways
• Change’s are a significant investment – treat them as
such
• Understand and develop your organisation’s change
delivery capability
• Prioritise! You cant do everything.
• Create and reinforce a delivery culture
• Don’t kill your change initiatives by under-resourcing
them
• Project sponsorship and governance are core skills for
executives
• Stop initiatives that no-longer deliver any benefit
23. Got a question?
0411 243 568
Michael.young@transformed.com.au
www.transformed.com.au
Notas do Editor
Defining change capability
Why should you care?
Identifying the right initiatives
Case study – what the best organisations do
Effective and sustainable delivery
Change means different things to different people
Commonly people talk about the 2 certainties in life – death and taxes…. I reckon there are three – death, taxes, and things changing!
Nothing stands still – things are always changing…
Market disruptions
From an organizational perspective, changes are managed activities to move the organisation from one state to the next.
Ideally these changes result in achievement of the organization's strategy or an ROI
We tend to see two key aspects in a business, each with a different approach and focus:
Run the business (operations)
Change the business (projects)
With the changing environment and in the world of hyper-competition, there is an increasing focus on changing the business. Time to market is more rapid, cycle times are quicker – just look at common everyday things – media operates in seconds, songs on the radio disappear after a few weeks and are never played again.
We need a systematic way of dealing with all the projects and change initiatives that an organization manages at any given time. And no the answer is not PRINCE 2 or PMBOK just in case you were wondering. I’m not against PRINCE2 or PMBoK, however these standards only describe a singular, individual project – not a portfolio of change initiatives that exists in an organisation.
So if change initiatives are so important, how are we tracking… the research shows a pretty damning picture!
9 % of organizations rated themselves as excellent on strategic change delivery
56 % of strategic initiatives met original goals and business intent.
Organizations are losing $109 million for every $1 billion invested in change delivery.
High-performing organizations successfully complete 89 % of their change initiatives
High-performing organizations waste nearly 12 times less than low performers.
Top executives are not clear about their own company’s strategic initiatives yet up to 40% of the organisation’s resources are spent on these.
Does this look familiar??
But why is this the case?
Organisations are not mature in managing portfolios of change
Selecting the wrong initiatives, or pandering to the executive’s wims
Too many initiatives and not enough resources – prioritising in a changing world when everything is important
being focused is difficult and requires lots of discipline
I have been conducting research with the University of Canberra over the last 3 years to understand the maturity of organisation’s in delivering change.
In 2011 the Government mandated that all agencies undertake a maturity assessment using the P3M3 maturity model.
The average maturity across FMA Agencies is around 2 which is considered ‘Ad Hoc’.
“best-practice” is 3.
The best organisations are 4 or 5.
Remember the stats a little earlier… Low performing organisations complete only 36% of change initiatives successfully…
The case studies I will refer to a little later are from two organisations both of which are operating at level 4. We are conducting detailed case studies to identify what the recipe for the ‘secret sauce’ is…
Now back to the run the business / change the business concept.
I will focus on the portfolio management element - ‘Select the right Initiatives’.
Part of the problem the research shows us is that there is:
A lack of resources
No portfolio management processes
No new product development process
Low impacts (poor outcomes)
Poor cycle times – things just take way too long
High failure rates of change initaitives
When we start to explore the root causes we see a few common themes:
Too many projects
Many projects are small and don’t really deliver any benefit
There is no prioritisation
Projects are not killed when no longer delivery any benefit
Projects just don’t deliver – a poor job is done…
One other thing that tends to occur is that there are always lots of ideas. Many ideas are not good ideas though… The irony is that most innovative organisations (which are often considered the best) are the ones wit the idea problem!
Boeing has developed an ‘ideation’ process to filter and validate these ideas through a series of gates.
In the words of Charles Darwin – only the fit survive!
The rationale is to also ensure that the limited resources the organisation has are only focused on the most important or well considered ideas.
