Why Programs* Fail And What Exceptional Leaders Do Differently

Transformation programs, strategic initiatives, major projects, major change efforts - call them what you will - share certain characteristics that make them difficult to get right with day-to-day working methods:

• Things are changing, internally and externally
• There is uncertainty
• There is complexity
• There are many projects that share dependencies... often too many to be managed in a fine-grained way
• There are multiple organizations involved, potentially external to each other

Unlike ants, humans are just not very good at instinctively working in these situations and pulling all efforts towards a common set of goals. We are a bit too independent, which is very useful for innovation and autonomy, but means we need to implement some extra structure if we are to move things along in a coherent way.

Don't get me wrong. An anarchic collective can be a lot of fun, but I don't know of much evidence of such structures successfully delivering beneficial outcomes in the situations described above. As long as groups such as the US, UK, EU, Australian and Canadian Governments and their agencies have been studying the outcomes of large-scale publicly-financed programs then key challenges have been observed:

Low support from those who are funding the change

We just can't drive people-change from the side. It has to be visibly-supported and role-modelled by engaged decision-makers who are aware of the case for change and firm in their understanding of the financial implications. Key in this is leaders consistently supporting the sometimes-difficult progress towards a compelling vision.

As a leader, you can't just fund the change and let the change team go off and do it for you. They will be able to create the needed capabilities, and support people in new ways of working, but you need to steer the program team and show your organization that it needs to come along on the journey.

Unclear decision-making

It can be murky about who can make a particular decision, whether a decision is needed at all, what the options and pros and cons are and whether the decision has actually been made.

Crisping up these topics will allow decisions to be made at the right level, keep things moving and aligned to the strategic objective and reduce waste through rework.

Low ongoing focus on benefits

Usually when a program is chartered there will be statements about the expected benefits and accompanying budgets.

When we get into the details of delivering capabilities and change support there are many detailed decisions to make at a project level. Issues will arise that need to be overcome. Unless the projects are managed in a way that keeps those decisions aligned to the overall strategic purpose then there will be drift and the collective project outputs may not, in fact, enable the goal.

Poorly defined or communicated Vision

We are talking about something large-scale here, so not all of the stakeholders of the initiative will have access to detailed information about the purpose of the change. A simple, compelling statement that can be consistently used to inspire people about a better future and draw them together in the effort to achieve it is needed.

People directly involved in delivering the program will need more detail than this, but the rallying point provided by the Vision will be useful for them too.

Lack of clarity about the gap between current and future states

We might have a good gut feel about the value of deploying Salesforce, drones in the field or sensors in our factories, as examples, but without a clear view of how our organization will actually use these capabilities and how the team will be enabled to use them then we won't get the value. We will have underutilized capability that cost a lot to introduce and is costing a lot to maintain.

This is particularly risky in programs that have a large amount of technology, as vendors are skilled at selling the benefits of their technology but usually those benefits take work to realize.

Unrealistic expectations about the capacity and ability to change

Even if all the new ways of working and the capabilities required are perfectly-well crafted, the changing organization still has to manage to transition from the current way of working, sometimes called business-as-usual, and the new ways of working.

This takes effort on behalf for the operating business, and is harder the more embedded the existing ways of working are, so the amount of change happening in a period of time has to be managed. You don't want chaos and you don't want to build change fatigue through perma-crises.

Often, the capabilities are not perfect and the support to transition is not as good as it could be. I heard an example recently about an organization that deployed new cash registers across its retail outlets. In at least one example the retail staff found out about this when the new registers were installed. They did not know how to operate them, so the ongoing operations were disrupted.

Failure to engage and influence stakeholders

Programs will inherently have many stakeholders of different types. In the public sphere there may be a significant influence from real politics and/or public opinion.

Individuals and groups will form different attitudes to the program: perhaps they are supporters, perhaps they disagree, are neutral, or have a stance that changes over time based on the information they receive.

If they do not receive information in a coherent way they will receive it from unauthoritative sources or make up their own.

You want stakeholders engaged and excited about the future, and providing measured inputs as to changes needed to get there. Get ahead of it and don't leave things to chance.

Complex dependencies

Sometimes there are simply several things happening at the same time, but they have not sprung from the same initiative, so there is no natural co-ordination.

In other cases we might have external regulation happening at the same time as in internally-driven transformation program.

These cases introduce the need to stage program delivery carefully and focus on strategic risks to avoid a reduction in strategic value at the program level.

Inability to influence the prevailing culture

This is huge and many Program Managers would consider this to be the hardest item to operate on. When the ways of working are well-established then there may be a strong familiarity with them and also a lack of a change-able attitude in the organization.

Put simply, they don't want your thing, at least as far as they understand it.

In this case creating and communicating real benefits, role modelling from leadership, and creating dissatisfaction with the status-quo are some techniques that can help. Being respectful of the past and preserving what is working well are key elements that will help with this very human concern. There is no need to build up unnecessary resistance - there is enough already!

Difficulties in keeping effort focused at the right level of detail

As we get into the projects, particularly with new technology, there is a danger of being overwhelmed with the implementation details of the projects. When that happens we can lose sight of the intended benefits and drift off course.

If you really just have a series of projects then manage them at that level.

If however, you have a strategic program then focus program management activities at the program level. Structure the program so that projects have sufficient clarity and autonomy to manage and deliver on their own, with the minimum escalations.

What to do

Best-practice Program Management frameworks such as Managing Successful Programmes from Axelos/PeopleCert help to put in place structures to minimize these problems and therefore maximise the likelihood of getting the results we want from our strategic program.

Although these frameworks can appear detailed and bureaucratic at first glance, they are derived from decades of hard examination of real programs, their successes and their failures. The trick is to implement the spirit of them, rather than directly follow every letter in the (big) book.

Often the best-practice can be delivered within the existing governance structures that an organisation has, rather then by implementing a disruptive new program structure. The key is to address the right topics.

I have created a diagnostic tool called the Transformation Readiness Assessment that contains over 30 key questions, aligned with best practice from MSP, major consulting houses and my own experience of strategic programs. The tool enables us to collaboratively assess the maturity of a current program setup, giving visibility to areas of strength and where action should be taken to improve the chances of success.

You can learn more about the Transformation Readiness Assessment here. If you have questions or would like to run a health assessment for your initiative then please contact me via LinkedIn or fieldenablement.com

Gareth

* I had to make a decision on "Program" vs "Programme" and I chose the more international spelling.