Why don't we start off with the title of the talk, Steve,
because, um, uh, it was not without controversy.
Was it
Contra Me in controversy?
Surely not, surely
Not.
So tell us the story. Where, where's,
where's this title come from?
Where does this idea come from? Oh, yeah.
Where does it come from? That's the point.
Well, I thought it came from, um, uh,
from Quinn at Dartmouth.
Uh, but apparently it didn't, it came from, uh,
Russell with all these things.
You, you Google a quote, you find a quote from someone,
turns out they borrowed it from someone else.
Uh, but we, we all stand on just a great quote.
The point is, it illustrates, uh, there's a guy called, um,
I forgot his name now, in the, in the States,
and he says, you know, we do
so much at work in organizations that makes no difference.
Um, Ken Miller, Ken Miller in the States.
So we do stuff that makes no difference whatsoever,
but we just carry on doing it.
Um, and he tells rather funny story about it.
But anyway, um, and it seemed to me that, you know,
too often I say to people when I'm talking about benefits,
I tour the world, and people say to me, hi, Steve.
You know, I met you a few years ago.
We've done everything you said.
I say, you know, we've got a benefit strategy tick,
we've got benefit profiles, tick, you know,
we've got benefit managers tick.
I say, great. Did you realize any benefits?
And I say, oh, we don't know. And here I'm trying to,
you know, it's just you're doing stuff rather than
focusing on what the, the stuff's supposed to deliver.
Uh, so you're focusing on the means rather than that,
rather than the ends.
And there is this, um, tendency, um,
and it's the devil inside.
I, this is not Steve saying, look, I'm so clever.
I never make this mistake. No, we all do.
It is the devil inside.
Um, and too often we get suckered into doing stuff.
Look, I'm so busy, I'm pushing bits of paper,
and yet it makes no difference.
Um, and so that's what that quote is, a reminder
that we need to focus on making the difference, um,
whether we call that value, benefits, impact, results.
You know, this year's word of choice appears to be impact.
Um, a few years ago it was results value.
You know, broadly speaking,
we're talking about the same thing.
We're trying to make, make things better.
What measurable improvements have we delivered?
Um, and so that for me is the,
and the, in a, the kind of PMO sense,
'cause you, just to follow up what I thought you was Yeah.
Was the first question. The challenge for the PMO,
therefore is to make a difference.
How do we actually make them and therefore, and
therefore focus, in other words, number one,
in the detention of the PMO should be benefits.
Now, Hobbs did a report about, ooh, a few years ago
for the PMI so prompt.
This will be primarily in the States at that point.
And, um, he identified 27 functions of A PMO
and benefits were slurred from bottom.
And I say, if you're not doing
benefits, what really whatcha, whatcha doing?
Everything else is a means to an end.
The end are benefits, the improvements.
If you're not focusing on that,
you're focusing on on the wrong thing.
And the guy called Kiran Bond,
Dale wrote a an absolutely awesome article, um,
entitled, I Come to Bury PMOs Not to Praise them.
Uh, and I thought, wow, what size?
Yeah, good name. You know?
And all he was saying, he said, look, people replied
to him saying, you mustn't say this.
You must, you know, you,
you are scared the the business people away.
And he said, all I'm saying is if you don't add value,
shut the thing down.
And I thought, what? You know, absolutely.
So it's really, I think of, you know, at the very heart of
what a PMO, um, is about doing, is about adding value,
whatever value means for that particular organization.
And that should be the number one focus.
Everything else is a means to the end.
The end is realization of value.
A absolutely. And there was, there was a rather rather
shaky study done a few years ago, um,
by the good folks at ESI, um,
and they, they surveyed a whole bunch of PMOs and,
and discovered that 73%, I think it was, um,
were were under threat of being shut down.
And, and that's why, because they're not adding the value.
You're adding value and you're not showing the average.
But I wanna, sorry,
before I forget, Stuart, we were, we were chatting a week,
two weeks ago or something, and you mentioned a story, um,
you said you were talking to someone
and you were talking about benefits and value,
and they said, well, yeah, but there's no upside.
You know, if we don't get, if we focus on benefits
and we don't deliver, then they're gonna come down
on us like a ton of breaks.
And if we do, well, no one really cares. So what's the part?
And I thought about that afterwards
and I felt, I was like saying to them, shame on you.
Yeah, shame on you saying that. You
Know, and, and it was a government department.
Well, that this is Double shame. Absolutely
Double shame. It's not
your money, it's my money. It's taxpayer's money.
And what you're saying is, it's okay for us to spend
taxpayers' money and not demonstrate that we've added value.
And not only not demonstrate it,
but deliberately say we're not gonna bother.
And I think No, absolutely. Outrageous.
So whether it's taxpayers' money
or it's shareholders' money,
that's why benefits is so important.
Because ultimately, you know, if it's my money,
and then my daughter, my elder daughter said to me, dad,
why do you want another motorbike?
You've already got two and a money in
Australia, so you've got three.
Why do you want another motorbike?
I said, Carly, how many pairs of shoes have you got?
She said, good point, dad. And you know, that's the point.
We will always justify what we want. Yeah,
Absolutely. But if
It's not your money, it's not my, if it's your money,
you can do what you like with it.
It's not your money. We need to do something sensible.
So this is why benefits is so important.
So, so before we jump into the,
so there's a question I wanna dig into, which is okay
with all of that, what's the po you know,
why do we have a PMO?
And I think you've, you've kind of set the groundwork
for, for answering that.
Um, but before we,
before we do that, I I just wanna read the quote
that we've been talking about just
in case everybody's forgotten.
So, so the quote is, um, a good deal
of corporate planning is like a ritual RainDance.
It has no effect on the weather that follows,
but those who engage in it think it does.
Um, and moreover, much, much of the advice related
to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing,
not the weather.
And so there's, there's kind of two bits to that.
First of all, uh, you know, by the end of today,
what I'm hoping you will all be able
to do is take a good look at yourselves
and see whether you think you are re affecting the dance
or the weather, right?
So that's, that's my challenge
to everyone on the, on the session.
Um, and then, uh, uh,
and then the second thing is, are you assuming that you are
spending too much time dancing, um,
how should we be changing the dance so
that we do affect the weather?
Or should we be doing something completely different
to make sure we affect the weather?
Can we affect the weather? That's an interesting
question as well, right?
So there's lots to unpack in this session.
