I attended a seminar on Brain Based Learning recently. We learnt about the latest thinking on how our brains work, how we learn and why we learn. One of the key takeaways for me was that static, lecture style learning doesn’t work for most of us. What does work is interactive, multi-dimensional methods supported by 'Learning 2.0' technologies. The seminar also got me thinking, again, about how critical learning is to an organisation’s success.
We all know that today’s turbulent, fast paced, ever changing environment means businesses must constantly change to survive and grow. The most successful businesses are ‘masters of change’1, they know constant change is essential, they excel at creating a compelling shared vision and they excel at managing change. They also have people who are experts at acquiring new skills, creating new knowledge and transferring that knowledge to others. When it comes to strategy execution, ‘masters of change’ are 10 times more successful than other businesses.
These 'masters of change' are Learning Organisations. The core principles of a Learning Organisation are deeply embedded within their culture, making these organisations more open to new ideas, less resistant to change and more capable of supporting the individual and team learning required to make change successful. When it comes to Strategy Execution masters of change already have the organisation capability to learn, change and succeed.
How do you become a Learning Organisation? Adopt these six strategies:
1. Commit to the fundamental principles of the Learning Organisation from the top down and create a culture that is supportive of learning. Business leaders need to demonstrate a willingness to learn, create a safe supportive environment for everyone to learn in and create a compelling vision of the business as a Learning Organisation.
2. Make Learning & Development a strategic priority. Learning & Development (L&D) is far more than the provision of one-size fits all training for your employees. It is a strategic workforce capability that ensures you have the right people, with the right skills, performing the right jobs. Make improving Learning & Development a priority for everyone, not just the HR folks. Build a plan and provide the resources necessary to make it happen
3. Support individual learning. Organisations only ‘learn’ when the individuals within the organisations learn. L&D strategies such as competency based assessments and individual learning plans allow organisations to identify gaps in essential competencies and focus individual learning on supporting business goals. However, they must be backed up with the necessary learning resources to be effective.
4. Provide flexible Learning 2.0 options instead of sending people to expensive offsite classroom training. Strategies such as webinars, knowledge sharing, just in time learning, coaching and mentoring allow individuals to select methods that suit their learning style. Not only will you save money, your people will learn more and your business will see better results.
5. Implement Collaboration and Knowledge Management: Organisations learn when they ‘know what they know’ and people can readily access, share and improve on the organisations knowledge.
6. Critically evaluate the results of learning activities: Business benefits when learning is aligned to the business vision and objectives. Build measurement of learning outcomes into your L&D strategy and regularly review what is working and what isn’t.
Organisation Change is vital to survive and grow in today’s turbulent environment. Organisation Learning - becoming a “Learning Organisation”- is one of the most important keys to becoming a master of change and excelling at strategy execution. The good news is advances such as Brain Based Learning and Learning 2.0 make it practical for even the smallest of organisations to become a Learning Organisation.
Make a start today. Click Here to request a copy of Beyond Strategy Consulting’s Learning & Development Capability Assessment tool and begin your journey towards a Learning Organisation.
(1) Making Change Work, IBM, 2009
Showing posts with label Execution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Execution. Show all posts
Monday, April 4, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Project Management Excellence: Low Budget High Impact Strategies
Last week I talked to a small business owner about his organisations’ challenges in delivering to clients on time and budget. Time and again his people would work heroically to meet their commitments, working many extra hours and using extra resources. Clients were delighted by his teams dedication. But, this came at a significant cost, with budget overruns, declining profitability and staff burnout. He knew better project management (PM) would improve the situation, but was overwhelmed by the complexity of most project management methods and tools, and given his cash-flow challenges couldn’t afford the high cost of formal PM training.
This is a common challenge for small and medium sized organisations (SMEs). They understand the benefits a better project management capability will produce, but are overwhelmed by the seeming complexity and can’t justify the high expense. So how do SMEs gain the same advantages their larger competitors do, while remaining agile, and without incurring significant costs? They adopt these six strategies to develop a mature project management (PM) capability:
1. Make Project Management a Strategic Priority: Promote excellence in project management from the top down, ensure everyone in the organisation understands why it is important, their role in delivering projects and the benefits to both the organisation and the individual. Make improving your PM capability a strategic objective throughout the organisation. Develop a plan for improving project management.
