Strategy Essentials for Project Managers

the broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen-only mode welcome everybody this is on strategy essentials for project managers and the goal of this presentation is to help bridge the gap between project management and strategy and the second goal is to help project managers become more strategy savvy the basis for this presentation we have several experiences that come to play in this we also have a new poll that's just been developed called strategy essentials for project managers that's a one day course it'll start its its sequence in Raleigh North Carolina next month and you can go on our website and get some information about that course we have a lot of experience worldwide with many organizations and training and consulting a lot with training and strategy and balanced scorecards performance measurement and project management we also have experience with the body of knowledge and the certification exam process and training by virtue of being registered educating education providers for both the Association for strategic planning and the project management institute we also have some experiences International thought leaders with keynote speaking and workshops and training and now in several languages English Arabic Spanish French and Vietnamese I'm Howard Rome and today I'll be joined by West ballet Qian and we'll give you a little bit of our background a little later once we get into the presentation more by virtue of background the history on strategy and implementation is not as good as we like the performance is not as good as we like there's a gap some PMI recent surveys dealt with this 59% of senior executives say their organizations struggle to bridge this gap and another survey 56% of initiatives are successful less than 60 percent and I think most telling is that only 9% of the companies surveyed a rate rated excellent that the strategy execution the this presentation is going to be recorded and we will share it with you in a link at the at the end of the presentation we'll send that link to your email address that you've signed up with so let's take a look at how do we become more strategy savvy as project managers we've boiled it down to a five essentials and the first one is the ability to think strategically and make a contribution to strategic discussions in your organization second to be able to select and help prioritize projects and portfolios of projects based on their contribution to your organization's strategy third aligning project performance to organization strategy mission and vision and also help align employees to organization strategy at the at the same time fourth draw a distinction between strategic initiatives and operational projects and then last but not least is to measure what matters measure the important stuff and we're going to talk about each of these five savvy elements in the rest of the presentation based on Wes's and my decades of experience worldwide with organizations we can tell you that becoming more strategic is a really good career move we're gonna do a few poll questions as part of the workshop today or the webinar today so if you want to get your smartphone or tablet computer and go to meant I am enti comm and enter code two six eight six three you'll be part of the polling survey that we're here in a few minutes I'm Howard Rome and I'm going to do the strategy part of the presentation I have worked for over 40 years as a consultant and a adjunct professor and as a manager an executive and author and the systems developer my background is my education is in engineering and my experiences with both the training and the consulting side with government with nonprofits with government agencies with business and industry so let's talk about strategy we'll start with a poll question what is strategy there's a lot of different definitions on what is strategy and so what I want to do is open up the poll and see what your answers are and we have four or five choices what what we're working on our collection of activities our strategic plan assumptions that we make about the future a path forward and none of the above not sure oh wait a few more seconds most of you are selecting a path forward that's very consistent with what we found with the last time we did this poll at the North Carolina PMI chapter meeting in Raleigh North Carolina a couple of months ago a path forward received 63% of the of the vote thank you so what is strategy there's a lot of different definitions and one of the things that those of you who are in this field no there is not universal truth when it comes to what these terms mean folks have different definitions for goals and objectives and mission and vision and strategy and so on and a tip that we've learned over the years of working with different organizations is to make sure that you agree on words right up front if my goal is your objective we already have a problem and the first conversation that we're having so one of the lessons learned is create a dictionary and then stick to it as you're building your strategy and management systems come about as a result of that so we like this definition that positioning choices making choices are important it's a path and the actions that are taken the planning part to move an organization from point A to point B there's many different ways of getting to point B and so strategy is about making a choice from options that are available to you it's not quite that simple though is it if you think about strategy at a high level there's other things that go on at the same time we like to differentiate between this strategic thinking strategic planning and then strategy execution as parts important parts of the whole process of creating a strategy and executing it strategic thinking is really a process of discovery we have found dealing with assumptions and scenarios and competitive forces external environment how we fit innovation into our planning our internal environment the assessments that we do in the customer value proposition and if our customers are and what do they need of us or our stakeholders customers and stakeholders strategic planning to us is more about storytelling it's about sharing the strategy and clearly communicating what the intent is to get the organization from point A to point B so it deals with things like mission and vision and values and goals the choices that we we make as to how we're going to achieve