Um, but, but I, I wanna, I wanna just keep going
with this value thing for a second, Steve.
So, um, I, I was on a, I was on a,
a webinar, I dunno, about a year ago.
Uh, actually it was a, it was an impact after hours.
So it was exactly a year ago.
'cause we're doing it again in a couple hours tonight.
Uh, we're doing a, an impact
after hours of Laura Barnard and the crew.
And we were talking about what's, what's the job description
for, for PMOs, right?
That was the title of the section. What, what's the PMO for?
And I'd done a bit of research into
the history of PMOs, right?
So I'm starting to roll out, you know, well,
back in the 1930s, right?
The, the starting of, you know, the original PMOs look.
And then in the fifties, and then in the,
and then lady called Amanda, open full steps,
and she says, Stuart, shut up.
No one cares the job of the PMO.
There is only one job at the PMO,
and that is to maximize the return on
investment from the portfolio.
That's it. That's, that's the job now.
So that executing
that job is gonna take different forms depending on
what type of PMO and what type of organization
and what maturity you're at and all that kind of good stuff.
But fundamentally, the job is to maximize the PMO, the,
the ROI from the portfolio discuss.
Would you, first of all, would you agree with that?
If so, why? And if not, why?
Well, primarily, no, I wouldn't agree with it.
But yes, I agree with the sentiment,
and I don't think it's ultimately it's senior manager's job
to maximize, optimize the return on investment.
They're the people,
ultimately, they're gonna make the decisions.
The job of the PMO is to facilitate, to enable
the realization, the optimization of value.
I think that's the, the
difference, oh, that's a subtle difference.
Okay. But I think it's important.
But, but, but what I would,
I think it's really important that the PMO in a way acts
as the conscience.
They should behave maybe internally as if it's my job,
because otherwise it's too easy to say, well,
you know, management just don't get it.
We sit here, we produce the ports, they don't do it.
I, there's a guy called Anand Sandwell,
and Anand was the head of corporate portfolio management
for American Express and wrote a rather interesting book,
won lots of awards a decade or so ago.
And I got him to come over to the UK and do a presentation.
I was in government at the time, had a,
a portfolio group in government across government,
and I've got Alan to come do a talk.
And he said, guys, he gets all your red, amber,
green charts, all your portfolio monthly reports
are worthless, goes, they're not, they're not of some value.
They're of no value until
the money you take money off, Stuart,
and you give the money to Steve until the money
flows in a different direction.
All you've created is a bureaucracy.
And I sat there and I thought, oh my God, listen, that I,
I'm not entirely sure is,
you know, a hundred percent accurate.
But nevertheless, I thought that was a useful challenge.
So, you know, you can, you can sit
and say, oh, well, it's not our job.
It's senior manager's job. We produce a report.
They don't do anything with it, dear road.
Well, what's the point then? What's the point?
Um, and that your point about making a difference,
and can we make a difference?
I remember talking to a guy in, in, um,
in justice in the UK at one point when I was in,
in the home office, and he was involved
with street crime, reducing street crime.
And I said to him, look,
but there are so many factors that influence street crime.
How do you know we've had a difference?
He goes, well, what's the point if
we're not gonna make a difference?
You know, we've got to make a difference.
Said, but you, I said, it's the place,
or it's the, so I think it's important
that the PMO in a way has the mentality of it's our job,
but you need to recognize you achieve that
through influencing senior managers, program managers,
project managers, a whole range of stakeholders.
So that's what, I mean, for me, this is why two things.
One, why this is the, in,
in the book actually at the very beginning, why I think, uh,
portfolio management is important
and why the PMO is important.
Because actually, when we wrote management portfolios,
we actually kind of, it kind of says
A PMO is kind of optional.
It's, it, it would be nice to have one,
but it, I'm not in that camp anymore.
No, we, you need a pbo. Absolutely.
Um, but the, the two points are, one, it's important.
Why is it important? Because without it,
you're not gonna get optimize your returns on investment,
uh, because you won't choose the right initiatives too
often, and you won't deal with the barriers.
You won't address the barriers to delivery.
Those are the two fundamental roles of the PMO
Help managers make more informed decisions
and remove the barriers to, to delivery
and to benefits realization.
So that's why it's important, but it is also damn difficult.
If it was easy, you know, anyone could do it,
but it's not easy because you're having
to influence people across the organization
where too often people are working in silos, um,
and they don't take a corporate perspective.
So the PMO, I think in a way,
you are holding the mirror up to the organization.
Many of the tools or the weapons that you have are,
you know, you can't just, there's no line.
You can't just say, do it, Stuart, do it Now, a lot,
my life's easy if I can say, Stuart, do it,
but I've got a persuaded Stuart Sure.
I want, and sure. I myself,
well, I don't see the value of this.
Well, let's have a chat, Stuart.
Let's have, you know, you might wanna speak to Dan.
I was working with Dan last week.
Look what we, me and Dan have done. Oh, that's interesting.
Steve might want a bit of that.
And so you can't call these, I mean, one of the things
that we did, we had, um, a whole load of, um, in,
in criminal justice in the uk, we had a whole load
of stakeholders that were basically winning.
Not our job, not our job, you know, uh, and I said, well,
but John Powells is doing it in the prison.
So John Powells is an ex mate of mine.
He was the ex prison governor, wonderful guy.
And he played ball.
We got him involved in the portfolio process,
and I said, we can't do it.
So John, is, John's doing it.
And when we've got a minister to stand up
and say, I just wanna commend the work
that John Powers is doing, he didn't say,
I'm commending the work that Steve Jenner and the portfolio.
I wanna commend the work this as a minister.
I want to commend the work that John Powell.
Suddenly everyone else wants to better that,
that love. Yeah,
Absolutely.
It's thinking about you don't always have the direct
believers to pull, how could you engage people in,
uh, the creation of value?
So, so here's, so I've got a little job for everybody.
Jump into the chat. I've asked a little question
so that it's voting time.
So the, the statement is, I agree with the spirit
of this job description so that, you know, PMO is there
to add value, yes or no.
So everyone, let's jump in.
If you haven't already, dive in with your answer.
And while you're doing that, um, uh, Steve,
Steve raised an interesting question, and,
and I suddenly realized
that actually I hadn't introduced you at the beginning,
Steve, I just gotta assume Steve Jenner, right?
I'm Steve Ho. Yeah. Steve, what? Hey, I'm Steve. Yeah.