2. Focus on your People: PM excellence is achieved by excellent Project Managers. Make sure you have the right people, with the ability and attitude to be great project managers. The best PMs will combine solid planning skills and attention to detail, with the ability to be flexible and have excellent people skills. If you’re hiring, don’t focus too heavily on certifications, focus instead on experience, skills and attitude.
3. Become a Learning Organisation: Be smarter about training, instead of sending people to expensive offsite classroom training adopt Learning 2.0 strategies such as webinars, knowledge sharing, just in time learning, coaching and mentoring. Develop a knowledge management system to capture reusable information and documents. For more formal needs obtain onsite training that is specifically tailored for your organisation, your people and your methods. Not only are the costs significantly lower the learning outcomes for your people will be significantly higher and immediately usable in your organisation.
4. Adopt a Simple Methodology: Most project management methodologies are well suited to large complex projects, and large organisations, but they do not work well for less complex projects in smaller, more agile organisations. Select a methodology that emphasises flexibility and can be tailored to suit your specific needs. Take the time to tailor the methodology and regularly review how well it is working.
5. Don’t buy Expensive Tools: Unless you’re involved in a major construction projects, building rockets for NASA or managing large complex software developments your tool needs are fairly simple. You need to plan who does what and when, create, modify and share documents, collaborate, track and report progress and manage project financials. There are many, inexpensive, cloud based PM tool suites available, chose one that meets your needs, is tailorable, will scale up as you grow and fits your budget.
6. Celebrate Success, Learn from Mistakes: There’s no silver bullet when it comes to developing project management excellence. It takes time, dedication, persistence and encouragement. Capture lessons learnt from all projects, what works, what doesn’t work. Use problem projects as an opportunity for coaching and learning, not blame. Ensure Project Managers receive mentoring from experienced PMs. Above all else, celebrate your organisations successes.
Project Management excellence is the key to successful long term success, without it your organisation will lurch from one challenged client engagement to another, never quite reaching its’ full potential. The good news is, small and medium organisations can develop strong PM capabilities without incurring the significant expense of complex PM methodologies, tools and classroom training. And in doing so SMEs can out-compete their larger competitors by remaining agile while still delivering outstanding project results.
This is a common challenge for small and medium sized organisations (SMEs). They understand the benefits a better project management capability will produce, but are overwhelmed by the seeming complexity and can’t justify the high expense. So how do SMEs gain the same advantages their larger competitors do, while remaining agile, and without incurring significant costs? They adopt these six strategies to develop a mature project management (PM) capability:
1. Make Project Management a Strategic Priority: Promote excellence in project management from the top down, ensure everyone in the organisation understands why it is important, their role in delivering projects and the benefits to both the organisation and the individual. Make improving your PM capability a strategic objective throughout the organisation. Develop a plan for improving project management.
2. Focus on your People: PM excellence is achieved by excellent Project Managers. Make sure you have the right people, with the ability and attitude to be great project managers. The best PMs will combine solid planning skills and attention to detail, with the ability to be flexible and have excellent people skills. If you’re hiring, don’t focus too heavily on certifications, focus instead on experience, skills and attitude.
3. Become a Learning Organisation: Be smarter about training, instead of sending people to expensive offsite classroom training adopt Learning 2.0 strategies such as webinars, knowledge sharing, just in time learning, coaching and mentoring. Develop a knowledge management system to capture reusable information and documents. For more formal needs obtain onsite training that is specifically tailored for your organisation, your people and your methods. Not only are the costs significantly lower the learning outcomes for your people will be significantly higher and immediately usable in your organisation.
4. Adopt a Simple Methodology: Most project management methodologies are well suited to large complex projects, and large organisations, but they do not work well for less complex projects in smaller, more agile organisations. Select a methodology that emphasises flexibility and can be tailored to suit your specific needs. Take the time to tailor the methodology and regularly review how well it is working.
