So this seems seems like a really good time
to introduce our speakers.
Um, so I'm, I'm gonna, Amanda, I'm gonna come
to you second actually 'cause
'cause that's gonna segue into picking off.
Um, so, um, uh, first of all, Adrian.
Adrian. Hi.
Hi. There he is. Uh, so there you go.
That, that's got a camera onto you.
So, um, uh, I, I first met Adrian, uh, a couple of years,
two, three years ago, Adrian, at the book launch, wasn't
It, mid, mid 2022 at the book launch? Yes.
Yeah, there you go. So we were all just sort
of still finding our way out from, uh,
underneath Lockdowns and things like that.
And, uh, we, we all huddled in a, in an office in,
in London up, actually, it wasn't in an office,
it was in a restaurant, wasn't it?
Yes. Uh, but with a beautiful view of the city of London.
It was absolutely stunning.
Um, and I was introduced to, to Adrian, um,
who'd written a book on P 3G.
Right. So project, program, portfolio governance,
and, uh, sort of co-edited it.
Uh, co-created it with, uh, Ross Garland
and certification that goes along
with it and all that kind of good stuff.
And Adrian's been doing this stuff for a long time.
Um, uh, wasn't sign. I'm old, Stuart. I am No, no.
It's a sign of wisdom. It basically means you made
every mistake you can make.
Right? That's, that's, that's the definite,
Yeah. Was maybe,
maybe not.
Yeah. I'm sure there's one or two more to be made.
Um, um, uh, you know, and, and ex-partner at pwc, um,
but with a real focus around sort of governance
and, uh, um, project, project management.
Um, so I'm really excited to have, uh, Adrian with us today.
Um, these days, uh, you, you left pwc, right?
And so tell, just, just tell us, spend a minute,
tell us what you're doing these days.
Yeah, so thanks Stuart.
Um, and, uh, hello to everybody online.
Um, so these days I have my own business.
I'm in a privileged position where I work as,
as an SMEA subject matter expert with a small number
of organizations, typically around their ways of working.
And a lot of that is around governance, so improving
how they govern
or manage their investments, projects,
programs, and portfolios.
Uh, so I have three specific clients at the moment, each one
of those sizable in its own ride,
and I'm taking 'em through significant change journeys to
optimize their governance arrangements.
So it's a lot of fun, challenging, um,
but, uh, I'm really in a privileged position
where people welcome the expertise,
but at the same time, I don't have to build a team anymore,
which is, you know, and run a business.
So that part of my life is long gone,
which I'm, I'm quite grateful for.
Yeah, that's good stuff. Good stuff.
Um, and just tell us where you're sitting
and a little bit about where, where
you're sitting, if you would as well. Well, yeah.
So it sits here in Brisbane. It's 8:00 AM in the morning.
I haven't got a wine. I've got a coffee.
And, um, so yeah, Brisbane based, um,
which is on the east coast of Australia.
You'd think Australia might have some
of the same time zones, but it's eight o'clock here
or eight 10 now.
And where Amanda is, it's nine 10.
But, um, we won't go into that.
But, uh, yes, Australia's a big country.
And, uh, I was, uh, originally a Brit, uh,
still had my, my British passport.
Spent the first sort of 30 years, uh, in and around the uk.
And, uh, but moved over here, um, sort of 2000 ish.
And, uh, yeah, loving life.
Excellent. Very good. So, so you,
you mentioned Amanda there, uh, let me introduce Amanda.
So, uh, Amanda and I first met
Ah, arguing.
Arguing. We did, yeah, I, I, I pasted the classic, uh,
clickbait, uh, type blog, you know, PMOs,
add no value or something like that.
And, and of course the whole point
of the blog was the exact opposite of that.
But Amanda didn't read the blog.
She just read the title and then started flaming me online.
Yeah. Um, uh, so that,
and I think you, you were, you were at Deloitte
at the time, I think, weren't you?
Yeah. Yeah.
I just come into Deloitte to do program recovery.
Uh, that was at the 2016.
2016. There you go.
There you go. And,
and from that, from that first argument on LinkedIn,
we figured we'd set up a call and we,
and we just got on, we just kind of clicked argue
Face to face. Yeah,
Yeah, exactly.
Um, and then we actually got to meet face
to face just a couple of months ago.
Yeah. Which was absolutely stupid. Took me out.
I actually saw kangaroos out in the, out in the fields
with a little Joey in the pouch.
It was just, it was absolutely brilliant.
Um, but the, we, we,
we did a podcast shortly
after our first discussion together.
And in that, in that podcast, so Amanda's done, you know,
lots of, you know, recovery and, uh, portfolio work
and delivery for IBM running delivery for IBM
and a bunch of other stuff.
But on that first podcast, I, I threw something out that
at the time I thought was quite controversial
because not many people were kind of thinking
or talking this way explicitly.
And I said something along the lines of, you know,
prioritization and things like that, uh, are the root cause
of an awful lot of project failure.
And quick as anything, Amanda came back
and said, no, no, you've got it wrong.
Governance is the root of all project failure. Right.
And, and that was sort of, for me, that was my wake up call
that says, oh, okay, you gotta,
you gotta learn a bit more about this governance,
governance more generally.
'cause at the time I was very, very focused
around prioritization and, uh, and so Amanda
and others have helped me on that journey.
And here we are. So we're gonna dig in a little bit
deeper today.
So, Amanda, do, before we do that,
do you wanna tell us a little bit about, you know,
what you're working on these days?
I've me sort of said what you've been doing. Oh,
Yeah.
Yeah. These days, so I've left, I've left running, um, sort
of larger groups of, of delivery, um, out
of IBM was my last one, uh, where we were actually running
that business, um, much like Adrian, a bit more, uh,
on my own, except I'm still pulling teams together.