So, so, so I wanna, so I wanna combine Steve Hoy's question
with, or I wanna riff off Steve Hoy's question by way
of introduction to Steve Jenner.
Um, so,
and we're getting lots of yeses, by the way,
which is not a big surprise.
Uh, that's, that's good news right there.
You're in the right place. So, so Steve Hoy says,
says something along the lines, it's, uh, you know,
it depends a bit on what, what the p stands
for in portfolio management.
Now, in the case of Steve Jenner, right, the P stands
for Paleolithic
because he's been doing this stuff since the
Stone Age, right?
Steve, Steve's one of the guys who has really shaped
this industry and the thinking both in terms of,
um, um, you know, being engaged academically, writing books.
Um, he, you know, Steve,
Steve essentially created the Management
of Portfolios program along with Craig Ilford, right?
Um, uh, yeah, give, give, give credit
where it's due to Banana man.
Absolutely. Um, and the, um, uh, so, so, you know,
and then there were, there were a
bunch of other people as well, right?
But, but, but Steve was one of the, the driving forces
behind that was chief examiner for the,
for the management portfolio
certification and so on and so forth.
So, Steve's been around for a long, long time.
Go in, go into Google Scholar and,
and just Google Steve, Steve Jenner portfolio management,
and you will see, or, or benefits management,
and you will see all kinds of stuff on there, right?
So, so Steve is one of those guys who is not only
just close your ears, Steve,
'cause you're not gonna enjoy this, but yeah, uh,
Steve's one of those guys who's not only brilliant,
knowledgeable wise,
but he's also a spectacular communicator.
Um, and, and can really get the ideas across easily.
So if you don't get it today,
you're never gonna get it right, is the message.
Um, but, uh,
but so, so my apologies for not introducing, that's, no,
that's the, that's the benefit.
Yeah. We, we, we were in the green room
and we were chatting, uh, uh, that just sort
of flowed into the, into the webinar, so I forgot
to do the intro, so my apologies.
No course. No worries. Well, so this is a good point, Steve,
to have a have a little break.
'cause one of the questions that we talked about last week
in preparation for this was, was
what are the attributes, right?
Because again, you've been doing it since the p paleolithic.
I quite like that. The P and PMO stands for Paleolithic now.
Yeah. Um, so, so, uh, uh,
you've been doing this a long time.
You've seen success, you've seen failure.
You're on top of the literature
and the research, you, you know, you, you, you, you interact
with people across, across the planet
in different geographies,
different sectors, and so on and so forth.
So the question I, I put Steve, is what are,
what are the attributes of, of a highly effective PMO?
And Steve's very kindly pulled together a
few slides with thoughts.
So should we, should we, should we jump off
over into, into that?
Absolutely. You can see the slides.
Can you or, or do I have to share? Not yet. No.
Not you'll need to share. You'll need to share to share.
Lemme, if you've got a problem that I can share,
Share. Oh, because
Here we go. Something's
coming. That's it. We got it. We
Got, cool. I just
ask that question. What does the P stand to?
Absolute. It's a really important point. I'm doing a talk
to the PMO conference in Edburg in November.
I work up the night one.
'cause they're all gonna be sitting there thinking,
I'm talking about project and program, no portfolios.
I'm talking about portfolio, portfolio management offices.
Difference between, you know,
because the portfolio level, we're concerned
with the investment management stuff
and the con the delivery
or at least enabling, facilitating the delivery.
So yeah, I mean, there's the,
the new guide, uh, is coming out soon.
I'm not trying to sell anything here,
but just to give an overview of what the guide, uh, the,
the, the framework on the slides.
Come on. Come on. Why aren't the slides?
Let's, ah,
There we go.
Who needs artificial intelligence, Stuart?
Good. Um, I'll settle
For any intelligence mate.
Indeed. So what we're saying in managing portfolios, the,
the new guide, uh, is, uh,
we have on the right hand side portfolio design.
So designing the portfolio, scoping
and structure in the portfolio, the portfolio strategy, um,
understanding what is happening, what, what projects
and programs do we have prioritizing,
optimizing the very core of, uh, portfolio management.
Um, 'cause in, in essence,
portfolio management is about three things.
Twice. First of all, it's about doing the right things.
So it's optimize, uh, prioritization and optimization.
And it's about doing the things right.
Uh, so we remove the barriers to delivery,
which also includes doing them at the right time.
So we manage the flow of work, uh, to optimize the delivery.
And if we're doing the right things,
then we're delivering them.
Then hopefully we're gonna realize the value
or realize, uh, the benefits.
So we have these two, um, two dimensions
of portfolio management, the design, the delivery.
We have principles that underpin the effectiveness, uh, or
and efficiency of portfolio management on the left hand side
and move on to talk about, I saw a a a a, um, one
of the comments by, uh, uh, shock just a minute ago.
And he talked about no one that gives you anything.
You know, we've got to demonstrate the value
or worse to that effect.
How do we engage execs?
And people say, oh, well, execs aren't engaged. Okay. Right.
You know, so you could be a victim or maybe not.
Um, strategic clarity governance setups. Anyway.
So it's all, but at the very core of this,
what I should be saying, I forgot to say it, my God,
this is subtitled lessons, lessons from
lessons sweep of history here.
So Stuart went with the paleo, what was it? Stuart
Paleolithic, Paleo Paleolithic.
I'm going quite to that level,
but we're going Aristotle, Shakespeare and Ella Fitzgerald.
Platonic. Okay, we'll, we'll go platonic.
We're gonna go, right? So Aristotle,
Shakespeare lessons from Aristotle, Shakespeare,
and Ella Fitzgerald, because, and it's very hard.
I've talked about, you know, the,
the principles under pit it on the left hand side,
what is portfolio management, doing the right things,
doing them right, and doing them at the right time.
But it only works if we address these, these six, uh,
key success characteristics that we, I refer to in the book.
Benefits led. The, the white letters,
the white lettering in the blue
and the pink benefits led evidence-based, fast
and frugal, active discipline and transparent.
And that's Ella Fitzgerald. You know, take what you do.
It's the way that you do it.
You know, we can say, well, we do,
we do portfolio management, Steve, we do prioritization.
Well, you do, you do it well.
You know, it's the way that you do it that matters.
So first of all, we've learned from Ella.
