What we're gonna do today is we're gonna be,
we're gonna be talking a little bit about,, uh, strategy
and the, the start of this webinar,
the seed for this webinar was actually the last webinar
we did with Rebecca two, three months ago, Rebecca.
Yep. Um, uh,
and, uh, in there we talked a bit about strategy and,
and we asked the question, you know, Hey, you know,
does anybody want a, a, a session
where we talk a bit more about, about strategy
and, you know, what it is and why it fails,
and all that kind of big stuff?
Uh, and that's what we're here to do. Okay?
So we're gonna dig into this, uh, when strategy fails, um,
how the PMO can help get things moving again.
So who is this crazy woman? Rebecca Reynolds.
Um, uh, gosh, Rebecca, I dunno.
We did, we first meet six years ago,
seven years ago, something like that.
Yeah. And, uh, Rebecca's a a consultant who
works typically with the executives of government agencies
and nonprofits in, in the US predominantly.
Um, she's super smart, super cultured, um, uh,
took some time out to go
and do, uh, do some research into 16th century,
17th century opera singer in Italy
or something. What was it? Rebecca?
18th. But close enough. 18th. Yeah, it's fine.
18th. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so, uh, so some real horsepower.
So, Rebecca, just tell us a little bit about, you know,
who you are, because I think it's, it's really relevant
to the topic that we're talking about,
that people understand who you are and what you do.
Yeah. Well, I, um,
I started out in nonprofit executive management,
and, uh, I did two jobs, both
of which very much were about transforming the organization,
particularly from the leadership vantage point.
I just found that a lot of the mindset
that was happening was antithetical to
what they were trying to accomplish.
And I was pretty young,
but there were just things that made common sense to me.
And those two jobs really got me to realizing
that I was good at change.
I really liked to get in there and work with leaders
and get them to, you know, shift their thinking
so they could be, the whole
organization could be more productive.
So I started, hung out my shingle when I was 29, I think.
And I basically started my career
with little nonprofits working with boards
and that whole notion of collaborative leadership
and, uh, how to really, um, I mean, the biggest problem
with nonprofits for them mostly is, um, anonymity.
They're small and nobody really knows who they are.
So really working on who are we, what is our value?
How do we state that value in a way that's compelling?
Uh, those were the very early issues I was dealing with.
And that, of course, that translated
into raising money, right?
Because if you don't have a compelling story,
nobody's given you any money.
And nonprofits, of course, depend on that.
But early on, uh, one of my clients, his day job was
for the, um, federal government, US Forest Service.
And he said, I don't know what exactly it is you do,
but I think I need, need you in my day job.
So that started a shift into federal government work.
And also, um, federally government led large projects
that were multi entities, so corporate,
academia, NGOs, et cetera.
And those were really cool projects,
but a lot of them were based on the same principles we're
gonna talk about today, which is, how do you get big vision
and strategy to align with execution such that it's not,
you know, just a stumbling block,
a barrier, a, you know, a problem.
It's actually just smooth sailing.
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you for that.
Um, so, so the, the thing to take away from that is that,
you know, Rebecca's been there and done it, right?
And, and done it in multiple times in,
in these large organizations.
Um, I, I, I, I see that we've got a few people from, uh,
various government departments on,
on the session today as well.
Um, so again,
Rebecca's experience I think will be really directly
relevant to, to some of you.
Um, so let's kick off with the question for the audience.
Please, uh, answers in the answers in the chat.
Uh, I did warn you go find the chat
button if you haven't already.
Um, so, uh, so who is in,
who on the call is in project delivery,
who thinks themselves as being in project delivery?
Give you a second to, to find the chat.
I like that one. Becca, come on more than occasionally.
Uh, yeah, yeah. Oh, I like Harry's.
And that's, it's interesting coming from Harry.
'cause Harry spends a lot of time, again at
that senior level, that strategic level.
Um, so this is of course a trick question, right?
Because we're not in project delivery,
that's not what we're here for.
We're, we're in strategy execution, right?
Um, so why do we do projects?
Well, we do projects to execute strategy.
Um, you know, all, all strategy means, right?
So simplifying it down to its absolute bare basics is, um,
we're over, we're here today.
We want to be over there
and we want to plan to get there, right?
So we are in strategy execution.
We are in, in and, and pro
'cause projects are what get you from
where we are today to where we want to be.
And so when we're doing projects,
we're not just doing projects,
we're actually executing the strategy.
And, uh, and,
and it's this, this sort of gap in, in mentality.
It's this, um, uh, this gap in the way that people think,
uh, that often causes problems in organizations.
And is, is the, the, you know, Laura Barnard, for example,
talks about the strategy execution gap.
Um, uh, other people just call it the strategy gap
or the strategy cycle gap.
There's lots of different names for it,
but it's a pretty well documented phenomenon.
The, you know, the, the, the
executives, they have their strategy.
Uh, the execution teams are just told to go and do stuff,
and then everything falls apart.
So we're gonna try and understand why today,
and we're gonna try and plug the gap.