those goals and the directions that we set for ourselves strategy execution is really about implementing it's about clarity about getting clarity about what we're trying to accomplish and what projects and portfolios of projects are going to be used to to get to the strategy to to successful implementation it's about discipline isn't it it's about the discipline of getting things done and getting things done in a climate of change and uncertainty you know I show these as three links in a chain but the reality is that this is a dynamic process you don't stop strategic thinking and then start strategic planning and strategy implementation or execution this is a dynamic process and we get smarter as we we go through the process of talking about options and the environment that we have to work in so on and so forth a couple of examples that we have seen over the years this is a picture from the rocket engine assembly building at what was Cape Canaveral this goes back to a story about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration the first trip to the moon with President Kennedy and the press reporters as soon as that program was announced we're looking for anybody they could interview and the story is told about a reporter ending up in the Assembly Building and interviewing people one of the guys he interviewed was sweeping the floor and he stuck a microphone in his face and asked him what his job was and the guy thought for a minute and he said my job is to help put the man on the moon safely and return him to earth folks that's how you know you've got alignment and your strategy is is working is making a difference with people and changing arts and minds when the guy sweeping your floor can relate to the the ultimate vision and mission of the program the goal then you've got then you've got strategy alignment here's an example of when strategy is not everybody's job this is a true quote and this is not a Photoshop this is a real picture of a client that and and the caption this is not my job I draw lines I don't remove trees the lack of strategy alignment and that organization so let's do another poll question how often is strategy part of your project management let me switch to that poll and advance it and then we'll go on to that question so if you would please how often is strategy part of your project management conversation almost never sometimes if reminded almost always and we are strategy focused by way of comparison with previous results on this poll question 44% selected that sometimes have reminded so in this case where we're getting a more a close split between almost always and sometimes have reminded thank you almost never interesting that's a relatively high number and we're strategy focused that's a relatively low number compared to what to what we'd like to see thank you everybody we'll close that pull off so strategy connects vision and mission to budgets and actions if you think about strategy as a bridge we start with vision and mission we identify a strategy to achieve that vision and mission and the goals that we set for ourselves strategic objectives are the building blocks of a strategy leading to the actions and to the budgets that make up the operating plans and the work that we do on a day to day basis and so the few slides that I have left this presentation are going to focus very much on the strategy and the strategic objectives we like to think a strategy is having altitude we keep looking for ways of making a strategy a little easier to understand try and make it more practical a little easier to implement and do and one of the things that we came up with is this idea of strategy having altitude and it fits in with other elements that make up a strategic planning and management system at high altitude we have our customers and our stakeholders and what they need what are we capable of providing to them so our mission is our purpose our vision is a picture of a successful future perspectives are different views of organization performance we call them dimensions different dimensions of organization performance strategy is this collection at mid-altitude a set of strategic themes or pillars of excellence if you will focus areas high priority focus areas is another term we've seen and some key results so the way to practically do this is to choose a couple of strategic themes and then develop some expected results intended results what are we trying to accomplish in each of those pillars of excellence and then once we have those we can develop strategic objectives which are the building blocks of your energy those themes and then create something called a strategy map which is a very popular tool for helping to visualize your organization's strategy the strategy map is going to show you one of the minute errors tell a cause-effect value creation story for your organization we're heading down an altitude now once we have our strategic objectives identified we can put on performance measures and targets around our strategy and start tracking our progress toward our goals hmm second down at the bottom but just as important as strategy are the strategic initiatives that come out of the thinking process from the strategy map and the strategic objectives so we're defining strategic initiatives as enterprise-wide high-priority large impact on the organization the projects and the action plans that are used to drive results to get to the strategy so one of the tools we use to help us develop strategy is something called a strategy canvas or a strategy profile this is an example from airline looking at some of the market differentiators when Southwest was moving from a small a regional airline to a to an international player in the airline industry they looked at the differentiators that made them different or the same as other airlines and looked for their blue ocean in other words one of the things that they can work on that other airline's aren't so that they differentiate themselves and find their blue ocean market space over in the right hand side you see friendly service and turnaround time there is a story around the the case study here about Southwest Airlines determined that turnaround time was one of the critical success factors for growing the airline and instead of benchmarking themselves against competitors who they didn't think we're very good at it they benchmarked themselves against a pit crew were racing pit crew to learn how people work together in a