5. Don’t buy Expensive Tools: Unless you’re involved in a major construction projects, building rockets for NASA or managing large complex software developments your tool needs are fairly simple. You need to plan who does what and when, create, modify and share documents, collaborate, track and report progress and manage project financials. There are many, inexpensive, cloud based PM tool suites available, chose one that meets your needs, is tailorable, will scale up as you grow and fits your budget.
6. Celebrate Success, Learn from Mistakes: There’s no silver bullet when it comes to developing project management excellence. It takes time, dedication, persistence and encouragement. Capture lessons learnt from all projects, what works, what doesn’t work. Use problem projects as an opportunity for coaching and learning, not blame. Ensure Project Managers receive mentoring from experienced PMs. Above all else, celebrate your organisations successes.
Project Management excellence is the key to successful long term success, without it your organisation will lurch from one challenged client engagement to another, never quite reaching its’ full potential. The good news is, small and medium organisations can develop strong PM capabilities without incurring the significant expense of complex PM methodologies, tools and classroom training. And in doing so SMEs can out-compete their larger competitors by remaining agile while still delivering outstanding project results.
Monday, November 29, 2010
The Seven Deadly Sins of Strategy Execution
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. Japanese proverb.
To prosper in these challenging and turbulent times leaders need more than a great vision. They need a practical strategy for achieving the vision and they need to drive execution of the strategy towards achievement of the vision. Volumes have been written about strategy execution and yet research continues to show the majority of strategies aren’t successfully executed.
Successful strategy execution will be hard work, but by avoiding these seven deadly sins you can increase the likelihood of success:
1. Not having a plan. We’re all familiar with the clique “failure to plan is planning to fail”. Just documenting the plan will significantly increase your probability of success, not planning guarantees you will fail. It doesn’t have to be the perfect plan, almost any plan will do if it defines goals, strategies and the measure of success. Tips: Keep it simple. Make one person responsible for each goal or strategy. Track your progress regularly. Adjust the plan if it’s not working.
2. Ignoring the people side of change. Organisations don’t change, people do and if your people aren’t along for the ride your strategy will fail. Plan for and manage the people side of change proactively from the very beginning. Communicate and over-communicate, people need to understand why change is happening, what the vision of the future looks like, what’s in it for them. Because change is constant you need to be good at managing change. Tips: Don’t hire an Organisation Change Management Consultant to do it for you, instead invest in building OCM capability within your own organisation.
3.Investing in the Wrong Projects. It’s easy to become caught up in the excitement of the latest great idea, but, in a business environment with limited resources you need a way to identify the most valuable projects. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) sounds like just another management buzzword, but in reality it’s a very simple and powerful concept. PPM ensures you are executing the right projects, that projects are strategically aligned and that they will maximise your return on investment. Tips: Keep it simple. Start with a list of all current and proposed projects. Invest in a Project and Portfolio Management Office.
4. Not managing projects. Just as you needed an overall strategic plan you need to plan and manage the individual initiatives that make up your strategy as projects. The advantages of managing initiatives as projects are well documented. Tips: Focus on building PM capability within your organisation based on skilled people, standard but flexible methods and tools that make it easier for PMs to manage.
5. Ignoring collaboration and knowledge management: Achieving the vision requires change and change requires people to learn, to work together in different ways to move beyond their current organisation silos. But all too often the organisation doesn’t know what it knows, people can’t find the information they need quickly and they don’t have the means for working across traditional organisation silos. Developing Collaboration and Knowledge Management capabilities within the organisation helps the organisation change faster, learn faster and become more agile. Tips: Start with a small pilot group. Focus on changing the organisation culture to reward collaborative behaviours. Create simple easy to understand Knowledge management strategies.
6. Not investing in your people: People execute the strategy, people make change happen, people generate business value. If you’re not investing in your people you will fail. A well structured, targeted, Learning and Development (L&D) Program is essential to success. Without it your people can’t develop the new competencies required to make your vision a reality. Tips: Assess what new competencies the organisation will need. Integrate L&D plans throughout the strategy execution. Adopt flexible Learning 2.0 methods to maximise the returns from L&D activities.