Um, and here we go.
Uh, so those in the UK obviously will get the
reference, uh, mind the gap.
Oh dear, those of you outside the uk, if you've never been
to the uk, we have the, the subway, the underground
that runs around underneath London.
And, uh, as the trains come in, there's,
there's a little gap just kind
of here, runs along the train.
And so you get this announcement, mind the gap,
mind the gap, uh,
and it's a very London thing, uh, to hear that mind the gap.
So we're gonna mind the gap today.
Um, and the gap is really about, um, you know,
doing more with less, right?
That, that's what people say.
And I'm not sure that that's really what we mean.
I think usually, and,
and Harry, Harry who just commented here, by the way,
Harry wrote an excellent book on prioritization, um, uh,
and prioritizing everything, not just just projects.
Um, and, uh, so, you know, I, I,
I suspect Harry would agree with this.
Let's see if he does in the chat.
Um, the, you know, the doing more
with less isn't usually about actually doing more.
It's usually about doing less,
but doing the right things, right?
So prioritizing the right things,
the things that'll add value.
And when you do that, you actually get more, uh,
more value, right?
With, with less resource or less money
or whatever the constraint is.
So that's what we're gonna try and do today.
Um, now we've structured this. We've got a few questions.
Uh, the, you know, we, we've sort
of got three sections to this.
Hopefully, lemme move the chat again.
Um, uh, so we've got sort of three sections.
First bit is about getting your ducks in a row.
So this is about, uh, this is about you
and the PMO, getting your own story together, right?
Um, uh, and we're gonna break it into strategic planning
priorities and decision
making, communication and transparency.
Uh, but this is about you getting yourselves, um, uh,
organized before you go to the, to the leadership team.
And then we've got some questions
for the leadership team, right?
So we've got questions,
and we're gonna, we're we're gonna, we're gonna go,
we're gonna tackle a few
of those questions, but we're not gonna do them.
All right?
There's some homework for you guys to go
and ask these questions, right?
So this is, this is what we're gonna do.
Um, and, uh, if you're interested in getting a copy
of the slides and the, you know, they don't look pretty,
they're not, they're not here to be fancy marketing slides.
It's really just giving you some information, some ideas.
Um, but if you would like a copy of the slides along
with the questions, uh, these questions here,
then just drop a note into the chat.
The chat is the way, drop a note into the chat,
and, uh, I will, uh, pretty will see that,
and she will send you a copy of the,
the questions along with it.
Um, so, uh, so just drop
Before we, just,
before we, uh, dive into this, I just wanted to, to kind
of get back to that metal level a minute.
Yeah. And just say that, you know, a gap is created.
I mean, just like the slide with the, you know, the,
the tube, uh, the two things, right?
Two things are not completely joined, right?
There's some sort of space between those two.
The bigger the space, right?
The more difficult it's gonna be to get across.
So what is the problem? We have space.
And that space can be be created by both things, or one
or the other, right?
So I always look at where are we?
And everybody's always pointing to the other side of the gap
as the problem, right?
If leadership would just blah, blah, blah,
and leaders are like, if my people would just
blah, blah, blah, right?
So we've got two sides of the gap,
and they both are looking across pointing.
I always say, let's start with ourselves,
because if we can move our side of the gap over
the gap's smaller, and what do we have charge of,
obviously, ourselves.
So that's how, uh, Stuart
and I came up with these questions.
One is, you know, for the,
we're we're taking it from the PMOs perspective,
but the first questions that the PMOs should be asking
and answering are the ones for themselves.
So that's where we're starting.
And then we can also talk about, once you've got that,
then you can start to ask the leadership on their side
questions that are gonna help close their side of the gap.
So that was kind of the thinking, right? I mean, absolutely.
That makes sense, right, Stuart? Okay.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and,
and to be honest, you know, so, so, uh, I'm at the,
I was at a conference here in Viness today, uh,
called the Bridge Conference.
It's kind of a, a project management PMO conference.
And, uh, and I chaired a panel that was on,
on this exact same topic, right?
So everybody's talking about it.
When I go to conferences, uh, around the world, um, this is,
you know, how do I close the gap?
How do I get executives to pay attention?
How do I get 'em to value what the PMO does, right?
That is, they're all the same question,
and it's the most common question that I get asked.
Uh, although I have to say that what's gonna happen
to AI is catching up really, really quickly.
But, but still, you know,
how do I close this gap is still the biggest, you know,
is the biggest question that I get asked at conferences.
And I think, too, that one
of the reasons it's a tricky question is
because it's never just one thing,
and it's never the same thing, right?
Yeah. That's one reason. When I go in to an organization,
what I'm looking for is what is their particular
gap creator, you know, what are they?
Is it how they're talking to each other?
Is it that one doesn't understand the value of the other?
Does, you know, is the strategy not clear
on the leadership side?
So no matter what over here is doing, right, it's,
it's not never gonna get to the strategy
because the strategy's not articulated.
