Large program of work? you should be afraid.
By Damian Heffernan
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
You all know the drill. You’re called together to witness the announcement of a large piece of work; a transformation, a system replacement. A huge “program of work” that will take lots of money, people (resources!) and multiple years to complete.
Look around and you’ll see fear in the eyes of many, resignation in the eyes of some, and pain in the eyes of a few. Rightfully so as according to data, logic, experience and many reports (Chaos Group, PWC, Gartner, etc): the bigger the project/program/initiative the less likely it is to succeed.
People working on these programs generally start OK, then proceed down the program curve of despair for a year or so and then quietly hope they can last until management either changes their mind and stops, pauses the program or the management changes and then the new management stops or pauses the program.
Only 2-6% of huge and large initiatives succeed. Most of the rest are challenged. Successful large programs? You’re into the single digits for success. So why on earth would you do it? If you really have a need to replace Salesforce with X, or SAP with Y, or do a digital transformation, it’s a huge or large piece of work so why would you head off on that path, when you and everyone else know it’s not going to go well. Is it optimism bias? Is it hope, faith?
I’m reminded of the quote by Herbert Hoover “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”
And it rings true here as generally The Bosses, the Senior Executives (insert large title here), scope up a huge program of work and then tell the teams - “we’re doing this”. Remember the fear you saw in peoples eyes? There’s even more to be seen:
fear; “OMG are they really going to get us to try this?”,
confusion: “why are we trying this… again? And am I going to get the blame!”,
sometimes resignation “oh well, here we go again on this distraction for the next couple of years. Hope I can keep my head down low enough.”
Or even sometimes clarity; “I’m out of here”.
So how do you get into the 2% of large programs that succeed? It’s possible. Well, don’t try to do large programs, but if you must (but don’t!) then it’s going to be difficult and you can try these tips.
Think small and like a startup
Sounds trite but think like a startup. Think like it’s your startup. Startups don’t have the money, time or desire to take on massive programs of work. They start building small, iteratively creating value through their deliverables. Do this. Don’t think like you have lots of people and lots of money and time. Think like it’s my money and I’m going to zealously protect it and spend only what I have to. Time is precious too; let’s get something out because the cost of delay can be awful.
Clear outcomes
Next, work out the outcomes you need from this work. What is the behavioural change you need to see to enable the success the of the initiative? Do some work and pull together the metrics you will be looking at to see if this is working, to see the change is happening and the effect you wanted is happening.
What’s it worth?
Decide what it’s worth to you. You may need to do some analysis on the work to find this out. This can be rough but even roughly it will guide you to how much effort (time and money) you are prepared to spend on this. 2 teams for 3 months? 1 team for 5 months? That’s as granular as you need. Once you have this you can look at what systems will be affected, what app/feature/platform you need to do work on. Then you can choose who will do that work for you. You need to set up the right team structures to make it work - and look to adapt as you progress.
Teams need a shared purpose, clear metrics and to value the work
This work you have been doing will enable you to communicate to the team the vision and goals for the initiative and the metrics you will be tracking to measure the success. In addition we need to focus around culture, values and the environment. This work sits squarely with the leaders.
You need committed leadership and executive support. Support that comes with realistic expectations, and someone who believes in, supports, and is super invested in the success of not only the piece of work and outcomes but all the people doing the work. This is rarer than you think.
As a bonus here’s some delivery basics that will help:
Slice the work small - there’s always a way to slice it smaller, this is your key to moving and learning fast.
Empower and engage your people - your people and teams will not only need to execute their accountabilities but also their relative accountabilities to succeed (this is hard by the way)*.
Conduct a listening tour. You’ll find people in any organisation who actually know what’s going on, what the work is, the challenges and the improvements required. Find them, listen to them, involve them.
Run experiments, fail fast, adapt. An experimental mindset beats a prescriptive one when it comes to big programs.
Be realistic about the effort. Use real metrics to inform the effort involved and keep revisiting this on a big program.
Focus on outcomes and not outputs - at every level, not just the highest program level.
Setup the structures you need to engage people and recognise and reward their work, this is important to continue to motivate and retain people who are part of something big.
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*https://resources.holacracy.org/articles/understanding-accountabilities