team and how by singularly focusing on one part of a process you can automatically improve the turnaround time of that process you can see that the emphasis on many of the differentiators is much different for Southwest than it was for the combination of the other major carriers at the time here's another tool that we like to use when we talk about strategy and in project management this is a strategy map we've identified at the top of strategic results for this particular company a leading innovator of multimedia productions and products the perspectives that I talked about earlier one of those critical elements of strategy in this case there are four of financial through the eyes of of the owners of the business customer through the eyes of our customers process through the eyes of internal business processes and organizational capacity which would include the human capital part of it the tools and technology part of it governance part of it and the infrastructure part of the organization the logic of a strategy map is that if we can make improvements in our organization capacity our capabilities if you will at the organization to perform we'll be able to improve processes which are a direct result of the work that we do in organizational capacity as a result of improving process efficiency we'll be able to better meet customer needs and satisfy and retain our customers leading to improved financial results when you build one of these it takes some time it takes the right people in the room it takes some good facilitation to get to a simple visual representation of customer value of the organization's value to produce and meet customer needs with satisfaction and profitably the ovals our objective strategic objectives their continuous improvement activities designed to continue to get better at this as we go up the up the line the story can be told reading from bottom top using if-then logic or from top-down using you know what do we have to do to for example increase profits we have to increase revenue and lower production costs if I were showing you one of these for a government or nonprofit a strategy map I would switch the top two perspectives in business and industry financial is the end of the value chain through the through the owners of the of the company if it's a nonprofit or government agency it's through the eyes of stakeholders could be citizens going to be members of an association other other could be a nation state could be a United Nations it's it's through a different set of eyes so the value proposition is different and that's why we switch those perspectives when we build these strategy management systems notice down at the bottom this client put improved project management expertise as one of the strategic objectives in other words a direct relationship between project management getting better at that and being able to improve our processes to make customers more satisfied to improve our financial results this is an example of how we can build closer relationships minimize the gap between project management and strategy is to look for ways how project management can play a role in continuous improvement in building organizational capacity and capability another thing that's important for the project management managers to understand that there are different types of measures for different types of purposes and that they all help in measuring the progress toward goals strategic measures look at those four perspectives look at the objectives and in those four perspectives that we just viewed on the strategy map there's also operational measures that look at efficiency and output in quality and timeliness and project measures we're interested in the schedule and resource adherence and the the risk of our projects are not succeeding also scope and scope creep are important PMP measures employ measures are important we won't look at human behavior look at human performance and so our risk measures safety and economic security and how those measures fit into our scenario planning and fit into the operations of our of our business units when we build a management system in a measurement system we look for different places to put our performance stethoscopes so that we can pull performance measures from these different places and put them into visual displays for management and other employees to to use and to learn you know the whole idea around performance measurement is to use the performance data to generate performance information to generate business intelligence so the way that we do that is by picking and choosing what's important making sure that all employees have access to performance information not just to executives or managers from the in the c-level putting it all together and telling a story is what strategic planning is about this is an example of a one-page strategic plan where the vision and the mission and the strategic themes in this case three of them The Associated strategic results written an end-state results-oriented language tell a story about how we're going to measure our success with international growth operational excellence and energy leadership this is for one of the large energy companies the strategy map is over here on the left it's a different strategy map than the one for the multi media company that I showed you earlier because it's a different value proposition you can't just take the strategy map of somebody else and copy the objectives it doesn't work like that this strategy map is built about around the uniqueness of your organization and the people who are in the organization and those differentiators that you choose to make up your strategy so it is a unique picture of the values creation strategy for your organization when we build one of these it's a hypothesis you know sort of our best estimate of how things work with the smartest people in the room that's why it's really important the folks you get involved to build one of these strategy maps you want to make sure that you don't do it by an organization chart it's much more about what do people know and then make sure you get some some good facilitation who folks who can manage the voices in the room to help you create a picture like like this the strategic projects or strategic initiatives are tied to the objectives within the prospective swimlanes this is a selection process where we prioritize where identify we make hard choices about what should be funded first and this is a way of