So we're, we're looking for where are the big issues between
that are creating that gap.
That's the real, uh, art to the whole thing.
Now, before we jump into the questions there,
there's one thing I wanna say.
Um, so Rebecca tackles this usually
from the executive side of the gap, right?
She lives in the executives, uh, in the boardroom, right?
Helping them, helping them think about, you know,
what's my strategy and how do I bridge the gap?
So this is your opportunity as a, as a, you know, the bulk
of the people on here are in PMOs, serve PMOs, uh,
project managers and, and so forth, right?
So this is your opportunity to quiz someone
who lives on the other side of the gap.
So if you don't ask questions,
if you don't get the most outta this
call, don't blame Rebecca.
Blame yourself. Chat is open.
And if you ask questions, I will do my best
to integrate them into the, into the conversation.
Does that sound like a deal, folks? Sound good?
Just smash the thumbs up or something, let me know.
That feels like a good plan, and we will move on. Excellent.
Right? Let's go. So, um, so, so we're starting off right
with, with this piece, the strategic planning piece.
And again, this is within the PMO, okay?
So this isn't corporate strategic planning.
This is within the PMO.
And, um, there, there's a bunch of questions here.
And what we've tried to do
with each section is just pick one question, right?
So in, in this case, um, uh, it's this one. Okay?
So, uh, and, and the idea is these are the questions
that you ask yourselves.
You ask your team, right?
You discuss this and you try and figure this out.
And, and so the first question is,
are there any assumptions in our current strategy
that we should revisit based on recent developments?
So, so Rebecca, why would we ask
this question in the first place?
Yeah. This is, I think, a really, really critical one,
because this is what gets us into a more strategic
and more leadership mindset ourselves.
And the hardest part about being in execution is
that we get our heads down in execution,
and we just think there, right?
So this question is really designed,
and maybe you've got better language for it.
I mean, everybody use your own, you know,
language that makes sense to you.
But the idea is to bring you up fairly regularly, right?
To keep your head up looking out.
It's like when you drive a car,
if you only look in the very front of the car,
you're gonna end up hitting something, right?
So you gotta keep your head up and you gotta look out, down
and acro and next to you.
And, and I think the more we can not, not, we don't need
to do this all the time, we need to institutionalize it
as part of our process so that we're looking for
what is leadership probably seeing,
what are they looking for?
And that gets us to a leadership level that we can have
where we can have a more interesting conversation, right?
And better understand what leaders are bringing to us.
'cause that's their job is to keep their eyes out, right?
So, um, this keeps us current with ourselves,
and it gives us a really nice bridge to talking to execs.
Yeah. Rebecca,
are you seeing the, are you seeing the chat?
I'm, look, I'm trying to see 'em. They're very small.
Okay. So F Fadi just made a really cool comment, right?
Uhhuh, he said, right.
This question is one of the mechanisms
for realtime strategic management.
Absolutely. And the PMO
actually is not a project delivery, um, uh, function.
It's a business function.
It's, it's a strategic facilitation function.
So the questions you should be asking
should sound like strategy related questions, right?
They should sound like strategic management questions.
And so, you know, one of the things that I,
I really hope everybody's gonna walk away with,
if you haven't already, some
of you I know have already made this transition,
but what I'm really hoping you'll, you'll all walk away
with from, from today is this really firm conviction
that you no longer work in project delivery.
You work in strategy execution
and start to help your teams make
that transition, right?
Project management and,
and PMO, their business functions, their leadership roles
to help the organization execute the strategy.
You do that through projects, of course, yes.
Um, but, uh, but the,
but the, the, they're really lead leadership business roles.
And that aligns you, that aligns you with leadership.
Yeah. So you're all, you know, they're gonna recognize
that language 'cause that's the language they're talking,
or they're supposed to be talking.
I just wanna put a small caveat in here.
One of the reasons we have questions for leadership is
because it is true that not all leaders know how
to articulate and,
and, uh, even create robust, clear, awesome strategy.
That's why I have a job, right?
Is because, you know, they need help too.
So you may have a gap there, but Right.
It's easier to daylight
that gap if you're asking those questions
on your side, right?
And then you can engage leadership.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, so, so Catherine
made an interesting comment, which is,
unfortunately we don't have a seat at the table, uh, execs.
And this is absolutely classic, Catherine,
that the execs sit in a room, they do the strategy thing,
and they come up with a plan,
and they pat themselves on the back,
and then they throw it over the wall
and then wonder why it doesn't work.
Um, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that later on.
Um, but you, you're spot on. Now.
There's, there's one thing that, that we do,
uh, that I'd recommend.
It'll be in the, the information pack, hopefully.
Um, and I think Lenora is on, so she may even drop the,
the link in is we, we do a thing called the Case for change,
which is actually, it's,
it's just a little workshop that we do with the PMO.
Uh, it doesn't, doesn't cost anything.
Um, it's a little workshop we do with the PMO to help them
build a case for why they should have a seat at the table,
why the organization should change the role of the PMO
and to, and make it more included in this strategy process,
because it is a strategy execution, um, uh, uh,
capability function.