So currently involved in a global m and a, uh, looking
after the region for, um, uh, food services and testing.
Um, anyone quick enough on Google, you'll be able to find
that it's all over the, all over the internet.
Um, but which is, which is absolutely fantastic.
But like Stuart said, we're, I'm now setting up larger
companies, um, inclusive of every project that they,
they want to do to move forward to ensure that it's set up
in the correct way for the company to have growth,
uh, and hit the market.
And whether I've always been an advocate for, whether it's
a portfolio of projects that you're thinking about
or it's actually a business,
it's pretty much the same frameworks.
Um, there's, there's not much in it between Oh,
Okay. Right.
Setting up a large business and then,
or setting up a business.
And I mean, look at, you think about it is if you're running
the portfolio and they, all the projects that's, there's,
there's not much in it between when sort
of looking at the business structure and,
and how and the operating.
Absolutely. Right. We'll, we'll come back
to that idea, Amanda.
I like that. We'll come, we'll come back to that.
I'll, I've just made a note of that one.
We'll, we'll come back to, I
Look at you in your pen.
So, so, so here, so, so let's come back to
that, that conversation, right?
We didn't, we had that discussion on the podcast,
and you, you said, you know, all failure comes back to
project failure, comes back to failure of governance.
So tell me about that.
Why do you, why do you think that, you know,
it's not like you've, you've experienced
or seen any failing projects or anything, right?
Oh, people think governance is about minutes
or about, um, yeah, they, they seem to align governance
to many, many people align, um, concepts down to artifacts
and or processes.
But governance at its heart, it's just the decision making.
How, how you make the decision.
Now, if you can't make decisions, um, you Yeah.
Or you're making incorrectly informed decisions, um, well,
you're not gonna get anywhere full stop.
That's probably at the heart of it.
Uh, you, you, you can
make all the decisions you like based off
the, off the, you know.
Yeah. There we go. Rebecca said,
a governor's all lack there off,
or we, I've got, I've, I've got a recent incident,
for example, where the company has pulled together
governance and the, and the difference
between words and actions.
They have a governance structure,
they have an organizational structure, they have intent,
but when you watch the behaviors,
it all goes out the window, right?
So you've got a, a business that has, uh,
all the on paper looks like it should be functioning,
but when you walk in the door
and you actually have a look at the behaviors,
they're completely in, you know, do not align
to, to that governance structure or intent.
So they sort of tick the box,
and then you wonder why you just, it,
you can't just put a piece of paper.
You can't just, well, we all know it.
Don't, you can't just run prints to, um, PMBOK
and put the book in front of someone
and say, read that and you'll be fine.
You've got a, you've got a PD
and you've got, you've got a, you know,
you've set up your business case, and,
and you, you can't, it's how we do it.
It's the actions that speak far louder than the words.
So, so, so coming to those actions, um, agent,
how would you define governance around projects, portfolio?
You know, P 3G? Yeah, so, sorry, go ahead.
Is that any more of that question, Stuart? Sorry.
No, no, no. Go for it. Go for it.
Um, so, you know, as, as Amanda said, at the heart
of governance is decision making.
And so, um, that's decision making at each
level in a hierarchy.
If, if you look at projects, programs, portfolios, um,
and what, what sits alongside that then is accountability.
And accountability is absolutely critical.
Understanding who's accountable
for different, different decisions.
But people often talk about accountability without actually
then talking about empowerment.
And empowerment needs to be twinned with, uh,
accountability, IE the, the authority to make decisions.
And that decision making doesn't just sit within governance
groups within that sort of P three hierarchy.
It sits within the project team itself.
And so the concept there is, you know,
should delegate decisions to the lowest practical level.
But as, as Amanda was saying, um, you know,
and I, I, I did a post on this recently.
I'm really passionate about governance.
And one of the things that I really like is the nexus
between structure, process, and people.
And as Amanda says, you can get, have the,
the most amazing structure,
different governance groups set up, uh,
the right people in accountable roles, different escalation,
reporting pathways.
You've got these associated processes that work in terms
of informing decision making, escalation
evidence-based, um, models.
But it's, when the humans get involved,
it can go either terribly right or terribly wrong.
And I've seen both.
Um, and so, you know, when I invest in,
in looking at things like governance in organizations,
I invest a lot of time not only in terms of
creating some structures and process
and all the supporting artifacts
and taking people through a change journey to optimize those
or create those arrangements,
but there's a lot of coaching, there's a lot of coaching
of individuals to understand their respective roles.
And, you know, I've seen some comments in here in
the, the, the chat.
Mm-Hmm. You know, governance is the root
of all evil and mm-Hmm.
Uh, in, I can see.
And I've seen organizations where it is overly bureaucratic,
it doesn't add any value, and people sit in meetings,
and those meetings add no value.
If you sit in a meeting and you think you're in a governance
meeting, and all you are doing is getting a progress update,
um, regurgitating what's been brought into the committee in
terms of reports, just getting people standing up
and giving, uh, status, um, information
that's not governance.
Governance is going back to your question, Stuart.
Governance is about decision making.
And that decision making exists at all levels within
a, an organization.
And within that P three environment, you know,
project managers need to be, uh, empowered
to make decisions within certain levels of authority.
And sometimes that doesn't happen.
And that's really frustrating for, for project managers
because, uh, you are just stymieing their
ability to execute.
At the end of the day, that's what they're there for.
So it's important
that you understand it's about decision making,
it's about delegating authority
and the right people at the right levels
making the right decisions.
So, so here's, here's the, so, so here's the question.
Um, is, so, so it's all about decision making,
and we've heard there's a bit of process
and a bit of people, and a bit
of this and a bit of that, right?
And, and we, you know, you were starting
to dig into processes and governance meetings
and all this kind of good stuff.
We'll get to that before we do though.