So what, the way we do things, the,
these success characteristics, you know,
I'm briefly have a look at this,
and then this will, um, uh, provide a basis for hopefully
for, uh, exploring some of the areas.
Number one. And it has to be number one.
'cause if you're not doing benefits, what are you doing?
Uh, I did a session for the PMIA few years ago,
and, um, I did my session sat down
and they had, uh, Antonio Nieto Rodriguez talking next.
And Antonio, Antonio, if you haven't heard of him,
he was the past chair of PMI Global.
He's the author of the strategy focused organiz,
or sorry, the focused organization.
And his session was all about, you know,
why do senior managers not take project
management seriously?
And he said, does everyone agree?
You know, senior managers just don't,
and everyone, yeah, you know, managers don't get it.
And I thought, God, this is, this has been a plaintiff cry
of middle managers for the last 150 years.
You know, senior managers don't get it.
And when, then you get there, the junior managers
and the middle manager will say the same thing.
But I sat there and I thought, and it, and, and,
and Tony had a really good analysis of why, so
that they're not paid.
They're paid to manage the business, not the, the change.
They're paid. They, they're trained.
None of the MBAs cover project management,
or at the time, they didn't.
And the Harvard Business Review doesn't write any articles
about it and all this kind of stuff.
But I sat down and thought, but if your project doesn't show
what contribution it's gonna make to strategy,
why would they be interested?
You know? So if you can't show the impact
that you're gonna make, either at a project level
or at a portfolio level,
that's the root of cause of the problem.
So, number one, we need to be able to show, um,
what difference we're gonna make.
And, you know, the PMI paid me to do some research.
I, I openly say, admit I would pay the PMI,
I'd give them the money back to say what they've said.
Project benefits synonymous
with positive strategic impacts.
So we talk about strategic objectives, benefits,
and then we commission initiatives, projects,
and programs to deliver the benefits
to achieve our objectives.
That's it. And you see the model on the left hand side from
managing benefits, where you've got halfway down.
You've got, you've got second box down rail objectives
and linked to them rail, the benefits.
And below that, the projects and programs.
In a way, it's over complicating.
Just think about, think about the OKR framework,
which is very similar objectives, key results.
And then you commission initiatives
to deliver the key results that, uh,
show you've achieved your objectives.
The problem is no organization, every organization,
there's no standard, um, benefits categorization system.
So we need to develop a, um, benefits categorization system
for our organization so that all projects then, um,
articulate their benefits in a consistent,
uh, a consistent way.
Um, so what I've said, I said, sorry,
I said benefits is about three things
twice, and I only said it once.
Uh, doing the right things,
doing them right, and at the right time.
But its portfolio management at its from, its very origins
is about one thing, risk and return.
You don't just look at the return on your shares,
you look at the risk of those shares.
So we need to bounce risk and return.
We need to, prior to that whole, you know, that,
that model I had with, um, six different, uh,
practices on portfolio design, and it's very heart.
It's about prioritization.
Why, what is all actually awesome quote from Mark, uh,
cipher, uh, in one
of the P buy publications, we can do anything.
We just can't do everything. And that sums it all up.
We just can't do everything. You have to choose.
If you're choosing, you've got to prioritize.
So it's about balancing risk and return.
It's about choosing. 'cause you have to choose.
And thirdly, it's then about making,
you don't just then sit back,
you know, I'm an accountant by trading.
So you say, oh, now we've chosen the perfect,
we've got steward in stewards assist us.
We've chosen the right projects.
We can now sit back and wait till they, you know,
the project guys deliver them.
Our job here is done.
No, you've actually got involved in actually removing the
barriers to delivery, make sure we actually do de uh,
deliver the projects and programs
and that we realize, uh, the benefits.
So benefits, benefits comes, comes firstly. Um,
Can, can I, again, can I jump, but just, just
before you move on Yeah.
Can I just jump in and and dig just one slight level deeper?
Because one of the, one of the things that people struggle
with, um, if you just jump back a slide, Steve.
Oh, cool. One of the things people struggle with thank you
is, so you were saying, you know, strategic benefits,
strategic benefits, strategic benefit.
And then they turn around and say, yeah,
but, you know, three quarters
of our budget is going on business
as usual, keep the lights on.
Now, I wanna be really clear here.
You, your strategic leaders in the organization
don't care about that stuff.
They don't care about the BAU stuff, right?
If they could make it go away, they would, but they can't.
They would put all of the energy into the,
into the strategic change, the business project.
But here's the, here's the important thing.
This is not a conflict because for the BAU teams, right?
Managing risk is one of their strategic
drivers, right?
And all of that BAU work that you do
is mostly there a few other things you do in there,
but mostly it's about managing risk in the business.
So if you're in it, updating that database
isn't actually a must do project,
but it is helping reduce risk in the business, right?
A risk that the system fails.
You, you, you, your system goes down,
your order processing system goes down in the middle of the,
the run up to Christmas
and you lose $3 million worth of sales, right?
So, so often people will challenge this strategic thing
and say, oh no, but we do BAU stuff, right?
BAU stuff is strategic.
Every part of the organization has its strategic goals.
And just to, to, to kind of
wasn't gonna go here, but let, let's go here.
What you're pointing out, Stuart, is
that when we talk about benefits, in a way,
you can talk about there are financial benefits
and the non-financial benefits.
Absolutely. The thing that worries me,
me in government is when they say there are financial
benefits and the non-financial,
and I say, why did you put financial first?
The job of the Department of Education
is not to spend money.
The job of the Department of Education is to improve,
deliver improved educational services.
Those me, the measures of that should come first.
The financial staff should come second.
Um, but there's financial, non-financial,
but it's the kind of the benefits associated
with the positive benefits improvements.
But there's also the avoidance of the bad things
that would happen if we don't maintain business as usual.
And you'll see that in that model on the right hand side,
two of the two boxes at the bottom,
one was about sustaining business operations.
So this is anything that we do.
The benefit is the avoidance of
what would happen if we didn't maintain business operations.
And you've got the license to operate.
In other words, complying with the law,
complying with regulations.
There are certain things you have to do
or maybe don't have, sometimes you have to do.
Sometimes we do it because we're trying to, it's our license
to operate in society.
Um, and so we have the, those two different,
and those are two different types of value.
So we need to have ways of articulating that
and ways of saying, well, where, what should the balance
between these various, um, you see
that I've turned them investment drivers.
The idea is that you would then categorize your portfolio
and split your portfolio in.