Um, I think, sorry, go ahead, Rebecca.
I was just gonna say, there's another way in Catherine
that I've been, that I've used with my clients who had
that issue, which is, um,
and I, you know, maybe you've already got something like
this, but the PMO is usually responsible for the process,
developing the process
by which leaderships make those leadership
makes those priorities, right?
Mm-hmm. So if you're bringing in something like Transparent
Choice, right?
The PMOs are presumably responsible for building out how
Transparent Choice is used by leadership to create strateg,
excuse me, to prioritize that.
Power is so huge,
it just guarantees you a seat at the table.
That's what we started doing.
We just started bringing in these tools.
Leadership didn't have time to bother
with creating the underpinnings of the tool, right?
They just wanted to use it.
We had to sell them on why the tool was brilliant,
which was easy to do.
'cause Transparent Choice is brilliant.
And, and so that got the PMO in the room in a very active,
much more powerful way than if they'd just been sitting
there chi chatting, right?
Because you're, you're creating a whole foundation of
what the tool is, is spitting out.
So that's just an idea.
Yeah. Yeah. A absolutely, absolutely.
And, and the comment, the comments are brilliant folks.
Keep them coming. We're probably gonna touch on some
of the themes that you're talking about, um,
as we go through here.
Um, so we, we, let's, let's just kind
of keep going, uh, a little bit.
I love the mention of governance. Yes. Abso
Yeah.
Yeah. Huge. Yeah. And I think, I suspect we'll touch on
that a little bit later on.
Um, and the interesting thing is, again,
remember we're still at the, you know,
when we're talking about the strategy here,
we're still talking inside the PMO, right?
We're not really talking about the
corporate strategy necessarily.
We're talking about internally within the PMO.
Um, uh, uh, uh, yes, we, we,
we we're gonna be recording it.
And, uh, if you look
for an email from Pretty at Transparent Choice,
you'll get the recording and, and everything else.
Um, so, so, so Rebecca, what are some of the things that,
um, you might expect to see that, that are the,
that are assumptions that you might want to revisit?
Well, I mean, I think, you know, very basically, uh, well,
okay, I would also say
that this question also helps us look at if we've built out
a consistent well crafted process ourselves
and what that's based on, and, you know,
or is our own process a bit on the haphazard sort of,
you know, floaty around, you know, sort of situation.
If we built out a really good one,
then our assumptions are obvious, right?
They're basically the criteria that we're using,
the value we place on those things.
You know, as we know, if anybody's using transparent choice,
one of the beautiful things is
that you can weight your criteria.
Those weights are often
what change our criteria is generally, if it's well set
and it's strategic, that's, those are usually more durable,
but the weight, the comparative weights may shift.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And, and, and we're starting to talk about, you know,
priorities and decision making already.
Um, and, and these,
there are some great questions in here, right?
So when you know, when, if you've, if you've asked
for the slides, uh, if you haven't asked for the slides
and you do want them, just drop a quick comment into the,
into the chat to let us know.
But they, um, uh, you know, some
of these questions here are really, uh, a fabulous way
to see if you are already thinking strategically.
So, um, the, again, I was in a room full of PMOs today,
and we were talking about these very topics and,
and the, so this top question, you know,
what are the top three priorities of leadership right now?
An awful lot of PMOs can't answer that question.
They don't know the answer to
that question, which is a problem.
But we're gonna focus actually on, on the,
on the green one, on the next one.
Oops, here we go.
Um, so, so you can use these questions
to really guide an internal conversation, right?
There we go. Finally, it works.
So I'll read this out in case people are struggling
with the green text.
Um, so how often and in
what form are we providing progress updates to leadership?
Is this effective? How do you know it's effective? Right?
Uh, you know, so how we know it
effective is that we're getting funded.
We get asked relevant questions, our strategy
and decision making is trusted.
So into the chat, please.
Who feels like right in their PMO?
I think, I think you may have skipped
over, and that's okay.
I mean, this one, we can do this one,
but I think we might have skipped into it
the next one, I think,
Oh, I seem to be having a,
See that one is different.
That's the one about are we saying
no, but it's no big deal. Whatever you wanna do, Stuart.
Oh, I, I dunno what happened there. Okay.
Yeah, it's no big deal. So let's, let's just stay here then.
So, yeah. Um, um, uh, so
how are we incorporating the need to prioritize
what we do into a decision making process, right?
Is it working and are we saying no?
So question for the audience, um, uh, very,
you know, yes or no?
Are you able, you know, are you,
do you feel like you're in a good position
where you've got structured decisions
that are able to say no?
And it's not you saying no, it's the business saying, no,
I like, I like these answers.
Not yet. That's a good answer.
So I'd be curious, what, what, when you say not
yet, what are you missing?
Can you just put that quickly in there?
I'm just curious to see what's keeping you from being there
yet, have the process been not
applied properly? Okay, cool.