Why, why do we even bother, right?
A, a, Amanda, you and I had a, you and I had a conversation.
It was, it was, it was, we had the band, it was one
of the band sessions, right?
Yeah. Where, where Laura Barnard and Mike Hannon
and Donna Fitzgeral.
Okay, let's, let's stop making decisions.
Everybody just stop. I'd love to see that.
We're just gonna decide today. No, no more decision.
F**k it. I wanna go back to being 15. Let's be kids.
You know, let's outsource all parenting and decisions
and Oh, can we do that for a day and see what happens? That
Would be good, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It'd be absolutely great.
That'd be, well, I don't know.
We, we, we, you know, we did try.
I, so, so for those of you don't know yet,
there's quite a lot of familiar names on, on the,
on the chat.
So quite a lot of people know this already,
but I have, I have 16-year-old twin boys,
and I'm loving having 16-year-old twin boys, right?
I thought it was gonna be horrible, painful process.
It's magnificent. It's wonderful. I just love it.
And we actually tried doing a teenage decision led day
a little while ago where they made all the decisions.
Oh, yeah. That's cool. How much fun did you have?
We, we, we did actually, we watched some interesting films
that I wouldn't have picked.
We, we,
meal times were slightly irregular,
but it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was good.
I can I just change the comment?
I just read something that Rebecca's put in
this decision making can be simple.
It's agendas, work agreements.
It isn't, I'm gonna put it out there and be controversial.
Controversial. There, there are artifacts
that articulate a decision.
So Rebecca, what do you mean the
decisions come prior to that?
See if she's quick on the keyboard.
Yeah. See how, see how quick a type A, do you know
what I'm, I'm gonna do something. Lay expectations.
Oh, I keep talking about expectations, because that's
What I saw from Arthur said, well,
what do you do with behaviors?
KPIs, KPIs can change your behavior.
It's really fascinating, um, how people can respond to
what those, what they're in incentivized to do.
And it also comes down to leadership.
If you're in a business
or you're in an environment with a strong lack
of solid leadership, I think you, you will see
that decision making change.
I just pinged in the chat to, if you've got some time,
watch the presentation about greatness by David Marquette
and how the empowerment that he applied
to a nuclear submarine, humans too muck it all up.
Um, and how to sort of, it's how to turn the ship
around is what, what he calls it.
But it's how to turn any, any sort of project environment
around through devolution of, um, responsibility,
not accountability, but responsibility.
Um, the, the accountability analogy was he always had the
red button, so he was allowed to press the release
of the nuclear warhead.
He didn't give that to, to anyone else.
Um, and also came down to impact of that decision,
um, which is, yeah,
I think it is really valuable if you're thinking about both
leader, which, which go hand in hand, leadership actions.
And, um, yeah, your governance is sort of that,
that triangle go.
So, so, so, so
before we start jumping into the, the details, right?
Okay, Why do we, why do we, why do we do any
of this at all?
Why do we care? Why, why do we do project?
Why do we care whether or not they successful?
You'd be a blob in bed. What would you do if you didn't?
That's so, it's, so, so,
it's okay, Ashok, I, I saw Ash's name on here.
Ashok, why do we do, why do we do projects?
What's the point? That's mean, isn't it?
To pick on someone and
Yeah, go on. Yeah. Because
we're evil. Uh,
Right? But, but
Ash's, Ashok knows where I'm going with this one.
Uh, it's all about ducks and eggs, right?
So, so, so the only reason you,
because the business, your executives, they don't,
they don't care about your projects.
They honestly don't, they don't care about
your perfect agile methodology
or your wadge fall dreams, right?
Oh, Ashok, There you go, Ashok. He's nailed it, right?
It's to deliver the benefits.
And, and so the point of governance is
to make the decisions
that help you deliver those benefits, right?
'cause that's the only reason we do any of this work at all.
So it's to, so, so it's to align, first of all,
align your projects with the goals you're trying to achieve,
and then to make sure you
actually actually achieve them, right?
So, so, agent, oh, hang on.
Amanda's gonna have Amanda, she's just pulled the pinch.
She's about to throw the grenade. Go. Then
I don't like the reference.
I, I agree with you. Uh, yes, Anne, right?
But I just find that the, if you,
if you're focusing on benefits, I remember this first,
the argument we had, um, another one where it's benefit,
like you, you start leaning into benefits management.
You know, I have absolutely less time
for benefits management than anything
else for, for a reason.
But I do like what Margaret said, outcomes
for the business, for business growth.
I think that's a little bit better than, than only, only
because I start listening to people in regard to benefits
and benefits management, which, which can come with a bit
of a, a bite on your bum.
But we, we won't get into benefits this, this time round.
Yeah. Let's, let's, let's not, let's not, let's touch
that one, because, because one of the questions No, that's
Not, Well, one of the, one, hopefully we're gonna get
to different levels of governance.
And when we get to project governance, we'll,
we'll maybe talk a bit about, uh, PMO with a project,
PMO, and, 'cause I know, Amanda,
you've got views on whether they're,
they're even gonna exist in 10 years time,
but let's not start there.
Um, Adrian, let's come back to kind of what governance is.
So it's about decision making with a view
to getting those outcomes, those business outcomes.
So, so when you, when you first talk to a,
to a client, right?
How, how do you start that conversation?
Because one assumes that it's broken when you arrive.
So how do you start the conversation about
understanding what's going on
and getting them to think about buying into interchanging
the governance to make things better,
which is kind of the point, right?
Yeah. So it's, it is a really good question, Stuart.
And I'm often called in when,
when things aren't working well.
Um, and some organizations understand
that they're not getting the outcomes that they're seeking,
but often their indicator is around delivery performance.
