Introduction
Do you regularly achieve your strategic goals? If you have any doubt, here are some tips from a lifetime’s learning.
Running a business is like flying an aeroplane without ever stopping. You need sales to keep in the air. Growing a business is about designing, building and transferring into a bigger plane - all while you are busy trying to keep flying in the first place. In practice, growth is a series of projects that get taken on by operations.
How do you manage your projects?
Level 1 - “Just Do It”; pushed through personality
Level 2 - A single project can occasionally get done according to a methodology
Level 3 - Several projects or a single programme have been done well
Level 4 - A programme office coordinates all project work using multiple methods
Level 5 - A dynamic programme office also helps you create your vision and strategy
The underlying point is that making strategy happen effectively requires different thinking. The critical levers for improving your implementation success are to create the right governance, to use the right methodologies and to use personalities in the right way.
Governance
Most Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) will have a management team of one form or another. They typically run everything in a key meeting whether arranged daily, weekly, or whatever, often supported by occasional strategy and other meetings.
Operational thinking, roughly speaking, looks at a system that’s in place and everyone knows how to get on with their job. A key management focus becomes ‘what will go/went wrong?’ and fixing it quickly. You put your best people on fixing things. Growing under this type of thinking is a reliance on your key people to get it right; what I and some others call “just do it”.
Strategy and project thinking in contrast has to create direction and activity, often from a blank sheet of paper. Planning this at ever more detailed levels through to detailed tasks in diaries is a big effort. You need your best people on this. Or did you put them on fixing things instead? Warning: strategies slip one day at a time.
Most companies set up a separate meeting such as a ‘Steering Group’ or ‘Transformation Board’. In essence, you should use that meeting to assess, prioritise and authorise.
Methodology
Just Do It, introductory level, Waterfall, Agile or other; they all have their applications. The question is, what will you use and when? You don’t want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut - deciding on one method and one detail of it is far too rigid in today’s dynamic and fluid growth programmes. So it is up to the governance body to make sure the right project method is being used in each and every case.
So much for projects, how should the ‘project office’ be put together? If you don’t have one now, how will it be created, what will it do, and how will it interact with everyone else? The best should enable and support your operational teams to grow in a controlled and effective manner. Departmental timetables with all of the growth impacts included are a good start.
Strategy has its own methodology too. Each company, and certainly consultancy, has its own. What’s yours, and could it be improved? Do you come out of such meetings with an enthusiastic team and an agreed way forward? Leadership and methodology combined give the most powerful result.
The big question here is ‘do you have enough knowledge in the team?’. It’s not just project delivery, it’s the project office and strategy too that should be structured.
Personality
One company I worked for was great at creating things, but poor at delivering. It therefore had excited people at the beginning of projects who left when the going got tough and, well, they began something else. The company recruited heavyweight project managers to implement things, who typically ruffled feathers and then got thrown out.
Many firms have strong personalities at the top. But then again, they don’t always agree with each other. Driving projects through all the way is great, but doing your own ‘pet’ projects, finding a slush fund to get it going, or the “I’ve started so I’ll finish” approach may not be best for the company.
Lack of role clarity is common, particularly when it comes to decisions being made about ‘my’ staff. We end up with ‘gaps and overlaps’, where everyone wants to do some things and others simply don’t get done. Who do you have on this?
Personalities are great; just not at the cost of strategic failure.
Summary
Agreeing strategy, plans and projects is a good start. Setting up the right governance and ensuring transparent reporting is good too. Assuming every project will be closed at each governance meeting is strong; projects will only go forward if they have earned their place. Assigning the right methods and project managers completes this picture. Good luck!
Author’s Credentials
Experienced Programme Director reporting to Chairmen at £1bn turnover
Driving change up to and including new visions and strategies
15 years specialising in SME Growth for Owner-Managers and their businesses
Comments