Nice. Awesome.
Nice. Um, Ah,
Changed too often.
Ooh, good one. Ashock. That's interesting. Maybe,
Maybe we're not looking strategically enough
if they're changing that often.
And is that coming from leadership a shock,
or is that you guys internally,
I'm just curious if it was,
because leadership can also be guilty of that, right?
It's changing priorities every couple of months,
and it just makes everybody just exhausted, you know?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's not doing their job,
they're just thinking too small.
That's why they're, they're changing all the time anyway.
Yeah. Have a process that's applied where I work.
PMO are not effectively used. Uhhuh.
Well, that's, that's again, a leadership problem, right?
Definitely.
So all Fear,
So this is, so this is really interesting, right?
There is, there's a couple of these answers
where they're saying, yeah, we've kind of got a process,
but it keeps changing.
Or, or, or we've sort of got a process,
but we don't quite stick to it,
or we override it, or we Yep.
Yep. And, and, and you've had some of that in the past
before Rebecca, and,
and we, we, we sort of tried, you know, we, we kind
of help fix some of that.
So, you know, have you, where have you seen that,
that kind of thing before?
Um, what do you, what do you think are the root causes?
Well, I think number one, it's, first of all,
people have a hard time saying no.
And so they will create all kinds of confusion
and shifting things, shifting sands so they can avoid it.
And that's one thing we've gotta just talk about right out,
you know, that if we've got a list of projects, our job is
to say yes to some, you know, seek coming on others
and no to others.
And maybe it's not, no, but it's not yet, right?
So that's a mindset issue.
And it's also, I think the reason people don't like
to say no is because they don't feel they have the
basis to say it.
So that's the second issue.
Are we absolutely crystal clear about the values, the,
the criteria that we're using?
And are those transparent to the people
that are presenting projects?
If they're not, then people are just throwing projects in
that they're creating out of thin air, right?
And there's, they don't understand the basis of the no.
So when they get the no,
or they get the, not yet, they get all crabby
and they're like, well, that's not fair,
and da da da, and, and they're right.
It isn't fair. So we're needing
to better daylight those criteria.
And we can, even, the beautiful thing about transparent
joints, and I know I sound like an ad
for Stewart's project product, but what I did with it is I,
because I was working with federal government,
I brought in like 400 people into the process
of creating their criteria so that we'd have buy-in.
And once we got the results, people were like, oh, right.
So it didn't feel like a black box. Yeah.
And so those are the two things I see most often.
And, and this, and, and it's actually a
really important thing, right?
Is that part of the reason that this happens is
because, um, I, I imagine a,
imagine you've got a five-year-old, okay?
And thank goodness I'm past that stage.
I have twin boys, they're 17,
I don't have to do this anymore.
Um, so with a, with a five-year-old, right?
You go in and you say, here's a chocolate cake,
would you like a chocolate cake?
And they go, yeah. And then you say, oh,
by the way, here's some donuts.
Would you, do you want some donuts? Oh, yeah.
And then you say, oh, here's some candy.
Would you like some candy? Oh, yeah. Right?
Because they want everything, right?
They, and the problem is that you're,
you're giving them these wonderful things
that they would like to have.
And executives are just the same.
When you focus them on, here are the nice,
tasty foods that you can have.
They want them all. And what,
what Rebecca's talking about when she's saying criteria, is
that there's a step before you even look at the projects,
which is understanding what are our goals?
What are we trying to achieve, what are our values?
What are our, different organizations use different
words for this, right?
But it's basically, what are we trying to achieve?
And so if you're, if you're, and,
and people confuse the word priorities.
'cause they, they talk about projects as priorities.
Projects are not priorities. Projects are things you do.
Your priorities are what are we trying to achieve?
And which of those is more important?
That's what your priorities are.
And so when Rebecca's talking about the criteria,
that's really what she's talking about, is figuring out
as a team what those goals are.
And so, Rebecca, when you did that with, with the,
the US government, that branch of government, um,
what were the kind of conversations
and what was, what was the reaction that people had
to those conversations?
Well, very often, you know, it was completely like a,
a mystical experience almost for leaders to really be,
be asking themselves in a deep way,
what are we trying to accomplish?
Literally. And I would have to say to them, all right,
here's, they could talk about their problems all
day long, right?
Humans tend to sort for the negative.
So I would just say, okay, if that's the pro,
and I'd be listening to all their problems,
and I'd start to bend them up,
these sound like the big problems that you've got.
Oh, yes, that's it. You've got it. Okay.
And then I'd say, all right, let's turn it into
what the desired future is.
The opposite of the problem is the destination, right?
And we need language for that,
because people are motivated surprisingly enough by
that, right?
Ending hunger is a huge thing
that motivates a lot of people.
Are we ever gonna end world hunger? No, we're not.
But a lot of people work on it, right?
So having leadership be able
to articulate both the problem side
and the desired, desired future, those futures begin
to create the basis for the criteria
through which the projects are evaluated.