And so, whilst we, we talk about projects are there,
or pro projects
and programs are there to actually deliver outcomes
and benefits, at the end of the day, a lot
of organizations focus in on the journey too much,
which is then time performance, cost performance, scope, uh,
risk, which are all very important.
But that's usually some of their indicators
that things aren't going well, they're over budget, uh,
things are running behind.
And some of that's obviously down to a number
of different contributing factors.
But once you start lifting the hood, what is the root cause?
And so it's, it's a, uh, how should we say,
an iterative discussion,
because sometimes they'll just present some symptoms
and you'll go, okay, well how's that, how's
that actually, uh, come about?
And you'd unpick it. And then it, you realize
that there was maybe one of a number of things.
There was no governance or no effective governance.
IE nobody had accountability.
Nobody was, um, on, on the case in terms of oversight
and making decisions,
or the wrong people were in those roles.
And we've often all seen the missing sponsor sort
of posters, which are, are kind of entertaining,
but, uh, quite scary in fact.
And so, uh, and,
and so it's, it's a diagnostic process, Stuart, for me
to come in and, and have that intuitive discussion and try
and get through to the root causes.
And as Amanda says, you know, a lot of this, that, that the,
uh, governance is a key contributor to success or failure.
And so, you know, it's important to understand that.
But, but governance means different things
to different organizations.
And that's, that's something that when I start talking
to organizations, coming back to your original question,
which was, you know, what is governance?
What is, and focusing in on decision making, accountability.
So making the optimal decisions
by the right people at the right time,
using the right decision processes based on the right ev
evidence within the right delegated authorities.
Those are all things, but a lot
of people get focused very much on the control environment.
Mm-Hmm. And its controls they think about in when
they're talking about governance.
And once we unpick that,
it becomes a very different discussion.
And, um, then we introduce the concept of empowerment.
And, uh, because people inherently understand
accountability, although sometimes they confuse
accountability and responsibility.
But when we start saying,
are you empowering your accountable people,
your decision makers,
are you actually separating decision making from
stakeholder engagement?
Are you ensuring that the accountable person gonna be a
sponsor or executive is accountable for decisions?
Are use the arbitrary of, of all decisions?
You're not effectively using a governance group as a a,
a proxy, as an accountable proxy.
'cause governance groups shouldn't make decisions.
They should contribute toward decisions
made by accountable person.
So once you start unpicking those sort
of things in discussions, it becomes a very, uh,
different discussion.
And people go, no, I don't have any of that.
And yes, I have these symptoms,
and yes, I can understand
how governance plays a key role in some of those things.
But then it's, it's around they, okay, well,
have you done it with other organizations?
And then you kind of, you refer to a number of case studies,
but, um, that's typically the sort of, uh,
and then there's a diagnostic kit that I've got,
but, um, that's kind of something
that I roll out after brilliant.
Initially through the discussions.
So let me jump in just for a second, Adrian.
So, um, Adrian, why don't you drop your LinkedIn
profile into the chat.
So, um, go follow Adrian.
'cause periodically he drops in, uh, the, these little, um,
one page governance primers.
I, I dunno if you've seen them, Amanda,
and I love them, right?
I, I'm, I'm not the kind of person that really,
I don't enjoy process, right?
I'm not good at process. I don't enjoy it for an
Engineer. That's ridiculous.
Say again, You're an engineer. That's ridiculous.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I trained as a physicist, Amanda.
So we just like breaking things, right? Um, yeah.
Pressing the buttons. And so, so, so one
of the things I'd recommend everyone
does is go follow Adrian.
Um, and you, and occasionally he'll,
he'll drop some of these things.
And even as someone who doesn't like process,
I love reading those because he, he takes something
that's really complex and just takes one aspect of it
and boils it right down to a one pager, which I love.
Amanda is gonna jump in. Go on, go on. Jump,
Jump. Yeah. Heap
of stuff that just highlight
for Adrian, just outlined.
I mean, governance is leadership. Leadership is governance.
They go hand in hand, which is a, I think is, but,
but Adrian, you touched on something fantastic.
There's, um, whenever you
or I are called in, you tend to find
that empowerment's out the window and,
and the human response has gone into control.
And generally that has come about because of fear.
And I have a great analogy. Um, and it's fear.
Going back to those KPIs,
we were talking about people's expectations.
Often senior leaders have jobs online
because they haven't delivered budgets.
And there's, and, and,
and you start to see the human response, which are,
which rolls out in actions into incorrect decision making
and governance and coming back to fear.
And the way I usually explain that is, you know, as,
as leaders and PMO leaders as well,
and leaders in business, you've, you know,
you've trained your staff, you've employed the right people,
you've put your energy
and time, you've run your projects, you're down
to the finish line, and you are like
that race horse coming down to that final,
you know, crossing.
And I can see your face, 'cause you've heard this before.
And what you find is all of a sudden that fear takeover
that, are we going to get the first place winning ticket
that we want in the market?
Does this business gonna actually do it?
Now you have two types of responses,
and the one that will be the most damning is the control.
All of a sudden, you start
to see people pull the reins in on their metaphorical horse
and pull it right in tight
and start to control where, you know, the,
the business or the horse.
And this analogy is, you know, placing its feet and has to,
and they're really digging in.
And if you can imagine being in a, in a horse race,
and you're down at the Melbourne Cup,
that's not the horse that's gonna win.
The, the horse that's gonna have
that control mechanism wrapped around it so tight
that it can no longer move without the rider telling it.
It's actually a time as a leader that you've gotta step back
and do the opposite of what your human instinct says,
which is let the horse ride, let go of the reins,
trusting in the people trust
that you've instilled in them what's needed to be done,
and that's the horse that will win the race.
But that comes back to that fear and letting go of control.
But that's the why, the reason I've explained
that is it's the why behind the conversations
that Adrian articulated so clearly.
That's why we do it.