helping to influence an impact the decisions that go around budget formulation with regard to what should we be spending our money on organizations that take this to the highest level identify a set of what I call the a-list strategic initiatives something around a dozen maybe eight to sixteen those high level high energy enterprise wide must do projects that will help move the needle on performance within those individual objectives because the objectives are directly linked to the mission and vision and the strategic themes we have line of sight between the projects that we're working on and the strategy that we are implementing to achieve the goals and the results that we want to get to our vision so to wrap up the strategy part of this why is it important why is it important for project managers thinking about strategy learning about strategy talking about strategy helps align an organization it helps clarify the communications around what we're trying to accomplish in how we're going to measure success when we see it strategy helps with the selection and prioritization of what we should be working on how we should focus our energy it helps with what we should measure rather than measuring all the easy stuff it's a way of differentiating between the stuff that we have to measure and the stuff that we could measure it also builds accountability increased individual accountability and collective accountability through the strategy map when we set objective owners for those objectives and build accountability throughout the organization and it also helps with changing hearts and minds with the transformation that all companies all organizations are going through in the 21st century so our picture of where strategy fits it's it's amid the mid-level here between vision and mission and corporate values of strategy is our path in a plan for getting to point B and that devolves into business unit operations strategic operating plans to implement the strategy and finally right down to individuals and employees that help them understand how they fit in and most importantly how what they do matters to the overall success of the organization initiatives play a role in every one of these levels strategic initiatives tied to strategy operational projects tied to business unit and operations and then local or more tactical projects tied to individual and teams with that I will turn it over to West Blake Ian to talk a little bit about practical project management and strategy Wes yep thank you very much Howard I appreciate it and and great introduction there there are certainly some things there that I'm going to cover you'll see it from a little different perspective and as you can see from my background I'm a 25 year veteran in the project management world I've authored eight books from the subject of project management been an international speaker and consultant for many many years and so on and so forth the rest of it you can read so that's a little bit about me but I would like to also remind you before we move to the next slide that we've got another couple of questions coming up so keep your mentee side open by the way that's real-time data coming in to so you can actually see that information as it comes up and and how the audience is responding so a little bit of a little bit of data for you there so practical strategic project management let's take a look at that as we've heard and and as we should know whether you you are a project management expert strategy expert or something in between above or below all projects support strategy or should within an organization so keeping that in mind enterprise level at the enterprise level and starting at the top of this diagram and moving down looking at the enterprise level how are we supporting what our strategy is looking at the business units going left to right we look at Tier one the initiatives a B and C and then we look at tier two the business units which then convert those initiatives into projects a B C D and so on so what we try to do is we try to make sure that we understand again top down I'm going from the very top down what it is that the enterprise wants to do meaning how where they want to be in X amount of time whether it's one two three five years how they want to get there at least in their vision of that and then we create projects from that and deliver based on making sure that those projects are aligned at the enterprise level of what the strategy is that the organization wants to do we've seen this slide earlier from Howard and I like to use it as well and Howard walked us through starting at the top mission the vision the perspectives the themes our objectives and where strategy lies and with any good building or any good solid foundation on anything you're doing you need a good foundation you need a good starting point and I look at this and work it from the top from the bottom to the top my perspective is that strategic initiatives which are the projects and the actionable plans that drive results have to be the foundation or a good foundation of how we're going to deliver on our performance measures how we're going to plan our strategic objectives and themes and results the perspectives the vision and the mission obviously comes you know from the executive side and and and leadership but in order to get to that we have to have well-constructed well-thought-out and a good process to develop those and deliver those and and and I particularly I prefer that you use some type of proven methodology whether it be from a from the project management institute whether it be from amia whether it be from it doesn't matter but you need to have a good solid way to deliver on those initiatives so from my perspective this is this the slide I look at it from the bottom up from Howard side the strategy side if you will it's from a top-down perspective and the strategy sits in the middle but we're all trying to get to the same thing so it works both ways I really like this to be able to project and articulate the value associated with delivering your projects taking those initiatives making sure that it's clear what it is that we're trying to achieve which we can do using project management as a tool as a process okay and that's the and that's the the important thing here is we're using that as a process to deliver that so okay next question we have a poll question how is project management used in your organization not much we know what it is got some