And the result is not surprising…
So what is the answer? Lets look at what the best, high-performing organizations do
I’ll be looking at aspects of case studies from two different government agencies, both of which are operating at Level 4 either for specific elements or across the board.
Firstly we need a direction (oops wrong direction) so we can identify and set priorities.
Without this direction we cant set priorities…
In the infinite wisdom of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland - If you wont know where you are going, any road will take you there
Whether we are talking about the entire organisation or just a department or division the best organisations have a strategic plan with a clearly articulated set of goals and objectives.
Think its not possible… think again… From research in NSW and VIC governments – the strategic goals were found to largely not change over a 10 year period.
Secondly we need an investment process
Yes, Change initiatives are INVESTMENTS that the organisation makes. As much as 40% of the organisations resources or funding is spent delivering them… Wonder what the impact is – Imagine if the Government announced that the APS would be reduced by an additional 76,000. Or closer to home, your boss said you have just been given a $40,000 pay cut!
Therefore we need a process to manage the organisation’s investments.
The Former DEEWR had a problem – their IT capital budget was cut in half. In the past they had pretty mcuh enough money to do most of the things they wanted to do.
The theory was that all the projects would be thrown into the mix the right projects would just pop out the bottom. Reality was slightly different. There was horse trading and executive arm-wresting…
To improve the process we made a few minor changes to improve their investment process.
Third activity is to understand the supply and demand of resources and critical skill sets.
Organizations commonly approve projects and other change initiatives based on a budget allocation. Whilst budgets usually translate into staffing, the raw high level numbers don’t add up.
Why try and do a particular series of projects when you don’t have the specific resources to do it… sure you can go and hire contracts but guess what – if you need them, so does everyone else. You will quickly find out that there are either no contractors available, or you will pay 2-3 times you have budgeted.
Engwall & Jerbrandt - Resource allocation syndrome - satisficing rather than prioritizing
The situation is actually counter intuitive:
- it’s the heap of small projects that kill the big projects – yet small projects are often not scrutinized and are approved with little formality
- You get more finished by starting less
Top performing organizations have developed workforce plans and conduct supply/demand analysis of all resources. the most important projects get the resources – the rest get what’s left or nothing.
We are just wrapping up a case study with another smaller Government CAC Act agency.
What is unique there is that head of the Enterprise Program Office is part of the Executive Committee. Even after a change of CEO this position was maintained. When we spoke to the CEO about why she kept this arrangement in place after she started – she indicated that it was due to the large investment that the organisation was making in key changes. Other key comments included:
The EPMO Manager works closely and collaboratively with the CIO, CFO, COO and other executives
Provides visibility to all executives
Executive support of key initiatives is critical
The research also supports this – Top Management Support is the most critical factor for project success
Top performing organisations have some sort of change delivery or project management framework – and it’s a lot more than a bunch of lame templates.
From our case studies- the CEO of the small government organisation had some really interesting insights.
The PM Framework provides:
role clarity for everyone, including the Executives
a consistent approach for delivery and reporting
visibility to executives and promotes transparency across the organisation
a basis for consistent language
Helps to identify workload issues – resource supply and demand
She also mentioned that:
It must be fit for purpose and tailored to the context – an out of the box doesn’t work
Needs to be ‘just enough’ - Goldilocks
Must be matched with a financial system that is sophisticated ‘enough’
I find it rather interesting that many organizations continue to pour money into projects that are either not delivering or no longer deliver something the organisation wants or needs.
One project I worked on I recommended on 3 separate occasions to shut it down. I asked to be moved on to a separate project – the original project ended up ‘fading away’ after having spent 10 times the budget and being more than 3 years late.
Top performing organisations cancel projects if they no longer deliver any benefit.
Change initiative sponsors – critical projects are built into individual performance agreements
Resource suppliers (eg CIO) has supply requirement built into their performance agreement
Getting good people and letting them get on with it
Holding sponsors to account
Public recognition of good project work – Good PM is valued, nurtured and encouraged – examples sent in CEO weekly email