So if you've got initiatives that set out to save money
or generate revenue, they shouldn't have to compete
with initiatives that are keeping the lights on in other,
you split your portfolio up into say,
6, 7, 8, 4, whatever it is, categories.
The first decision you make, this is why Bob Cooper called,
doesn't call 'em categories.
He calls them strategic buckets.
And you've decided how much money are we gonna put into
keeping the lights on?
How much money are we gonna put into income generation?
How much are we gonna put into, you know,
improving educational services?
And then once you've made, that's, so in other words,
that's a strategic decision.
And then projects then compete within those
buckets for funding.
And, and, and one of the things, so,
so we use this concept of buckets as well,
and we, the way we talk about it is
that people will often say to us, you know,
you can't compare apples with oranges.
Actually you can, you absolutely can
compare apples and oranges.
They're both fruit and they are there to be nutritious,
tasty, look good, all that kind of good stuff, right?
What you can't do is compare apples with elephants
because they're not there for the same purpose, right?
Yeah. We know what apples are there for.
I'm not sure what elephants are
there for, if I'm honest, right?
But, but they're there for something, right?
And so you can't compare apples and elephants.
So apples and oranges, you can absolutely compare,
but apples and elephants, you can't.
So you have to split them apart and,
and make a conscious decision of
how much you put into each bucket.
And you know, again, when you're doing it right, I,
I don't wanna go too far down this rabbit hole
'cause I could spend an hour on this,
but when you do it right, you know, you have this sort
of slightly iterative process where you, you you sort of,
um, you know, you're able to see, uh, because,
because for every portfolio, each
of those buckets is gonna have some projects
that are really high value for money
and others that are lower value for money.
So you wanna be trying to balance
where you are on the efficient frontier.
Steve, we were talking about that before the session. Yeah.
AB absolutely where you are on that efficient frontier
for each of those buckets
and actually move money around between the buckets.
But yeah, but there's also a, another added value,
which is the, what you are talking about
as business as usual.
But really we're talking about, I suppose from my
perspective, is mandatory projects, the some
with mandatory projects,
there's a lot of them are mandatory.
You know, people like to say them.
You know, I used to, when I talk to, I used to say
a conference, anyone from it here, you know,
you get hands goes say, sorry, you know what,
talk about Y 2K stuff about it was Christmas come early
for the IT guys, everything got put
through as a what we gotta do.
It was Y 2K, half of it didn't,
you know, it was just an invention.
So if you give people, if you allow them a mandatory,
often say, you know, they, they, they fixate,
they say we have to do it, but why do you have to do it?
Is, and is this the best way of doing it?
Are there other ways in which we could,
we could do it more cost effectively
by having a strategic bucket for the mandatory stuff?
You know, maybe, I know HMRC at one point when they started
doing this, they said, alright, god, 80%
of our spend is on the mandatory stuff.
And the guy in charge, really brilliant guy said, great,
but at least now we know that
and we can say, well, we want to reduce that 80 to,
you know, 60% over the next three
or four years so that we get more money in the, you know,
adding strategic value bucket
and get it away from the mandatory bucket.
So they're able to manage that over a period of time.
And, and you can do that.
You to do that, you, you have to, you have
to get outta this concept of it being binary have
to do or not have to do.
Yeah. It's about how much risk do you introduce?
How much risk do you leave in the business if you don't do
this right?
And then understand which investments are going
to help you manage the risk
and which investments are just being tagged as must do.
Right? And there's lots of them.
And that point about, and at the right time,
because it may well be the time we have to do it,
but let's, let's, we can't do all of that this year.
So let's push some of that back.
Maybe we could do some of it this year,
some next year, some the year after.
Um, so you're absolutely right. It's not binary.
This is, and this, so there is no right,
you know, doing the right things.
There is, this is a value judgment. That's
Right. And it's about
trying to reach an understanding,
a commitment by senior managers to what is the best use
of the limited resources at our disposal.
So I would love to go on
and talk about how a HP is the best way to do this
and all that kind of good stuff.
But we are on one of six. Let's keep going.
Number two of six is, uh, this is
where a HP actually comes in.
You know what it's an example of.
We needs to be evidence-based.
I turn my notes because I have to say, you know,
when you look out the window as I'm now, we see the impact
of a guy called William Edwards Deming everywhere.
And many people listening will never have heard
of William Edwards Deming.
Deming is the guy that the Japanese credit with the,
um, economic, Japanese economic miracle
after the second World war.
He's thinking about statistical analysis,
about systems thinking total quality management.
He's the godfather of total quality management and
therefore the godfather of grandfather of lean and,
and all that kind of good stuff.
And Deming said, trust in God, but all lovers bring data.
We need to have data.
I mean, uh, can't, one of the guys' names he said,
he said in government, he said, asking
for data is a bit like asking a 4-year-old to eat broccoli.
You know, it ain't gonna happen.
You know, people like, I'm a
professional, I don't need editor.
Yes, you do. That's the whole point.
Um, so it needs to be evidence-based.
Um, so use techniques that have been shown to work.
I mean, I saying this stupid fine, the red pill,
the blue pill from Matrix, that whole, I mean,
I'm an accountant by training.
I'm trained to use MPV, I know the strengths
and weaknesses of MPV.
We behave as if MPV was in Violet, that the results
of an MPV calculation are, you know,
they're handed down from on high, they're not,
you know, it's unreliable.
Most business goes bent flu you business book of a year.
You know, he says, you know, there is a fallacy at the heart
of cost benefit analysis, not, it's a little bit out.
No, it's wildly out guys. Yeah.
And everyone goes, isn't that interesting? Right?
What's the MPV? You know, it, it's insane.
We need to use it.
Doesn't mean you don't do MPV,
but it means you need to look at things
from more than one perspective.
It needs to be evidence-based. That's one aspect there.
Navy seals make, make, uh,
mantra slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
You know, managing your delivery of projects.
Don't just start everything as quickly as you can.
You, you, uh, you stagger the delivery of projects
and programs within the constraints.
It's called Theory of constraints.
Brilliant, brilliant stuff about, um, managing the delivery
so it matches the constraints,
the resources within the organization.
So that's one aspect, or two aspects
or three aspects of being evidence-based using, making sure
that you use reference task forecasting in
your business cases, for example.
So we've got some evidence, some confidence.