answers already here we go a lot we understand it and use it well then my work here is none there's more there's more not much loosely okay all right so starting to change a little bit we know what it is and use it that's probably the the answer we see the most 5% not sure sometimes that numbers a little bit higher settling in here at 36% we know what it is not much well the 43% or about 50% of you use it a lot we understand it use it and it is adopted and that's really the key to delivering strategic projects and aligning projects strategically so that you deliver the results the organization is looking for great poll by the way love it okay so what is strategic project management or a strategic project manager okay in this case project managers who contribute to corporate strategy discussions would be a strategic project manager but that's not the only thing that's a component of what a strategic project manager would be project managers who manage projects with strategy in mind would be another component project managers who start with the end in mind which if you're a project manager most of the time you're doing that anyway or should be at least have an understanding of what the end is and project managers who put their individual projects in context with the greater good meaning what is it that's going to help the organization succeed am i doing those things or is the project adrift from that alignment and understanding and reacting to that and not just ignoring it another key component I remember many many years ago getting into the project management world it was it was very difficult and it was very unusual for project managers to have any influence really up on the project once it's been given to him or her over the years I've been happy to see that that has changed dramatically and the value of project management within organizations globally has really changed and we're not out there educating organizations on the value of project management they understand that and they put that value in the project managers and so they can make decisions at the right time I'm especially when we're talking about a strategic project for the organization so little side story there but I just wanted to emphasize I'm not late to coordinates results across departmental boundaries so very important components of a strategic project manager strategy focused project managers prioritize their initiatives and the way they do that or the way they should do that or a way to do that is to run them through a filter many of you if you're in the in a sales organization certainly understand this type of scenario where you're putting all these things into a filter and and through the filter what comes out of the bottom of the filter are the really important initiatives that need to be looked at so in this case we're looking at an outreach program we're looking at integration to the financials of the company and then certification program improvements out of all those things that went into that filter the importance of doing this is is we we're not focused on the 100 things that came up as a strategy initiative more or less we're focused on the really important things that are going to make a difference in the organization and help the organization succeed in where it wants to go strategy focused project managers help support alignment so looking at this particular slide we're looking at the various levels if you will of AB alignment so starting on the left side we were looking at corporate and moving down this may not be exactly how your organization is is is is built or designed but you kind of get the idea once once the executives have decided where they want to go it gets moved into the operating divisions each of those operating divisions have directors or vice presidents or whatever they're called in your organization team leads whatever and then that gets moved down into the manager level all the way down to the team level and and if you will an example of that was the person on the shop floor at NASA that was vacuuming the floor so and that's where the results come out once we get it down to that level so so looking at the corporate level you're talking about executive management at the operation division you're looking at business unit leaders who have to take the corporate vision and move that into their divisions each of their individual divisions and then those moving to the right into the organizational stakeholders or those divisions have to take those initiatives from those for their operating division and cascade it to their management team their management team then has to cascade it to their employees in order to get the results that we're looking for and this really is just a way to show the type of alignment and what has to happen now you can imagine it's a very simple slide I agree and it's very easy to read once you know you kind of look at it but the complexity of this if you can imagine is very high because obviously at the corporate level like senior executive level they have a vision and and I don't think amount of line saying this we all know it that at that level well their concern is not how we're going to get it done their concern is this is what we need to do okay and that's when it starts to transform right there from the corporate to the operating that's when it becomes how are we going to get it done so you know then then it starts to get complex because the minute you start thinking about that and then cascading it down it starts to get even more complex so the level of complexity from the from the left side corporate all the way down to the team side increases exponentially as you get down there so there's a lot more to this than just saying oh we're just going to align our organization and everything we do is in alignment there's more to it than that and unfortunately we only have an hour today but in our one day workshop which which is expanded to a three day workshop so that we can get into more detail but I just want to say that the one day workshop that we're having in June and in Raleigh we'll get into a lot more detail on this particular subject as you can imagine there's a lot more talk about on this particular slide we have another poll question how well do your projects align to strategy since we're talking about strategy let's let's take a look and see give a give us a minute or two to get some results here very well aligned and consistent somewhat aligned numbers are moving