And if those, if those, uh, destinations, if those goals as,
as, uh, Stuart called are outcomes,
or whatever words work for you
and your environment, if those are the basis
of project evaluation and prioritization, now we're golden.
Yeah. And if everybody understands that they're not going
to, they're not gonna submit projects that don't fit.
And if they do and they get a no, that is the rigor
that we need in our process to actually say, to say no
to the things that don't fit.
And that's, leadership's gotta be behind that.
'cause no PMO can do that on their
own. And that's what I work with.
You're a hundred percent right?
And, and there are, so there are two
really interesting things there, right?
Is that, so interestingly enough, those goals
don't tend to change very quickly, right?
Those business priorities don't tend
to change very quickly if you're in government, if
They're yeah. If they're
positioned at the right strategic level. So
Yes, yes, that, that's right.
Um, and, but if you're in government
and there's a change of, um, you know, regime
or something, then they can shift quite quickly.
But, but generally speaking, those goals
don't move around very much.
And so all of that volatility that you're seeing
with priorities changing, what you, what you really mean is
that, which projects seem important, keep changing,
but that, that's not because the importance
of the projects changes, it's
because you haven't measured the importance
of the project against properly thought through goals.
It's that simple. So if you can get agreement,
have a proper structured conversation about those goals,
you can then use that to evaluate your actions,
your potential actions to implement those goals, right?
So, so, so you're going from strategy to execution, right?
Which, which is why we're talking about being in strategy
execution, not in project delivery, right?
Um, so, so it's really quite a, quite a,
um, a simple concept.
Um, and, you know,
and Rebecca's used, you know, you just mentioned it a couple
of times, used our software to do this.
Um, and, uh, what the kind of conversations that we have
with executives after they've been through the process is,
wow, we've had a very different kind of conversation, right?
We are aligned for the first time ever.
That kind of statement.
Did you get any of that when you were,
when you were going through that process?
Are you talking to me? Yes, I am.
I am. Oh my gosh, yes.
I mean, I, I, one of the things I wanted
to say about this whole morass is language is
so incredibly, uh, slippery, right?
We use all this language
and we think we understand what we mean.
And half the time, what I'm saying,
what I'm in these conversations is,
can you help me better understand what you mean?
And why I'm asking that is
because I can tell that the way somebody's using strategy
or goal or outcome or this,
or whatever word it is, is not the same as
what this other person is.
And so they're talking like this, right?
And that is part of the gap creation, right?
Because we're unknowingly talking across or past each other,
and we're not getting clear, really clear, uh,
criteria that we all feel understand and own, right?
So that process takes time, right?
And that's, that's,
and that's why the conversation finally feels better,
like you're saying, Stuart, because they can feel in their
body that they've actually finally agreed.
We all know when somebody's agreeing
and it feels like they're agreeing
and when they're just talking Yeah.
Right across and using the similar language.
And actually the point where the magic happens is,
is the meeting where you're, you're waiting criteria, right?
You, because that's a discussion where you're saying, okay,
we've said these 10 things are important,
let's figure out which ones are really important, right?
And, um, and, and so we use, we use, and,
and the product, we use piece of decision science called a
HP Analytic Hierarchy process.
And we use that because it works. Okay?
So just sitting people down
and saying, Hey, what weight should we put on this criteria?
I'm not gonna give you the whole spiel.
This isn't meant to be an advert for, for the product.
But when you, if you just sort of sit there
and say, Hey, I, you know, what weight
should we put on the criteria?
It triggers all kinds of biases.
It triggers all kinds of power politics,
it triggers cascade.
You know, there are sort of decision cascades that start
as soon as you've got a group of people sitting in a room
with who appears, you know, there's politics,
there's power at play.
And, um, so what a HP does is it breaks all of that down
and it, it kind of neutralizes it,
it gives everybody a voice so everybody feels heard.
And if people feel heard, usually
they can buy into the answer.
They might not always agree with the outcome,
but if they understand why it's like that
and they feel like their voice was heard,
then they'll usually back it and buy it, right?
So it's, it's incredibly important.
And, and the, the reason that it's important, um, and,
and this is the second big benefit of doing this, is
that then you get outta the business of saying, no, you
don't need to say no.
That's right. That's exactly right.
That's why the tool is so powerful,
because it puts the, the daylighting of the mismatch of
that project with these criteria
right over there on the board.
And we can all look at it together
and go, Hmm, look what we came up with.
It's not the PMO saying No, and that is great.
You wanna get out of that. You never wanna be the nos sayer.
That's the, that's, you know,
that's just makes you unpopular,
which I'm sure you've all experienced.
You don't wanna be that, that PMO, right?
You don't wanna be the process police.
You don't wanna be the, the guy
Oh, that's exactly right.
The process police. Ugh. Yeah. So, so we should know.
No, no, no, Rebecca, it's the process.
Please, can we, can we, can
we at least speak, oh, sorry, English
On this. I'm sorry. I'm
in Canada. I should be knowing
that the process, please.
Yeah.