I love Annie Duke's, uh, you know, um,
thinking in thinking in bets, you know,
if Thomas someone says, this is gonna be worth
20,000, you go, yeah.
Do you wanna bet? And that forced me.
So what's the chance that it won't be, we need
to be looking not just benefits,
but what's the likelihood of those benefits being realized?
And this is what I said to someone from Australia recently.
Uh, she said, Steve, you know, our forecasts are
so wildly inaccurate.
We want to adopt reference class forecasting.
What should we do? I said, well,
you can't do reference class forecasting
'cause you haven't got a reference class.
But what you should be doing
to people when they put the forecast in, you say,
how confident are you?
Yeah. Are, yeah, 80%. Are you 60%?
Oh, she's, no, I don't think they're ready for
that blue pill.
Yeah, blue pill. Why not? Why not? Why not?
So, but the other aspect,
And so, so as well,
so here's a, here's a quick thing, right?
So, so, um, there's a, there's a lot of this where
people think data means something that you can go out
and measure, but sometimes data is subjective.
A lot of what you just talked about is subjective, right?
That is data as well.
Abs. Absolutely. I mean, Kaplan
and Norton, uh,
the balance scorecard guys. Balance scorecard.
Yeah. Yeah. When it was first came out,
and I remember sitting in a room
and someone said, what about with this kind
of the softer stuff, you know?
And one of them, either Kaplan
or Autum said, if you say you can't measure it,
you're not trying hard enough.
You know? And I always say, look, you know, I remember when,
uh, bad example, a bit aged now,
but you know, the, um, uh, um, God,
what they called, oh nevermind, sorry.
But anyway, you know, from we measure
gross domestic product.
Yeah. They actually started measuring, um,
David Cameron one, his prime minister says, I want you
to measure national wellbeing.
If you can measure national wellbeing,
you can bloody well measure the benefits from your project.
Don't tell me you can't measure them.
'cause people say, how would we know? If you wanna know
about customer satisfaction, go and ask the customer.
Go and ask them. Yeah, absolutely.
Ask them and engage with them. Really engage with them.
Um, yet too often we, we treat them as,
as this Ken Miller said, like in government, he said,
we treat customers like hostages.
You know, they're caught. So we need to engage.
It's about, this is why benefits management
and portfolio management,
they are stakeholder led practices.
And as you're absolutely right, Stuart,
data doesn't necessarily mean numbers.
It can mean, you know, softer,
but nevertheless, this is the most important stuff.
Engaging. What are their perceptions?
One of the things I did when we were working,
I was working on the Telus once program,
and they'll collect all sorts of data.
And I said to the program director, if I could tell you
that 95% of chief execs in England
and Wales say it's made a significant difference,
what can that do for you, Lynn?
She says, absolutely, Steve.
So you have to ask chief execs,
ask department managers, what difference does it make?
You know, you know, significant, minimal, non-negative.
Tell us. We should, we should know that.
So it's qualitative as well as quantitative.
There's nothing wrong with quantitative data.
So I'll tell you what we let, let's,
let's move on just before we do this.
There's, there's one piece as well, which is that some
of the data is also subjective.
And where you just gotta make a judgment.
And when you have that,
whenever you make so, so often just coming up
with an estimate for a project, it's subjective.
Someone's making a subjective judgment on how big it's,
and so there are some really nice techniques you can use
there to improve the quality of that data really quickly.
Um, so, so, um, uh,
and we built some of this into our, our software as well.
So there's a, there's a, a pretty simple process
that you can go through where you, you get, you know,
a number of people together and you ask them all
to estimate the same thing.
Yep. And then do that independently. Delphi and Delphi.
That's right. Yep. Delphi.
So you, you do it independently, then you reveal the answers
and, and you have a discussion about it.
And then you take the, everybody moves around their votes,
and then you take the average, they're
Allowed to revisit. Absolutely.
And, and when you do that,
the noise just collapses right down.
You're not gonna eliminate the noise.
It's still gonna be a subjective judgment.
It's gonna be a lot, lot better. Uh, wisdom of
Ground Judgment, wisdom of the, we call it,
we call Delphi Wisdom of the very small crowd. Yeah,
Absolutely. There's a brilliant,
I there's a, anyone wants it?
Send me the, send me an email afterwards or a link, um,
or the Stewart, then send it to me.
There's a brilliant five minute video on the BBC.
They did that. It's unbelievable. You, you won't believe it.
And it, it demonstrates the power of the wisdom of crowds.
James Sirki. Um,
this is all based upon statistical. This is all,
He's great. I
Love him. This is, this is
not, oh, this might be true.
This is absolutely true. It works.
It certainly does. Right?
Let's move on. Let's move on. We're,
Oh, uh, but I, I've got, you can't let me, my favorite
Shakespeare said, 'cause we've had Aristotle
and so we haven't, we've had Ella Fitzgerald Shakespeare
test in 12th Night said,
this fellow is wise enough to play the fall.
You know, the job of the fall.
The jester in medieval England wasn't to tell jokes.
It was to point out to the monarch the error of their ways,
because there were, you know, no one was felt brave enough
to challenge the Monarch.
'cause you know, what's gonna happen due tomorrow.
So the job of the fool was to, to point out.
So we need to have the job of the PMO is to be brave.
Are you as the PMO manager? Are you brave?
Are you wise enough to play the fool? Mm.
I was at the OECD in about 2004, 2005 in Paris,
and, um, at a meeting about benefits across the OECD
it programs, big IT programs and portfolios.
And a guy called Bob Mor from Canada stood up
and he said, business cases contain assumptions
that masqueraders facts.
And I sat there and I thought, cross, I wish I'd said that.
You know, and I wrote it down bit like a Kiran Dale
with his, I come to bury PMOs not to praise them.
I said, whoa, what a title.
But yeah, business cases contain
assumptions that masquerades effect.
And so someone needs to, but we don't see it.
We need to point the error of, of people's ways out to them.
So the job of the PMO part of it's to be, to fill this role.
And you say, well, Steve, that sounds great,
but Shakespeare, oh, it's so long ago.
Well, let's bring it up to date, shall we?
Daniel Kenman, Nobel Prize winning psychologist.
We love a good Dan Kahneman. Dan Kenman here.
Daniel Kenman talks about adversarial collaboration.
This challenge and his adversarial collaboration was based
upon his own work with Amos Urky,
who would've won the Nobel Prize if he'd still been alive.