That's why we like, like people, I ourselves coming
to do the diagnostics.
It's, it's to, it's to pop that pin brick
that is controlling that business too much.
Brilliant. So, uh, I wanna build on that,
and I want to use Ash's comment.
So Ashok is a superhero.
He attends just about every webinar we've
done in the last year and a half, um, which is great.
So I love this. I love this, uh, comment.
So I'm gonna read it out first so everybody sees it.
So my view is key contributor to failure is poor
and improper start to project, uh, poor business case,
poor resource scheduling,
not having the right skills in the right role.
Right now, the reason I wanna start there is that, in
that one comment, we've got
front door management, project prioritization,
we've got resource planning
and uh, yeah, capacity planning and resource planning.
We've got skills development.
And now,
and so the point I wanna pull out from this is that all of
that involves decision making Exactly,
But, But probably not in the same meeting, right?
Governance, Right?
So, so, so, so, so one of the, one of the things
that I think some people wrestle
with is they think governance is this, this monolithic thing
that you do once a month.
Yes. But it's not, it's, it's a Adrian, it's a collection
of different bits.
And, and in the, and in these different meeting forms.
Calm down, Amanda. We'll come back to you in a minute.
Write it down. I know. Write it down so you don't forget,
but go quick.
But, but so, so, so in the book you talk about this really,
really, really clearly, Adrian.
So just take a minute or two
and talk us through what some
of those different governance bodies are and, and forums are
because, and they're not
gonna be the same for everyone, right?
But just give us a flavor of what some
of those different governance bodies
are and what they're for.
And please bear in mind a lot
of the questions in here have been about, uh,
portfolio governance rather than project governance.
So maybe spend a bit more time at that level rather than the
Yeah, absolutely.
And um, and I, I think you may have sort of, uh,
cottoned onto the theme that, uh, of some of my, my sort
of previous answers or responses is that, um,
governance groups exist to help accountable people
or persons make decisions.
And so at the end of the day, going back to Ash's query,
and that, that strikes at the heart of, uh, a lack
of governance in mobilizing something.
Um, but in doing so, whatever,
whatever pursuit it is, it needs to be
both effective and efficient.
And efficiency then looks at, in the early stages
of a project, and we'll come back to the portfolio a bit.
You may only have a sponsor,
you may not have a governance group around that sponsor,
but somebody needs to own that initiative, needs
to be accountable, needs to take it through
that initial investment justification.
You then may be build governance structures around
that person being a, a, a governance group or committee.
Um, but that's important that everything is viewed
through the lens of effective,
who's making the right decisions, as I've mentioned before.
But efficiency, don't overcook it.
Don't ever overcook it, don't get too many people involved.
It's the right people. And there's a,
a lot of guidance around that.
But going back to your question, Stuart, within a,
within a a a sort of an organization that has a number
of different investments, obviously there's, that, the work
that you do in terms of how an organization goes
through a process to prioritize
and then offer up, uh, recommendations around selection
of those investments.
Uh, and, and that, that a selection of investments is
a complex process that needs to not only involve tools such
as your tool and um, uh, other evidence,
but it needs to involve humans.
Because in any of these situations, there are trade-offs.
If you're going to invest in A versus
B, what does that mean?
'cause it may, it may actually impact a market,
it may impact a division,
it may impact stakeholder perception.
All of those things. There's a trade off in any
of these decisions because you've got, um,
you've only got limited resources,
so you're not gonna invest in everything all at once.
So that, that investment governance
or portfolio level governance is absolutely critical.
And this is where I think we're at in a, in a, an exciting
but scary time going forward in that with the sort
of access to greater analytics
and scenario modeling, uh, using sort of different, uh,
technologies and ai, that's very exciting.
But at the same time, uh, the risk is
that governance groups,
particularly investment management committees,
are over reliant on some of this information
that's not necessarily valid.
So, um, or, um, verified.
So it's, it's, it's, it's important then that the humans
involved in decision making,
understand not only the decisions they're making,
but the evidence upon which they're making those decisions.
The defensibility of their decisions
and the explainability of how they went about making
that decision is gonna be key themes going forward, I think.
And that's gonna be paramount of that, uh, portfolio level
to understand and defend how you made investment
to decisions and what level you relied upon, um,
technology versus your own human intellect
and behaviors and, uh,
Judgment. And, and I, I've
got a couple of, I've, I've got an a word
and a C word that I'm gonna introduce or not introduce,
but focus on.
Uh, so, so the first, the first one is one
that you've thrown out a few times already is
accountability, right?
So, so the accountability, so what you talk about there,
about the, the, the, the subjective nat nature
of the portfolio governance,
but the, the prioritization in particular is,
is quite subjective, right?
Which is why tools like ours work really well,
but we'll, we'll not go down that path too far tonight, but,
but the, but it is quite subjective
and it is subject to people
exaggerating benefits perhaps, and,
and maybe even minimizing risks
and things like this in the, in the process.
And so, so part
of a really good governor's process really hinges
around this accountability word.
So the accountability starts here, right?
It starts with committing to some business goals.
And when you're building the business case,
when you're making that case for a project, right, knowing
that you are gonna be held accountable for delivering that,
because that changes the behavior if you are accountable
and if you know you're accountable,
and if the process is transparent, visible, and, and, and,
and if you know you're gonna actually drive
to the benefit at the end and measure it, or the outcome
or whatever you wanna call it at the end, measure it
and say, did we actually deliver it?
One comment. So the
accountability comment
was really important. Comment, yeah, go
Ahead. Accountability is
absolutely important,
and I won't hold the, the session,
but, um, I, I put up a lot of posters as, as Stuart said,
talking about accountability.
And I put up one, uh, just a few days ago, uh,
contrasting accountability versus responsibility.
I've got some really interesting comments back.