a little some one alignment interesting so today we have a little bit more global audience than the the the snapshot we took a few weeks ago at the the North Carolina chapter and the results I think are somewhat different because if I remember the results on this there was a lot more in the blue I don't see much of any alignment Howard's got those results I could be wrong there but I think I saw more and and in this one we see some alignment exists but not consistent and then somewhat aligned and with some consistency but the point I think that that this instant poll result shows us is that 18 percent of the respondents and I know this is an any scientific thing and we can't you know announce to the world that we've discovered some new numbers here but you're getting to see that there's room for an opportunity here and the opportunity is to start thinking about how we're going to take strategy and how we're going to going to strategically align our projects and deliver our projects with strategy in mind very good thanks for that poll by the way everyone appreciate you responding okay next let's move to some roles and responsibilities of the strategic project manager's office so many of us have heard of a PMO project management office some of you have may heard of a strategic management office they can be one in the same they could be combined or they could be individual so either one I'm going to start the left side of the screen and look at the the first the first block in blue and talk about what the what the office might be thinking about strategy execution strategic analysis strategic initiative portfolios goals and target setting so when you contribute to strategy reviews from either one of those offices these are some of the things that you might be doing you know the why why why is the office in existence well these are the things that we're reviewing these are the things that we're doing analysis on and these are the things we're looking for results on to measure how well we're doing with our strategy looking at the the green box or the box below the top one down to the right managing strategy execution and these are the things that we're going to pay attention to and review we're going to manage our strategic resources whether they be financial or human capital logistics management monitor and report on our performance you know how well are we doing how well are we not doing whatever that might be some traditional project management things here like schedules and milestones we're meeting our schedules if so you know are we doing things well if we're not meeting in what are we doing wrong checking our milestones to making sure that we're hitting our milestone and then most importantly is employing cultural dynamics and the reason we put that in there and in order to manage the strategy execution is once you develop a new strategy and you cascade that and roll that out within the organization that one thing for sure is going to happen and that's community transformation new strategy is transformation within the organization why because we're doing something new it's change so so the community needs to transform I use that term as opposed to change management or organizational change I just like community transformation a little bit better as a term but that's what's happening and one thing that we need to do is we need to manage that make sure that everybody understands what's going on understands the dynamics of this change is on board with it motivated by it etc etc so strategy focused project managers so as a strategy focused project managers we help create a competitive advantage so looking at this particular slide if all of our competitors are pushing squares and we can push a ball that immediately puts us in front of everybody I couldn't think of a better way to articulate the value of creating a competitive advantage and one of the ways to do that is to make sure that our strategy once it's defined is being delivered and that we stay on track with that as project program and portfolio managers to make sure that what we're doing is in full alignment of what the organization is doing could you imagine if we were or not we would end up in a big mess everybody's going in different directions and I'm sure that doesn't happen in your organization but it could if we're not careful about what we're doing so - creating a competitive advantage like this is very easy to do even though you're a project manager or a strategy executive in your organization you can help create this competitive advantages by alignment and an alignment is done using a good project management process again something that we'll talk about more in depth in the one-day class so all right let's talk a little bit about traditional project management because I didn't want to forget that that we've we've grown over the years in the project management space and the project management delivery arena and the project management theater is as a little different and the landscape is different than it has has been over the past ten years even past five years for that matter and certainly over the last 20 years so looking at a traditional project management implementation using project management tools and just pick on this particular one for this slide so using a typical project management institute delivery model which includes initiation planning executing monitoring controlling and closing with the various process groups that are associated with each one of those process groups processes rather that are associated with the process groups with specific deliverables from each one now I show this particular one because I wanted to show that in the way we look at things we certainly believe this is a great process we certainly believe that any and all of these processes or knowledge areas and groups are valuable and a good resource for us to use and delivery of strategy but this particular one you'll notice that even though it's color-coded that even some of the executing ones that are in brown or over in planning and some of the things that are in monitoring control start and executing in this particular client as we do with any client once we understand how they operate and what they do doesn't mean you have to keep everything and it's nice little little column there and we've adapted it this particular process for our particular client and that's the way it should be done so being flexible being highly adaptable and using a process