7. Not managing value realisation: Your strategies are intended to deliver value, but how do you know if they are? It’s not enough to simply execute the strategy. You need to clearly define how each element of the strategy, each initiative and project, will contribute to value creation and you need to manage execution to ensure this planned value is actually delivered. Without Value Management strategy execution can easily lose focus and fail to follow through to ensure planned value is fully realised by the organisation. Tips: Keep it simple. Document the planned business value for each initiative or project and ensure it clearly links to the overall vision. Define key metrics for each value area. Constantly track progress and adjust plans if value isn’t being realised..
The most successful organisations in the future will be those organisations that can successfully execute strategy, not just once, but time after time in response to rapid changes in their environment. This will require critical capabilities such as strategic planning, value management, organisation change management, project and portfolio management, collaboration, knowledge management and learning. Successful organisations will develop these core capabilities internally and will use external consultants to support capability development rather than strategy execution.
Joan Dobbie is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting.
Beyond Strategy Consulting focuses on delivering valuable strategic planning, strategy execution and capability development services that enable small to medium enterprises to achieve their vision.
To prosper in these challenging and turbulent times leaders need more than a great vision. They need a practical strategy for achieving the vision and they need to drive execution of the strategy towards achievement of the vision. Volumes have been written about strategy execution and yet research continues to show the majority of strategies aren’t successfully executed.
Successful strategy execution will be hard work, but by avoiding these seven deadly sins you can increase the likelihood of success:
1. Not having a plan. We’re all familiar with the clique “failure to plan is planning to fail”. Just documenting the plan will significantly increase your probability of success, not planning guarantees you will fail. It doesn’t have to be the perfect plan, almost any plan will do if it defines goals, strategies and the measure of success. Tips: Keep it simple. Make one person responsible for each goal or strategy. Track your progress regularly. Adjust the plan if it’s not working.
2. Ignoring the people side of change. Organisations don’t change, people do and if your people aren’t along for the ride your strategy will fail. Plan for and manage the people side of change proactively from the very beginning. Communicate and over-communicate, people need to understand why change is happening, what the vision of the future looks like, what’s in it for them. Because change is constant you need to be good at managing change. Tips: Don’t hire an Organisation Change Management Consultant to do it for you, instead invest in building OCM capability within your own organisation.
3.Investing in the Wrong Projects. It’s easy to become caught up in the excitement of the latest great idea, but, in a business environment with limited resources you need a way to identify the most valuable projects. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) sounds like just another management buzzword, but in reality it’s a very simple and powerful concept. PPM ensures you are executing the right projects, that projects are strategically aligned and that they will maximise your return on investment. Tips: Keep it simple. Start with a list of all current and proposed projects. Invest in a Project and Portfolio Management Office.
4. Not managing projects. Just as you needed an overall strategic plan you need to plan and manage the individual initiatives that make up your strategy as projects. The advantages of managing initiatives as projects are well documented. Tips: Focus on building PM capability within your organisation based on skilled people, standard but flexible methods and tools that make it easier for PMs to manage.
5. Ignoring collaboration and knowledge management: Achieving the vision requires change and change requires people to learn, to work together in different ways to move beyond their current organisation silos. But all too often the organisation doesn’t know what it knows, people can’t find the information they need quickly and they don’t have the means for working across traditional organisation silos. Developing Collaboration and Knowledge Management capabilities within the organisation helps the organisation change faster, learn faster and become more agile. Tips: Start with a small pilot group. Focus on changing the organisation culture to reward collaborative behaviours. Create simple easy to understand Knowledge management strategies.
6. Not investing in your people: People execute the strategy, people make change happen, people generate business value. If you’re not investing in your people you will fail. A well structured, targeted, Learning and Development (L&D) Program is essential to success. Without it your people can’t develop the new competencies required to make your vision a reality. Tips: Assess what new competencies the organisation will need. Integrate L&D plans throughout the strategy execution. Adopt flexible Learning 2.0 methods to maximise the returns from L&D activities.