And obviously there's only
so much you can cover in a LinkedIn post.
It's not the book. Um,
but accountability needs to be vested
with not only a person, but the right person.
And the right person in projects is the person
that is then accountable for the business outcomes
that are enabled by that project.
That's the optimal arrangement.
And there can be some trade offs,
but that person has the most skin in the game
to ensure there's line of sight through
to success in delivering the project,
delivering the capabilities, realizing the outcomes,
and that because they are then the owner of the capabilities
and the business outcomes
and the risks, the associated risks
that are delivered at the end of that project.
So that's really important. But then somebody actually
challenged me on that, which I thought was a
really, really good challenge.
Um, so how do you actually embed that into a person's,
um, employment contract or position description?
But my response to that was, okay, if they're accountable
for the business outcomes being enabled,
they are already on the hook
through their employment contract
or PD for the things that are important, the things
that we said earlier, the outcomes.
So you don't need to suddenly change employment contracts if
you have the right person as the accountable person.
And I think that's critical, Stuart.
Well, and, and I'll, I'll, I'll see that
and raise it a little bit, which, and,
and say that there's, there's, in most organizations,
there's a little bit of a gap between strategy formulation
and the execution of that strategy.
And a little, yeah, I know I'm a brit, I understate things.
Are we, are we, oh, no, I'm not going down that path.
I want, I want to Amen. Anyway.
Um, and,
and so the, um, you know, one
of the things here tho those executives goals
that their compensation is often tied to Yeah.
Are usually created out of sequence.
So they will sit in an ivory,
someone will sit in an ivory tower
and create a bunch of goals
and say, this is what we're doing this year.
And then they'll go and say, what, what are we, what are,
what are the projects we're gonna do to get there
Even worse? Can I add
to that? Yeah. How many businesses do we know
that put head of strategy as the CFO or the head of finance,
and they all strategy goals are, are set
by the fi finance guys.
And then yeah,
well roll on gap, just saying,
Yeah, that, that, that becomes a chasm at that point.
But, but, but what you, what you get is, right.
So what you get from that is you get,
you get goals being set,
and then someone will say, well, to get to
that goal, I need this project.
And so they'll tie somebody's bonus to that project Yeah.
Before they've gone through the selection process as whether
or not they're ever gonna do that project.
And, and, and then the whole thing,
the whole cast of cards collapses.
And then as Adrian just articulated, then they go out
and just choose a completely different sponsor. Yeah.
Mm. Yeah.
And then they're not at all aligned just
for s***s in Googles
'cause it's fun, let's just not make decisions.
And, and that person, of course,
is really bought into the original goal. Yeah.
It was set up by finance. Yeah.
Oh, look, we're so facetious. It's brilliant.
So, so, so, so you, so, so, so you, so you set up,
so the, the original point for this a Adrian,
is we were talking about different bodies.
So we've talked a little bit about, you know, so there's,
there's, there's a governance body that meets periodically,
monthly, quarterly, whatever the right cadence is
to review incoming projects and select stuff.
What are, what else might you have in there?
What are the kinds of governance bodies or processes
or forums might be useful to people?
Ah, so, so, so certainly, you know,
continuing the theme at that level, that
that group not only looks at what's coming in the front
door, it also looks at
what should be going out the back door in terms
of optimizing your portfolio.
So it has a, a, uh, an investment selection
and then investment optimization.
But that group then also needs to have oversight of all
of the governance arrangements
that exist across the organization to ensure
that they're fit for purpose and what might exist there.
Then. And then it's interesting.
So I'm working with a,
a large government owned corporation here at the moment.
Massive, massive amounts of investment in digital, um,
uh, workforce infrastructure, all different types
of investments, both CapEx and opex.
And so really, really complex.
And so they've got multi, so one of the things
that we spent a lot of time on was ensuring that, um,
there were governance arrangements that were efficient
as well as, uh, effective.
So we actually set up some sub portfolio steering committees
as well as program boards.
And the program boards were there to look at, um,
either inve, uh, vision led
or business led programs, true benefits driven programs,
or, uh, buckets of, uh, common projects that, uh,
deliver some common outcomes.
Um, so they were very important. And, uh, we optimized that.
We didn't invest a lot in project level governance.
We tried to delegate that down to the teams
and invest in program level governance.
But I, I, I talk about these sub-portfolios,
because often what can happen is if you have a, a,
an organization that has lots of investments,
you can potentially clog your investment committee,
your strategic sort of level governance group
that does the investment selection, investment optimization,
you actually burden them with, um, clearing decisions
that weren't addressed
because they didn't have the appropriate authority lower
down in that hierarchy.
Mm-Hmm. And so instead
of having the program governance groups
escalate the portfolio committee,
we set up sub-portfolio committees,
and sometimes they're called delivery group delivery
governance groups as a clearinghouse.
And that's worked fantastically well.
So when we talk about that hierarchy, Stuart,
I think each time I, I look at these things, it's not a case
of here's the prescriptive view.
You have project governance bodies,
program governance bodies, portfolio level.
You need to tailor that to the organizational environment.
And I encourage everybody
to ask the question, is it effective?
Is it efficient? If it's not efficient, then you need
to question the existence of some of these bodies,
because too many times we over bureaucratize this
and the term minimal viable bureaucracy
or minimal viable governance needs to be part of what we,
we we test governance arrangements against.
Goodness. Elon Musk just joined the call. Oh, no, no, no.
Oh, no, no. Please don't. Let's not go down there.
No, sorry. Um,
but they, uh, we have an international audience,
so we're not going down that one.
Um, so, so the, so, so, um, yes. That's fantastic.
So, so the, and, and I'm gonna just bring it back to
what you said earlier, Adrian, about having, you know,
it's about making the right decision at the right time,
at the right information with the right people in the room,
and so, um, at, at the different levels in the organization.