as the key am i advocating that we need to use all the processes no am i advocating that it has to be done this way no what I am advocating is that you use a process so that's the key couldn't couldn't talk about project management without bringing in agile project management we certainly are a firm believer in delivering at using agile for our strategy so anything that we do from from a strategy perspective we also follow the agile methodology where we're doing you know short sprint we're using customers where they don't redefined our if the needs are redefined we change directions we come back we deliver something if it's successful and and we're ready to move forward we incorporate that and then build on that and then if we see some new insights coming in from the customer or there's new ideas developed we incorporate those as we move forward so so using agile as certainly is something that we we firmly believe in and and we still use that today so a little agile a few agile principles we've adapted for strategy and strategic planning strategy execution for you first we welcome in a path to changing strategic assumptions I know this may be difficult for some of you to believe but the most strategic assumptions do change as the iteration process continues you know Howard showed the the slide earlier with the chain I I think it's I think personally I think that's really the best and best way we can explain all that this is is everything is linked together but the chains are not broken and that tells me that everything is it goes through in iterations and sometimes and many times the the iteration bleeds into the next level and then from from there you continue the iteration that bleeds into the next level and then when you're done with with the project that changes your your strategy so it is it is a loop and it is an iteration number two work closely with customers understand their needs and aim to deliver early always in delivering continuous value iterative and tangible progress is delivered and measured frequently with continuous attention to quality and meeting our customers needs obviously when we're talking about delivering and this is using the agile principles strategy is developed and executed by motivated individual working in teams who should be trusted again this is just another example of how project management has a ball over the past five years and and and how lucky I am to have seen 20 years ago when when I started in project management how far it's come and and where we are today compared to where we used to be in the world of project management and its delivery and the last but not least focused on simplicity the art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential so our agile values are responding to change over a over following a plan so we wanted to make sure we we brought that in thank us I'll wrap it up here with some observations over a couple of decades of working in this arena and I started out by saying that the the goal for this presentation was to help bridge the gap between project management and strategy you know the higher purpose for why we do this stuff is really to create higher performing organizations organizations that are most strategy more strategy focused is the way that that we get to higher performance and some critical success factors that we have observed over for long term success remember this is a sprint not a marathon our experience is that we can do the facilitation the workshops build a the strategic plan the management systems that come about in a matter of weeks and months but the reality is changing hearts and minds and creating higher performance organizations is a marathon and that takes typically a couple of years to make those kind of alignment transitions that we have been talking about so far some keys to success number one is engaged leadership and it's not enough for the leaders to say go build me one of these systems or go go align the organization this really takes leaders and I don't mean just the the c-level folks here this is engaged leadership finding the leaders at each of the levels in the organization I like to call them finding the different voices of the organization and getting those folks engaged so that they they become the the champions throughout the organization we need more than champions at the executive level and the key is to build those champions at the business unit and the team and employee level second change management this really is about changing hearts and minds if you think about everything we've talked about much more on a system and much more than measurements and and much more than alignment it really is changing hearts and minds and that means overcoming resistance identifying and motivating the right behaviors and getting folks engaged and accountable for results to build a high-performing organization you have to do something with the performance measures or it's not worth it's not worth tracking them right so we're looking at how can we influence how can we impact how can we inform decision making with performance information going to a more fact-based decision making model another element is strong project management discipline which is why we put this webinar together linking strategy and project management and helping to create a unified framework rather than two separate frameworks I talked about this being a marathon you have to be make a commitment to be in this for the long term and not just treated as a as a one-off and finally incentivizing the desired behaviors that we want ties back to the fact that change management needs to be built into the the planning in the system that you're developing from day one this is not the kind of thing where you can work on performance measurement and strategy and project management and then turn it over to the HR department and expect them to deal with the changing hearts and minds it just it didn't work very well 20 years ago and it doesn't work that way at all today so if you're going to take on a assignment like this of building higher performance organization recognize that you want to build the change management and right right from the first day a little bit about us we use the nine steps to success framework was developed about 20 years ago and what it does is connect the dots where the practical folks who like to connect the dots and make strategy and project management simple and easier easy to implement easy to do and exciting and fun to