7. Not managing value realisation: Your strategies are intended to deliver value, but how do you know if they are? It’s not enough to simply execute the strategy. You need to clearly define how each element of the strategy, each initiative and project, will contribute to value creation and you need to manage execution to ensure this planned value is actually delivered. Without Value Management strategy execution can easily lose focus and fail to follow through to ensure planned value is fully realised by the organisation. Tips: Keep it simple. Document the planned business value for each initiative or project and ensure it clearly links to the overall vision. Define key metrics for each value area. Constantly track progress and adjust plans if value isn’t being realised..
The most successful organisations in the future will be those organisations that can successfully execute strategy, not just once, but time after time in response to rapid changes in their environment. This will require critical capabilities such as strategic planning, value management, organisation change management, project and portfolio management, collaboration, knowledge management and learning. Successful organisations will develop these core capabilities internally and will use external consultants to support capability development rather than strategy execution.
Joan Dobbie is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting.
Beyond Strategy Consulting focuses on delivering valuable strategic planning, strategy execution and capability development services that enable small to medium enterprises to achieve their vision.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Ensuring Projects Deliver Business Value
I recently spoke on this topic at the Australian Institute of Project Managers Conference in Queensland in a presentation that highlighted the importance of OCM to projects’ success and the need for Program and Project Managers to understand and apply OCM best practices in their projects.
As individuals we need to adapt to change constantly throughout our lives, from a new barista at our favourite coffee shop, a new tunnel, or a new government, indeed the ability to adapt to change highly regarded trait, demonstrating emotional intelligence. And in today’s fast paced, rapidly changing world so too must organisations develop the capability to successfully change if they are to survive and grow profitably. BUT,
It’s clear from the many studies on this topic that organisations are still struggling to successfully change, in 2008 IBM conducted a study involving 2500 CEOs from organisations worldwide. IBM reported that almost 60% of change management projects fail to achieve their business objectives.
The impact of failed projects is immense, from lost revenue, increased costs, lowered morale and reputational damage. Organisations that fail to change will ultimately fail in the market.
The same IBM study found that organisations that have adopted best practices in Organisational Change Management were up to 10x more successful in implementing change. The top organisations (change masters) had an 80% success rate while the bottom organisations (change novices) 8% success rate. why?
Organisation change is hard because organisations don’t change, people change, and without a compelling reason to change individuals are more likely to resist change than embrace it. Organisation Change Management (OCM), is fundamentally about people. it involves learning new behaviours, influencing people to change their mindset, and encouraging people to give up entrenched ways of working
All successful Project Managers have good people skills and the various PM methods do emphasise the need to manage people change, but they lack real guidance on the methods used to influence and motivate people to change. So, while we’ve become very good at managing the ‘hard’ side of change, using mature PM methodologies and highly skilled project managers, many technically successful projects still do not succeed in delivering the planned business value
We need to become better at managing the people side of change to ensure successful projects deliver of their promised business benefits.
In today’s complex, rapidly changing world simply managing successful programs and projects is no longer enough. The PM profession is at the heart of organisation change and needs to ensure every project is linked to business objectives and delivers the promised benefits. It’s clear that technical PM methods on their own aren’t sufficient to guarantee success and there is a significant body of research that illustrates the vital role of OCM in ensuring business value is realised.
Together OCM and PM are the keys to delivering real, sustainable business value for organisations.
This article is part of a series exploring the essential capabilities all CIOs and IT Organisations need to drive transformation and deliver enduring business value.Joan Dobbie is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting. Her company offers a wide range of IT Strategy and Transformation services to IT Organisations of all sizes.
As individuals we need to adapt to change constantly throughout our lives, from a new barista at our favourite coffee shop, a new tunnel, or a new government, indeed the ability to adapt to change highly regarded trait, demonstrating emotional intelligence. And in today’s fast paced, rapidly changing world so too must organisations develop the capability to successfully change if they are to survive and grow profitably. BUT,
It’s clear from the many studies on this topic that organisations are still struggling to successfully change, in 2008 IBM conducted a study involving 2500 CEOs from organisations worldwide. IBM reported that almost 60% of change management projects fail to achieve their business objectives.
The impact of failed projects is immense, from lost revenue, increased costs, lowered morale and reputational damage. Organisations that fail to change will ultimately fail in the market.