And so it's whatever the right processes
and decision making bodies are to allow you to do that.
And, and, and it can change over time.
As maturity changes, as maturity and delivery changes
and maturity and governance changes, as the maturity
of your leadership team changes, you need to evolve
and develop those.
So we are, that brings us onto the
leadership team themselves.
And your stakeholders, Amanda,
they never cause any problems, do they?
No, no. They're beautiful people.
Um, they do it, you know, expected,
um, pe pe people.
What would, what would, why can't we just work with robots?
And, and then it'll all be pre-planned and programmed,
and we could do this perfect project rollout
that would be effectively responsive
to all these activities we put in.
And then, then, then, and instead we want to have fun
and add people to the mix, those uncontrollable humans that,
uh, have things like, uh, politic and life
and influences outside of life.
And then we have to learn to manage
with those biases and agendas.
Bias. Yes. Mm-Hmm.
So, so, so Gossip.
So, so Amanda, when you go somewhere that's broken
Yes. Right?
I've got a story for you.
Oh, good. Right.
So when you go into somewhere that's broken, how do you
get the leadership team to start taking governance?
Seriously, feel free to tell a story first, by the way.
Because like, by the, if it's all broken,
the leadership team's the problem.
Like actually a couple of stories.
I've just gone in to do a, a, an assessment
of another business recently.
And my first stop off, actually, I should know,
I won't put a question out
'cause it, so I turned up at the, at the property, I was,
you know, the, at the establishment there, the building.
And um, I was asked, you know, I was asked
to turn up at nine
because the poor, you won't onboard until 9 0 5
by the time the IT guy gets there with your laptop.
So I turned up at eight and had a look about,
and there's this awesome cafe next door.
And so I thought, I'll go
and have a coffee with him and sit down now.
It told me while I was having my coffee,
he'd been there 25 years.
I was like, great. Uh, has that business been there 25?
He goes, yeah, about the same time
knowing them for the whole, I said, great.
I said, 'cause I'm about to go and have a chat to
that leadership team and everybody in there,
and they're about to tell me what they think
they want me to know.
So why don't you come and sit down with me.
Now I got a download from the cafe owner of
absolutely everything that had happened
because everybody in that business went
to the cafe and whinged.
So before I walked in, I knew who did what, who was with
who, who had affairs, was someone else.
And was who got annoyed at this end.
Do you you got, you got this amazing download of insight.
So yeah, when you walk in to do project reviews often,
you know, if, if things have gone awry, um,
and they are really, really not doing well,
leadership's broken.
Uh, yeah. That's, that's your first problem.
So how do you have that conversation with them? Right?
I mean, you walk in, you've got your beautiful suit,
you got your $200 haircut,
I know what you spend on your haircut.
Yes. No, you know, I don't do that.
Connor's in there with the scissors. Yeah, right.
But, but so, but how do you start that conversation?
And, and if you are a, if you're a PMO leader in, so
as a consultant coming from outside, you have a certain,
certain you have a certain kudos, right?
But if you, if you're not that
person, how do you get it started?
How do you start that conversation?
It comes just walk in and say, you are the problem mate.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.
It is easier when you've been asked, when it is gotten
to a point that you are asked to come in and review
because you've got someone who's going,
look, I, I just don't know.
So you've got that chain of communi a line of communication.
There is always someone in the business
and it, it that is absolutely passionate about
that business being successful.
Generally the owners or,
or people who are, you know, have got that skin in the game,
including financials to make sure that this is effective.
There is always someone in there who will listen.
Um, it is, do you have the intestinal fortitude?
'cause that's what, what it takes to get over
that personal fear of walking in the door.
And that again, comes down to self-leadership.
There will be someone to listen. There will be
Articulate. Well, I like that
in intestinal fortitude, that that's like,
um, yeah, exactly.
You evacuate yourself on the way in.
Yeah. So, and, and I've spoken to a lot of people
who just, just are too fearful.
Um, they feel that there'll be backlash
that they can actually speak to someone.
Um, and that's okay. That's all right.
And maybe that they in ask someone else
to help them. But ultimately,
Oh man. I'll
give you some to read our,
I'll give you a second to read that one.
Just you I can answer that after. Yeah, go for it. Uh,
Yeah. I actually got
some brilliant feedback.
Apparently, apparently.
And I, and I only got told this when I was in IBM
and I had a, a, an awesome, uh, PMO manager come up to me,
Simon, who brockwell, he's since retired
and meant he, he was good.
Um, and I came into recover a program
and we walked into a client meeting in,
and I, I tell you not these, the, the, the, the
executive at the time were yelling at each other literally
on this particular program.
And I had to the calm it all down
and the, as we walked out, Simon turned to me
and said, you are brilliant at telling bad news.
So I don't know how I couch it. I don't know what it is.
Maybe the fact that I see the life, I see life as kind
of funny, but however I manage to articulate the problem,
um, that's the only reason I haven't been fired.
'cause I'm pretty, I'm pretty brutal.
So, so, so I have a, it's always with a smile.
Yeah. That's it. So, so,
so I have, I, I have a theory, right?
Which is, first of all, don't be frightened. No.
Because, because people can tell.
And the second thing is always do it
with a smile. Right? And
Maybe that's it. You're probably
right, Stuart. I have no fear.
I actually, because I mean, realistically I would Christ,
if you are in a completely crazy work environment
with a bad project
and things, really,
you think getting fired is the worst outcome
if they're not gonna listen to you
and they're not gonna change,
is getting in the work every day
and living in a war zone, really worse than getting fired.
So I, I guess I, yeah, I have no fear
and I, I find the world really funny.
So I will tend to find the,
But going back to your, your question, Stuart,
and I think it's, you know, uh, Amanda
and I are often in a privileged position in
that we get the opportunity to come in and tell the truth.