do it starts with an assessment step and goes through several steps to get to the strategic initiative step six that we talked about and then rolling out a high-performance system as a result of that it takes a couple of weeks maybe a couple of months depending on the size of the organization to do that performance analysis and then cascading or alignment and program evaluation round out the nine steps of the nine step framework simply what we help organizations formulate strategy communicated we help with aligning employees and the data they work that they do to vision and strategy we help with prioritizing and managing not just projects and portfolios but the services project products and resources that make up the operating business units and finally we help with measuring and analyzing and improve proving performance where the strategy Management Group we fly three flags the balanced scorecard Institute the strategy management group which includes the strategy things we've talked about today in the project management things we've talked about and finally kp.org which is a new organization we've created to focus on performance measurement KPI training and performance analysis and results the training that Wes talked about it starts as a one based strategy essentials for project management course we also have a three-day version an expanded version of the course that we will be offering shortly we've offered it in the past for private clients and then we're going to offer it as a public course as well Wes does PMP exam prep training it's a five-day bootcamp and we also do balanced scorecard professional certification and KPI professional certification also five-day bootcamp three days in two days for introduction and then advanced to get to the full certification we certified jointly with George Washington University the College of Professional Studies and we have done that in multiple languages as I mentioned earlier and in all continents of the world now I mentioned some references earlier bright line initiative it's got some good stuff out from PMI Julia Sloane is some good thinking on how to think strategically blue ocean strategy of course famous book we've written a book a couple of years ago called the Institute way which lays out the nine step framework as a basis for the training that that we do worldwide so to close this off we're going to have a link to the recorded webinar and give you a copy of the presentation we'll email that to you if you're in a hurry you can contact either myself or Wes malakian and you can reach us reach us at the the address and the phone number and the websites listed there I think we're up at the hour I don't know Wes do we have time for a question there too I know we have still a lot of folks on the on the line maybe we can go a little bit longer than the hour if folks wanna hang on for a while Wes do we have any questions that we get yes we do Howard sorry we got two questions if we can answer them quick we can wrap it up in two minutes so I'll take the first one how's that and then and then you can answer the last one and close up there was a question about what about a link to scrum method and thank you for that question so I'll take that I didn't intentionally leave scrum out I think it's it's important I tried to emphasize the fact that a process is being used or methodologies being used I'm not really particular on which one as long as you're using a process so a lot more detail a lot more information will come out on the on the one day class so the person that asked that I'm sorry for the short answer but we're a little bit short on time Howard the question for you is today's definition of strategic thinking considered to be linked with organizational development and analysis with focus on innovative design planning and thinking I gave you a long one but would it would you like we read it again or do you have it no what what what what is the question is today's definition of school is thank you okay yes is it to be considered linked with organizational development I'll just leave it at that yeah I you have to start with with looking at the forest I think when it comes to the strategic thinking if you start with the existing organization structure I think you're starting at the wrong altitude you know when we start brainstorming around scenarios and you know and world events and markets and competitive forces and employee capabilities and capacities you know I think you have to start by looking at it as sort of the pieces of the puzzle that you know after we've we've discussed them and talked about him and and gotten a little smarter about them relative to to our organization we'll be able to put it put the pieces together in a mosaic and you know one of the pieces that comes out of the mosaic is how should we organize ourselves so I think the organization development question is really the maybe the second or third question after we figure out what the strategy is and you know how we're going to communicate that strategy how we're going to align the organization you can't start a clean sheet of paper of course right unless you're a new startup so part of that discussion of course is you know what are our current capabilities right both from an innovation point of view a technology point of view a tools point of view a human capital point of view so those are all you know inputs into that mixing bowl or that funnel if you will that helps determine what an organization's strategy is certainly related I just think to make it manageable you know you have to you have to I like to say chunk it up you have to you have to take on small chunks of things and then connect the dots later I think Stephen Covey was what was right on track right one of the seven habits of successful people that start with the end in mind and that's the process that we have used to develop these techniques and tools and the logic of the way we go about doing strategic thinking and planning and project management good question thank you everybody Wes thank you everyone okay yep thanks everyone we appreciate and follow the lincoln call us if you have any questions we'd be happy to help thank you

Channel: Balanced Scorecard Institute

Views: 2,725

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: project management, project managers, strategy, strategic planning, strategy execution

Id: 5oD2iifWk_c

Length: 62min 56sec (3776 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019