Excellent. Alright, so let's,
let's move on to the next question.
'cause we're, we're, we're not, we're not really rattling
through them very quickly, but we are, we are,
we are having a good, good conversation, I hope.
Um, so here we go. Uh, progress updates.
This is the question we're looking at earlier on.
This is the, the, the, the, the next zone.
Um, uh, so there is the, again, there is a, a number
of questions and we just picked one of them.
So anyone that's put their name in will get a copy of the,
the whole list of the questions.
Uh, so this is about providing upgrade updates, you know,
how often in what form
and are they working, is it effective?
And so you're gonna know that it's effective when you're,
when you're getting funded, right?
When you, when activities getting funded,
when the PMO is getting funded,
because you're adding value when executives are asking
relevant questions and,
and the decision making processes is trusted, right?
You're seen as a partner in that process.
So very quickly in the, in the, in the chat,
I'm not gonna ask anybody to say, well, yes I will.
Uh, so just gimme a quick yes no, you know, does
that sound like you, do you, does it sound like you're in
that position where it's really effective?
Well, and I just wanna say too, this is one of the big
stumbling blocks on the PMO side is
that the, the what we're providing to leadership in terms
of updates or information
and how often is not working.
And so this is our key way,
this is our key moment to communicate.
And we're not taking advantage of it, right?
We're just in the soup.
Yeah. Yeah. I love Deb's answer.
The SLT has a DD, um,
yeah, that, that, that, that is,
that is a challenge actually. And, and that is
Exactly right. How to
grab them. You are spot on. Yes.
And there, I believe there's always a way, you just have
to understand who you're talking to, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here we go.
So Catherine said something really interesting there,
which is that the, the, the,
they've said our reporting isn't working,
but they don't know what they want.
And, you know, so, so very often what we see, um, Rebecca,
I dunno if this aligns with you,
but very often what we see, the the, the PMO presenting
is lots of data.
Yep. Not much insight. Yep.
And what, what as a general rule, I think
what executives want is they want the insight
and they want to know the insight is backed up by data.
Yep. So is that your experience as well?
Yep. What the data means,
I think we get very caught up in our own worlds,
our own language, our own acronyms, our own cool data,
how we got to this data.
It's so interesting to us. Nobody cares up there.
They don't care about that. Talk about that internally
and congratulate yourselves when you get upstairs.
He's absolutely right.
What they care about is what the hell does this mean to us?
Yeah. So you've gotta put, you've gotta turn your brain
and focus it on them.
And if you don't know how to do that,
that's gonna be your problem.
'cause you're never gonna be able to talk to
leadership, right?
So that's one of the things that, again, I help with is we,
people, when they're talking to you,
they'll tell you everything you need to know without
actually telling you.
I mean, you know, if you ask
Catherine, what do you want from us?
Okay? They'll say, well, yeah, we don't know. Okay.
Or, or here's what we want.
But that's not what they really want.
'cause you bring it to 'em and they say no,
what we've gotta do is we've gotta listen under,
not ask them directly, listen to what they're at,
what they're talking about, what their complaints are,
and we then have to surmise right, what it is,
and we try different approaches.
But I do believe Stuart's nailing it,
if we're talking about us, our data, how we got it, how cool
that was, and wanting to get Pat on the back for that.
Mm-hmm. It's not gonna happen if we bring insight
and meaning that leaders can understand
and that makes them go, aha.
Oh, I wanted to say that's one
of the greatest gifts we can give to leaders, is
to give them an aha moment.
They're not always looking for product
and results, even though they say they are.
They'll a lot of times want that aha,
because they've got to lead, right?
And, and that and, and getting a new idea
that changes their thinking forever.
Now you're valuable and you're a strategic advisor to
Them. Yeah. Hundred, a hundred
percent.
Um, so, so Deb says, you know, we need
to present updates in business terms.
Any thoughts on that?
I'm sorry, say it again. Uh, so Deb says we need
to present updates in business terms.
Yes. So what do you mean by business terms?
I'm assuming you mean leadership,
the executive leader and the organization.
Is that what you mean, Deb?
Yeah. So many of the PMs Yes.
Pre present it updates, correct. Bang.
Exactly. Oh my gosh.
I had a, I had that problem with a client
and the CIO was never invited into the leadership
conversations, the CIO,
because all the CIO could do was talk in tech terms.
And leadership was just like, like, we don't care.
We don't understand it. This is boring, get out of here.
And so we had to train the CIO
and the team how to talk in lay language,
in the leadership language so
that they could really understand what, what was going on.
So business, if you say business, I just think that's
that speak for whatever the leadership, how they talk,
what they're thinking about in,
or if you wanna, you know, if you're trying to reach them.
I mean, we always have to translate no matter
who we're talking to, right?
Stuart and I talked about how to talk to you, all right?
He said to me, we're not talking to the C-suite here,
we're talking to PMOs.
So, you know, Rebecca, you need to think about that, right?
So we're always having to translate how we talk to people.
