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Improving Management Health -- Getting Off the Big Comfy Couch

I bet you suspect, "OK, it's almost the end of March, so judging from the title this must be somehow related to all of the recently-abandoned New Year Resolutions involving gyms, low-carb foods or running." Not so my friends; this is actually about the importance of finding some balance across different management focus areas -- even when it forces you to address topics well outside your zone of comfort and expertise.

Besides, I don't run. If you see me running, it's because I'm out of ammo. You better run too.

One of the things we commonly find is a situation where organizations have fallen into a lop-sided approach to management improvement initiatives. Let's say for example that several years ago a generally process-immature organization began a program to advance its ad hoc project management capabilities. They kick it off by bringing in an experienced, PM-savvy manager, identifying what is in the project portfolio, and establishing some basic processes to help move projects through the lifecycle. Later, they start to build out some document and WBS templates, get some basic tools in place and begin a training program on PM fundamentals.

So far, so good. A year or so later, with some early improvements recognized, another round of PM refinement is launched, adding more rigor and sophistication around scope and requirements management, use of decision points and milestones, and better performance reporting. Flash forward a few more years and improvement cycles, and the organization now boasts a high percentage of certified project managers. Overall, the project management methodology itself gets a strong B grade.

But, the law of diminishing returns kicked in some time ago and making further progress in raising the project success rate seems to be stuck in a rut. What went wrong?

Project management became the big comfy couch. Bolstered by early successes and becoming increasingly comfortable with the initiative, the organization decided that continuing to improve project maturity was far more inviting than turning equal attention to other management areas in need of development. To continue the work-out analogy, it's like getting past the initial pain and establishing your technique for doing wrist curls. But, if that is all you do, then you may end up looking like Popeye the Sailor Man -- able to firmly grasp project planning and execution, but little ability to do the heavy lifting needed for true innovation.

Consider this: if you make tactical improvements to your project management capabilities but ignore strategic planning or project selection, then aren't you potentially executing the wrong projects more efficiently? If so, then the net business value of those PM improvements actually goes down! You are, in effect, wasting money faster. Furthermore, improvements in project management are inherently constrained without commensurate improvements in managing resources.

On the back side of project management, improving how project deliverables are managed operationally is equally important. Building an effective go-forward strategy relies on understanding the effectiveness of the services and products you are delivering today relative to the needs of your markets and customers.

The underlying message is that all of these elements are inter-related, so putting a myopic focus on continued improvement in one single area gains little in additional benefit until related areas are also improved to a level of functional parity. Real operational efficiencies are gained when small step improvements are made across all of the core business process areas in several iterations.

Now, get off that couch and go exercise some of those other management areas in need of some muscle; consider it process maturity circuit training.

I Can't Tell You What Business Value Is, But I Know It When I See It

(…with all due apologies to Justice Stewart)

Lately I've been revisiting some content on benefit realization, thinking about the investment analysis process in general, and mulling over different approaches to making business decisions. As part of that, I reviewed a lengthy but interesting paper from Audrey Apfel of Gartner, titled, "A Maverick Approach to the Business Value of IT" (G00157347, dated 29 April 2008). While the paper was directed specifically at IT, many of the points she makes are more broadly applicable.

The common thread of all the aforementioned subjects is that defining value is much more elusive than defining costs, whether planning for them, forecasting outcomes or measuring the actual results. It is a good day when you have an initiative that has unambiguous linkage to quantifiable revenue generation, but those days can seem few and far between.

The key take-aways I got out of Audrey's work was:

• It is almost impossible to effectively and accurately convert all potential benefits to hard dollar values, and financials alone don't tell the whole story
• There are too many unknowns and variables to make an accurate up-front assessment
• Ultimately the value of any undertaking is substantially shaped by perceptions rather than by more objective measures
• Perceptions and objective measures often have strong correlations anyway…
• …so why not assess perceptions when it comes to determining potential and actual value?

Let me be quick to say that your take on the 18 pages may yield different results; closed course, professional driver, etc., etc. I never claimed to be an 'A' student.

Uh oh -- now I have that song stuck in my head; "don't know much about his-tor-y, don't know much about geog-ra-phy…"

Audrey offers an interesting (if somewhat jaded) view of current corporate valuation techniques, in that sometimes executives will send those doing valuation assessments back to the well until they arrive at the pre-conceived value that sponsors have in mind anyway. My question to you is, do you see that happen in your corner of the world?

Regardless, the underlying theme is clear, whether prioritizing work, making investment comparisons or measuring results, it sometimes takes a combination of subjective and objective considerations to measure business value; yet another example of the juncture between science and art along the highway of business management -- it's a craft, not a software application.

Don't calculate proposed initiatives to death with overly sophisticated and labor-intensive financial measures exclusively; they are probably fictitious numbers in the final analysis (literally), and could shorten your lifespan from sheer frustration. Make some room for a controlled mechanism to measure gut feel; whether you call it a Perception Index as Audrey does, or term it as the Right Lobe Wobble Factor, subjective assessments are a viable sanity check of the basic ROI/NPV/IRR math. If the two elements end up at opposing points on the value spectrum, that is cause for further rumination.

"…but I do know that I love you, and I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world it would be…"