Um, now in, in an objective manner, um,
and what's best for the business.
But as you've said, you know, if you're in a PMO
and you see some of these things going horribly wrong, it's
as, it's as Amanda said, you find somebody to hook
into in the organization somebody
who understands some of these things.
Somebody who's passionate about maybe looking to improve
or enhance or completely change the way things are done.
And, and that can be quite powerful, you know,
and it, sometimes, I, I, I'm working
with an organization at the moment, uh, where there's, uh,
it, it's, it's a significant organization where there's,
the organization's effectively split into two for delivery
of, um, well, it's 1600 kilometers worth of,
uh, freight rail.
And one half is approaching things in one
way and one half the other.
And from an executive level, they're wanting consistency.
And some of the things I've said was, look, you know, if,
if we haven't got a coalition of people wanting
to support this, let's actually make one
of these an exemplar.
Let's actually look to introduce new ways of working,
new ways of doing things.
We're refreshing some of the governance arrangements
and demonstrating to the leadership that it works.
And that's really powerful
because then we're dragging the rest
of the organization along.
Brilliant. So that, that, that, that, that's really key.
Um, Amanda, I, I'm gonna say no, you can't,
But I, I, I'll benefit You see, she has no fear.
She just goes anyway. No.
So, yeah. Uh, so Adrian, I guess
what I was just thinking about it from a career perspective
for people on the call of like PMO, we've, we've, all
of us been around this industry,
I'll call it an industry loosely, um, for a long time.
Um, the reason that the likes of Adrian
and I have gotten into roles that we have,
the privilege we have right now is that we, we voiced
and we changed things.
We put our hand up.
We actually had, yeah, we were fearless in our careers.
And we have put ourselves on the line.
We've fallen over a lot of times.
We've got some great stories where I shouldn't have,
like we're, we're bruised.
We're scarred, we've done some stuff we shouldn't,
we can share some wisdom, but we were fearless
and we were able, we di we didn't sit in maybe just,
you know, we had the choice
to sit there in a PMO management role in our career
and just head down and our doism told,
or we, we could be the catalyst
for change and make things better.
And we've both chosen to do that.
And in doing that, we now can speak from a position
where we do do have that
Privilege. So that,
so that brings me to photo
At 10. Yeah.
So that, that brings me to two, one minute Got it.
Two recommendations. One is if you're in that position,
why don't you reach out to Amanda or to Adrian
or somebody else for some help, right?
That's a great place to start
or go by Laura Barnard's book Impact,
because that, that gives you a really,
there's some really good starting points in there as well.
Um, and, and get started now.
Jump onto the chat
'cause we're, we're at the top of the hour.
Um, this, it feels
to me like we've only started this conversation,
so if you want us to do this again,
drop into the chat and say, yes, please.
Right. Um, and we'll try
and schedule something for the new year and,
and keep the conversation going.
'cause it feels like we're just getting,
just getting started.
Right. Um,
but I, I do want to thank Amanda and Adrian.
Um, I've enjoyed it.
We've kind of jumped a little bit around to get the, the,
the ball rolling, but it's been brilliant.
Amanda needs to go. So Amanda, thank you for joining us.
Adrian, thank you for joining us.
Reach out to re do reach out to these guys on LinkedIn.
Yes, please. And, and if you have any
questions, just reach out.
We didn't really get time to talk about transparent choice.
Amanda, thank you. You and I need to talk. I've gotta go.
Yeah, we, let's catch up next week.
Um, uh, um, we didn't get
to answer the questions that people
had about Transparent Choice.
These, these webinars.
I try and keep more thought leadership, less producty.
Um, but we, we will be doing a, a demo webinar in a week
or two's time, uh,
and digging into the transparent choice angle on this.
And we'll be talking about how it can support
the portfolio governance processes, uh,
and make them a little bit more transparent
and, uh, hopefully go a bit quicker, uh, a bit easier.
Um, uh, and,
and I guess I'm, I'm gonna leave the closing
word, Adrian, to you.
Is there any sort of last pearl of wisdom
or go do this tomorrow that you would give to everyone?
Oh, um, well, firstly by the book,
that's always a good start.
Um, but, um, beyond that, I think,
um, just bear in mind that, uh, as we,
we originally started, um,
governance is about decision making, the right people,
making the right decisions at the right time,
using the right information,
the right processes, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, and that's at all levels.
So be aware that you can have a material role
in influencing decisions
or even making decisions if you are one
of those accountable people.
And every time you're involved in governance arrangements,
ask the question, is it adding value?
If it's not adding value, put a line through it,
change it, start again.
Do something different. If you're just regurgitating
information that's not governance.
Excellent. Very good.
And I'm gonna throw out my one, which is,
um, slightly self-serving.
Everybody thinks the thing that they focus on they're
interested in is the most important thing in the world.
But I think that that first, the, the prioritization
and alignment, the intake piece,
if you fix one piece, fix that.
And the reason I say that is
because that is
where you are defining
the benefits you're trying to achieve.
That is where you are setting up the accountability.
That is where you are allocating resources
and setting projects up for success.
And if you set the projects up for success,
you have a much better chance of them being successful,
even if your downstream governance is weak.
Right. So, so I would start there.
Of course, that is entirely self-serving
as well, but I still believe it.
Right. So listen, Howard,
You've done very well, Stuart to, uh, host this at a,
um, a service station.
Yeah. At 10 o'clock at night now, 11 o'clock at night, uh,
with a two and a half hour drive in front of me to get home.
So, uh, it's been a pleasure.
Adrian, thank you for joining us early.
Pleasure, early your time in the morning. Um,
it was great having so many people on from Australia.
Thank you all for joining
and we will definitely do this again in the new year, uh,
and keep the conversation going.
So thank you everybody for joining us today.