But it's tversky's, uh, work
and conneman's work together jointly using adversarial
collaboration because they came from different disciplines
and challenged each other.
But if you say, well, that sounds,
but that's very academic, Steve.
I live in the real world. Give me one from the real world.
Okay, well how about Andy Grove at Intel?
Andy Grove talks about, uh, constructive confrontation.
It's the very heart of Intel's approach.
Constructive confrontation, adversarial collaboration.
Are you wise enough to play the full? So,
And, and there's a whole bunch, you know,
when you read into Kahneman's stuff in a little more detail,
there's a whole bunch of things you can do.
'cause adversarial can become a problem.
If it's I win, you lose. Right? Oh,
This is, sorry. This
is absolutely, this is gotta be,
there's no personalities in it.
This is not personal. This is about working together. Yep.
Because I, look, I'm an accountant. You've got lawyers.
If you ask an accountant for some advice,
he'll tell you why you can't do it.
You ask a lawyer, he'll tell you why you can't.
No, just how do we do it? How can we resolve you?
How do we minimize the risk?
How do we work collaboratively
to the best possible solution?
Absolutely. So, so anyone that wants to know more about
that, just, just gimme a shout
and, uh, I can point you to some good books, uh, um, so
to help you kind of think that stuff through.
But that's, that's great. Love that. Thanks David. This
Is my first book, but you can't get it anywhere.
It's outta a print. But it's called, it was called A Fool's
Errand is Realizing Benefits.
A fool's errand said, yeah, it is a fool's errand,
but only in the sense, not in the sense it can't be done,
but in the sense that you need to have a fool
to ask people, what the hell are they doing?
Why are you doing it? What difference would it make?
How will we know he is made? The difference? Love it.
That kind of stuff. Fast and frugal.
This is not rocket science guys,
this is, keep it simple, stupid.
I did some work when I, with the, uh,
UA European community funded, uh, program.
I was the UK rep on that, um,
looking at public sector return on it.
And their conclusion was that formula on the left hand side,
you know, they're having a laugh, really.
I mean, please God, how could anyone understand
what that was?
The no, the point is, as McKinsey say,
a handful of characteristics that are most critical.
So when you're making an investment decision,
you're gonna have criteria.
How many criteria? Well, Bob Cooper, professor Bob Cooper
new, he is the new product development portfolio management
guru for the last 20 years,
30 years probably from his research.
Bob Cooper says about the average, the best use average
of about 6.2 criteria.
It's, you know, a small number of criteria,
but you have to be disciplined about it.
The example on the, um, uh, the right hand side there,
looking at strategic fit for each initiative,
look at strategic fit, it scale, the financial benefits.
You add those 2, 5 2 scores up, gives you a score at a 10.
So that's the attractiveness side of it,
or the return, the strategic fit and financial benefits.
He says, Steve, what happened to, to risk?
Well, looking from Achievability, they looked at the scale
of behavioral change and the scale of business change.
This was from a, a transportation, uh,
organization from a few years ago.
So it was a way of, of adding up getting a, a score at a 10
for attractiveness and
for achievability zip on a little bit.
Obviously we talked about active, um, then the important
of being active and making a difference.
The, um, the thing on the little picture of the monkey
and the, uh, the circus tent.
Um, I was talking to my old at the gun, you know, Carly
that said, dad, why, why do you want another motorbike?
Um, and she said, you know, I had to give up work actually,
because she started earning more than me.
You can't have your daughter earning more than you.
So I went, that's when I went private.
Um, but she said, dad, you know, at work, it's normally
what you all you hear is, it's not my monkey.
It's not my circus. Wow. It's a brilliant saying.
It's an old Polish polish saying,
but apparently it's all, all the kids are into it
now on, on Insta.
Um, it's not my circus.
It's not my monkey or it's not my monkey.
It's not, in other words, it's not my responsibility.
And I remember doing a session for in the Welsh government
and one of the SROs, senior responsible owners, I said,
well, you know, who's accountable for benefits realization?
I said, guys, it's you, the SROs.
You are accountable for benefits realization.
And one of these SROs said, Steve,
I don't control all the business change.
My program is rolling out across the Welsh government.
I don't control all the business change.
Uh, so you can't hold me to account.
And I said to him, look, the world is full of people
who say it's not in my job description.
If you as the SRO don't say, I don't care
what I directly control, I'm gonna make it happen.
If you don't say that, who is?
And this is what John Thorpe, the information paradox guy,
he talks about activist accountability.
The buck doesn't stop here. The buck starts here.
We need to encourage that, that mind shift
that people hold themselves to account.
I'm gonna make it. I know it's not easy,
but I'm gonna make it happen.
You know, when all is said and done, more is said than done.
Uh, Steve, so you moved on
really beautifully into that one.
Going back to just the criteria, you don't need
to go back from the slides, but going back
to the criteria thing for a second.
Um, so, uh, we, we actually have a couple of eBooks,
short eBooks on the topics of criteria.
What are criteria, how to create good criteria.
Um, and there's a list of 80 criteria
that to start your thinking.
Um, and, uh, you know, I think I'd, I'd probably concur
with your 6.2 being a good number.
I normally say sort of five
to six. So that's, that's about right.
It's Bob Cooper. There you go. Yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Close enough.
Um, and,
and then part of the key is to break those down.
So anyway, there's anybody who's interested in getting a
copy of that book, just drop me your email address into the
chat and Lenora will pick that up
and make sure you get a copy of that book.
Um, so, uh, anyone that would like to learn more about that,
just as I say, just give us a quick yes please
and Lenora will get it to you.
Paul, we've got two more and we've got about six minutes.
My god. So disciplined. Bob Cooper mentioned Bob Cooper.
Bob Cooper says The difference between the winners
and the losers in portfolio management isn't
that the winners do portfolio management
and the losers don't.
He said the difference is the losers aren't consistent.
They're ill disciplined. They allow people
to bypass the process.
Um, the winners stick to the process.
They look to improve the process.
They look for continuous improvement,
but whatever the process is, they're disciplined about it.
Um, and key to that is this whole concept
of stage release of funding.
Annie Duke's book, I've mentioned thinking in bets.
So we need to be more like the, the PMO guy needs
to be more like a professional poker player, um,
making small bets as your confidence in victory grows,
so you commit more fun.
So you overcome what Tim Banfield
of the National Audit Office called the
conspiracy of continuation.