The same IBM study found that organisations that have adopted best practices in Organisational Change Management were up to 10x more successful in implementing change. The top organisations (change masters) had an 80% success rate while the bottom organisations (change novices) 8% success rate. why?
Organisation change is hard because organisations don’t change, people change, and without a compelling reason to change individuals are more likely to resist change than embrace it. Organisation Change Management (OCM), is fundamentally about people. it involves learning new behaviours, influencing people to change their mindset, and encouraging people to give up entrenched ways of working
All successful Project Managers have good people skills and the various PM methods do emphasise the need to manage people change, but they lack real guidance on the methods used to influence and motivate people to change. So, while we’ve become very good at managing the ‘hard’ side of change, using mature PM methodologies and highly skilled project managers, many technically successful projects still do not succeed in delivering the planned business value
We need to become better at managing the people side of change to ensure successful projects deliver of their promised business benefits.
In today’s complex, rapidly changing world simply managing successful programs and projects is no longer enough. The PM profession is at the heart of organisation change and needs to ensure every project is linked to business objectives and delivers the promised benefits. It’s clear that technical PM methods on their own aren’t sufficient to guarantee success and there is a significant body of research that illustrates the vital role of OCM in ensuring business value is realised.
Together OCM and PM are the keys to delivering real, sustainable business value for organisations.
This article is part of a series exploring the essential capabilities all CIOs and IT Organisations need to drive transformation and deliver enduring business value.Joan Dobbie is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting. Her company offers a wide range of IT Strategy and Transformation services to IT Organisations of all sizes.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Why CIOs need a strategy for executing the IT Strategic Plan
You’ve worked hard to collaborate with the Business and develop an IT Strategy that is aligned with the business goals and will deliver innovation and growth. IT’s goals are aligned with Business goals. The “as-is” and “to-be” enterprise architectures are well defined. There are new technologies to be deployed, legacy systems being replaced, new agile, lean, ITIL aligned processes for IT.
Everyone’s looking to IT to execute the strategy, drive change throughout the organisation and deliver on the promised business value. Does your team have the capabilities required to succeed? Do you know what the critical non-technical capabilities are? And how to develop them?
Typical IT Strategic Plans address the technology changes required to meet the business objectives. Most will consider the technical capabilities IT needs to develop, and the organisation change management required to deploy the new technology to the business units. However, few IT Strategic Plans consider the ability of the IT Organisation to execute the IT Strategic Plan. But, if IT is to drive major change and deliver business value it needs both technical and non-technical capabilities.
To be successful CIOs need a strategic plan for IT that ensures IT develops the key capabilities required to drive significant change. In addition to the technical capabilities required by the IT Strategy and Architecture, the organisation needs five key organisational capabilities to succeed:
CIOs should assess their organisation’s capability in these five key areas and build a Strategic Business Plan for the IT Organisation that incorporates development of these key capabilities.
This article is part of a series exploring the essential capabilities all CIOs and IT Organisations need to drive transformation and deliver enduring business value.
Everyone’s looking to IT to execute the strategy, drive change throughout the organisation and deliver on the promised business value. Does your team have the capabilities required to succeed? Do you know what the critical non-technical capabilities are? And how to develop them?
Typical IT Strategic Plans address the technology changes required to meet the business objectives. Most will consider the technical capabilities IT needs to develop, and the organisation change management required to deploy the new technology to the business units. However, few IT Strategic Plans consider the ability of the IT Organisation to execute the IT Strategic Plan. But, if IT is to drive major change and deliver business value it needs both technical and non-technical capabilities.
To be successful CIOs need a strategic plan for IT that ensures IT develops the key capabilities required to drive significant change. In addition to the technical capabilities required by the IT Strategy and Architecture, the organisation needs five key organisational capabilities to succeed:
- Organisation Change Management capability: enables IT to be champions of change throughout the organisation, to integrate OCM best practices with IT projects and to promote the use of OCM best practices for all strategic change initiatives.
- Portfolio, Program and Project Management capability: ensures that the right programs, aligned with the business strategy, are initiated and successful planned, managed and delivered.
- Value Management capability: ensures the business value of the IT Strategy is agreed by all stakeholders, measured, tracked and managed until the full benefit is realised.
- Collaboration & Knowledge Management capability: provides the skills, process and tools to work collaboratively across the organisation, allowing everyone to find the information they need, when they need it.
- A Learning and Development program that is aligned to the strategic goals will ensure IT has the right people, with the right skills, at the right cost, when they are required.
CIOs should assess their organisation’s capability in these five key areas and build a Strategic Business Plan for the IT Organisation that incorporates development of these key capabilities.
Joan Dobbie is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting. Her clients achieve significant improvements in business results by turning visions into actionable strategies, creating the capability to successfully execute and focusing execution on the delivery of sustainable business results.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Why CIOs need to be Organisation Change Leaders
As CIO you are a catalyst for change within your company, but if your team thinks change management is a method of controlling software releases you could be missing the most important capability your organisation needs to be successful.
Your company has aggressive goals, more growth, new products, more branches, lower costs and do it quickly. IT’s role in achieving the company’s goals is vital, without the new systems, streamlined processes and new services, the corporate strategy fails. IT is the driver of change across the company and the CIO is expected to be the champion of that change. At the same time the IT Organisation needs to adapt to these changes, there are new technologies, legacy systems being replaced, new processes and increasing pressure from business partners to do more.
A significant percentage of all IT projects are considered failures by the business post implementation, not because of any technical failures but because of change management issues such as inadequate training, poor processes, poor fit to business needs. Bearing Point, for example, report that up to 70% of change management projects fail due to internal politics and personnel. So, even when you’ve got mature requirements and project management disciplines and can deliver on time on budget, projects will still fail to deliver the expected business value.
Organisation Change Management best practices such as creating a compelling vision of the change, communicating, empowering action, and above all else having the key stakeholders involved in planning for change and owning the outcomes, significantly increase the success of change projects.
If IT is central to the company’s strategy then CIOs need to be champions of change. If IT projects are to become business projects and deliver business value, they need to encompass the business change required to deliver value and must adopt Organisation Change Management best practices.
CIOs need to develop Organisation Change Management capability within their organisation. How ready is your team for the changes to come? How ready is your team to sponsor good change management throughout the organisation? How well do you score on this quick and easy Organisation Change Management Capability Assessment.
This article is part of a series exploring the essential capabilities all CIOs and IT Organisations need to drive transformation and deliver enduring business value.
Joan Dobbie is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting. Her company offers a wide range of IT Strategy and Transformation services to IT Organisations of all sizes.
Your company has aggressive goals, more growth, new products, more branches, lower costs and do it quickly. IT’s role in achieving the company’s goals is vital, without the new systems, streamlined processes and new services, the corporate strategy fails. IT is the driver of change across the company and the CIO is expected to be the champion of that change. At the same time the IT Organisation needs to adapt to these changes, there are new technologies, legacy systems being replaced, new processes and increasing pressure from business partners to do more.
A significant percentage of all IT projects are considered failures by the business post implementation, not because of any technical failures but because of change management issues such as inadequate training, poor processes, poor fit to business needs. Bearing Point, for example, report that up to 70% of change management projects fail due to internal politics and personnel. So, even when you’ve got mature requirements and project management disciplines and can deliver on time on budget, projects will still fail to deliver the expected business value.
Organisation Change Management best practices such as creating a compelling vision of the change, communicating, empowering action, and above all else having the key stakeholders involved in planning for change and owning the outcomes, significantly increase the success of change projects.
If IT is central to the company’s strategy then CIOs need to be champions of change. If IT projects are to become business projects and deliver business value, they need to encompass the business change required to deliver value and must adopt Organisation Change Management best practices.
CIOs need to develop Organisation Change Management capability within their organisation. How ready is your team for the changes to come? How ready is your team to sponsor good change management throughout the organisation? How well do you score on this quick and easy Organisation Change Management Capability Assessment.
This article is part of a series exploring the essential capabilities all CIOs and IT Organisations need to drive transformation and deliver enduring business value.
Joan Dobbie is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Beyond Strategy Consulting. Her company offers a wide range of IT Strategy and Transformation services to IT Organisations of all sizes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