He said, well, everyone knows, just get the thing started
and it's almost impossible to stop it.
No, which we need to have a, a, a a stage gate process.
So your portfolio is a funnel, not a tunnel.
Um, I was doing this part about discipline.
I was doing a, uh, doing some work
with a major multinational.
And this multinational we were talking about on defense
scale budgets.
I mean, the money was just unbelievable scale.
And they won lots of awards for portfolio management,
including up being at one of those conferences
that you refer to in the, in the Middle East, uh, Stewart
and I'd been there the previous year
and I'd seen they'd been up.
They, they won their award and they showed the video.
Uh, and then I forgot all about it.
And then a year later, they contacted me,
said We'd wanna do some work on benefits, Steve.
So I went over to, to work with them,
and we did a little bit of work.
And then there was this presentation
by the portfolio manager
and she explained what they were gonna do in the following
year, and she finished.
And people getting up, the guy next to me, he was one
of their leading analysts, lent over
and he says, Steve, it's like Game of Thrones around here.
They're all stabbing each other in the back.
And that's the point. And you gotta build,
you can have the wonderful, the most brilliant processes,
but if the culture of the organization allows people
to bypass and they're maneuvering, it becomes a game.
Now, I'm not dissing that, that organization,
I'm not naming them, but it just illustrates
how difficult this stuff can be.
So we need to be like a poker player.
I haven't mentioned Aristotle.
I must have met Aristotle in a second.
We mentioned Ella Fitzgerald, uh,
we mentioned, uh, Shakespeare.
Um, but key for me, if you know, if you're gonna reach,
if you wanna change things, normally we reach
for the accountability stick.
If you wanna change something,
gimme an accountability stick.
Stuart, I want you to hit a hundred next year.
If you don't hit a hundred, you're sacked.
Now, Stuart is now motivated, he's now accountable,
and he's now mo no, he's not motivated, he's motivated
to make it look like he got to a hundred.
What drives behavior is transparency.
Look what happened when the Daily Telegraph published MP's
expense claims world changed.
Half those mps never stood for election again.
Nothing they did was illegal.
Half of them, some of them was illegal.
But what the people said, I don't care whether it's legal,
just shame on you.
Just shame on you. And transparency, what's it costing?
When's it gonna deliver? Been absolutely clear.
And it's just an example on the right hand side from Dubai
Customs, that was their portfolio map.
You hit one of those, any of those bubbles,
you've got a dashboard report, you hit that button,
you got a ROI analysis, open transparency.
Where did it get them? World PMO of the year in 2020.
So, but I didn't mention Aristotle.
Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do.
If you wanna get senior managers engaged in portfolio
management, Ash's point about, you know,
no one's ever gonna give it to you,
get them to play the game.
This is when, what Stuart's talking about,
and I hadn't didn't talk about, I didn't talk
to him about this beforehand, but it's actually get senior
managers involved in doing the portfolio management
stuff. That's
It. With your
Portfolio prioritization exercises,
your decision conferencing or stage gate reviews.
When people start doing it, then they see the value.
Well, it don't always be a straight line, you know,
things will get better and they
get worse, they get better again.
But nevertheless, we are what we were repeatedly doing. Um,
Fantastic.
So, so we had, we had a couple other questions, um,
sketched out that we cover.
But, but as, as is often the way with these things,
we're at the top of the hour,
and so we're, we're gonna have to kind of, uh, roll that up.
Um, so thank you people, uh, to,
to the folks who've attended, uh,
for the comments and engagement.
I've enjoyed that in the background.
Um, uh, Lenora will, um,
bundle in the, you know, uh, we'll, we'll make sure
that folks who've requested it will get that, uh, ebook, uh,
may, maybe we can bundle it
with a video when that goes out or something.
Lenora, that would be fine. Um, Steve, we have
so much more to talk about.
So we're, we're gonna to have, we're gonna have
to get you back again at some point. And, um,
In My pleasure. My
Pleasure, guys. No, no,
it's, it's, it's fantastic.
It's very generous of you to,
to share your wisdom with us today.
Um, one, one last quick plug for your book, uh,
the, the forthcoming book.
Give us, give us the details again.
Oh, so rather awesome.
It's not a bit like Management of Portfolios
that was published in two, it's like that on steroids.
Uh, I let say it's, it's
what it would be if we started writing it.
Managing portfolios, uh, due
for publication the end of October.
Um, it's a kind of,
all the stuff I've been talking about today,
in essence, is there.
It it's a kind of encyclopedia, if you like, of,
or it's references obviously to awesome people.
People like Stewart, of course. Um, and others in the field.
Uh, Mike, uh,
and Laura, they've all got, uh, bits in the book.
Um, lots of, uh, you know what,
all the stuff I think is really important, uh,
description of how you do it.
Lots of examples around the world.
Anyway, we'll talk about that some other time.
Absolutely. We, we will make time.
But, but now when's the book coming out?
End of that one is End Up Managing Benefits.
The third edition of Managing Benefits is due out,
this is hot off the press 10th of October.
And as I said in, I reply to them
and hopefully managing portfolios will be soon
after, uh, the, the, the target date was the end of October.
Hopefully was, will still, will still make that,
but managing benefits is the 10th of October.
Managing portfolios the kind of the end of October.
Excellent. Excellent. Well, I, I'll tell you what,
maybe maybe we should get you back in, in December.
We're having a session on what's the point
of the pmo, what's the point?
Um, that, that, that's the point of a PMO.
We, we've got a nice little graphic to go with it based on,
based on Monty Python, what the Romans ever done for us.
Um, so what's the PMO ever done for us?
Uh, so we'll be asking that question.
And so maybe we should have you back then,
and you can tell us whether or not the book's been released
and, and, uh, wave a copy around for all.
But, uh, but Steve has ever an absolute pleasure having you.
Um, it's, it's been super to to see you.
Um, thanks for walking us through the, through this.
Uh, I can't emphasize enough to people.
Um, you know, it is just a half dozen slides,
but this is based on decades of work
and research in into this area.
So thank you Steve, for making it
so accessible for everybody.
Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Really appreciate it, Bruno.
Hope to see you soon, my friend.
Um, and uh, everybody else
that has been absolutely super having you, uh,
do reach out with questions.
Uh, I'm sure Steve will be open to connecting on LinkedIn.
Connect with me. Sure. Uh, talk to you all soon.
Thanks everybody. Cheers.