It's no different when we're, when we're talking up, right?
So, so imagine that you're, you're uh,
or we, most of us have taken flights in our life
and many of us have, have hit air turbulence
or had bumpy ride on, on, on the, on the flight.
So the plane's shaking
and everybody's, everybody's a little bit nervous, right?
The pilot comes on and he starts telling you, right?
He says, ah, well, you know, we're, we're suffering from,
uh, a little bit of wind shear, which is causing vortices
of the trailing, right?
Does that help you one little bit? No. Right?
What you want to hear from the pilot is, don't worry folks,
this is, this is all normal.
It's gonna last about five minutes and then we'll be fine.
That's what you wanna hear, right?
So it's the same thing in projects.
If you go in there and you start talking project ease at
them, if you can't start telling 'em about the technical
stuff, glaze over, don't understand it,
and then they switch off.
And when you do say, oh,
and by the way, it'll be, everything's gonna be fine in,
and in five minutes they won't hear it
'cause they've switched off.
So, um, so this one's a Deb
I love, I I love that.
Finish sprint two, you can tell, right?
We're trying to get our bosses
to acknowledge our accomplishments,
and that is not what executive leadership is for.
They'll acknowledge your accomplishment when you prove
strategic value to them, right?
You'll get all kinds of things.
And that's what I meant when I said, you know, how,
how often in what form are we providing progress?
Is it effective? How do we know it's effective?
We get the money we ask for, they ask us interesting
and relevant questions, that means they're connected to us.
And third, they trust our strategic advice
and our decision making process.
Those three things are gold,
Right? And, and Deb, without
them, we can't do anything.
Deb and Deb, I'm gonna see your feature.
A, B, C was completed and I'm gonna raise it, right?
I'm gonna raise you to a benefit, right?
So I'm gonna say, you know, our goal this project is
to raise, you know, is
to increase our revenue by $10 million.
We've delivered this feature, which will enable $2 million
of that, and the other 8 million will come in three months.
But I need you to make this decision to enable that that is
what they want to hear, right?
Does that make sense? Let's have some thumbs up if
this is making sense to people.
I'm hoping it is, it's making sense to me.
Yeah, we've got lots of thumbs. That's awesome. Excellent.
Right? Let's keep going
because we, we've, we've only got 10 minutes left.
I can't believe it's gone so fast.
This is, this is one of the fastest webinars we've ever
done, uh, or feels it Anyway.
Um, so let's go, let's go.
Now we've got, the next section is about leaders.
Let me hide this so you, you all can see this.
So, so up
to now we've been talking internally within the PMO,
we're now gonna start asking questions
of the leadership, right?
So we're changing gear a little bit here,
and I, I'm not sure
we're gonna get through all three of these.
Um, uh, in fact,
I'm pretty sure we're not gonna get through all three of these.
Um, do you have a preference, Rebecca? Which one we do?
I thought we said, uh,
I think we said that one, didn't we?
Uh, biggest risk. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a pretty, that's a really obvious
and clear one, right? Yeah.
Yeah. That's one of the things I noticed is that,
that leadership has got their idea of
what success looks like, right?
And that is not, it's actually not realistic.
I mean, I'll give a very simple example
from one of my clients.
When I first started out, I was working
with this little teeny homeless shelter.
And they would, they were lucky if they could get somebody
to come off that who had come off the street
and take a shower pass.
That's how low bar, you know, if somebody is not bathing,
they really are not valuing themselves
and they're becoming more and more
disconnected from society.
If they will take a shower pass
and take a shower, that's a sign that they're, you know,
coming into the world and and caring for themselves.
The funder was asking them,
how many people are you getting self-sufficient each year?
Self-sufficient, meaning they're off the street
and living in an apartment with a job.
And I'm like, do you see the disconnect between
what they're asking, what they think success
is and where you are?
I said, you have to educate them.
Now, I know this is a very extreme example
and none of you have this kind of disconnect.
I'm just illustrating that this homeless shelter, I said
to them, I think you need to bring the funder here.
They need to see what you're dealing with.
And then you need to explain to them what success is.
And your measure is the number of shower passes
that you're given out and that are being used.
Not how many people are living in apartments
and getting jobs because of you.
That's way up the food chain from you.
And so just, just if they've got unrealistic KPIs,
you're never gonna be able to reach 'em, right?
So that's a lot of that's education.
Yeah. And,
and this is the kind of stuff Rebecca, she's
so, she's very shy.
No, she's not very shy, but she's very shy.
So she won't say this herself,
but she's, she's incredibly good at getting executive teams
to think about this stuff.
Right now, as a PMO, that's a difficult conversation
to have, right?
Yeah. So, so, but as someone from outside the organization,
it's much easier to come in and wave the big stick around
and bash 'em on the head when they need it.
But I also, I wanna say this
because I do feel like when I said to them, to this client,
you need to bring the funder here,
it had never occurred to them.
So I was actually meaning a site visit, which they did.
But think of that as a metaphor.
A PMO can create a site visit, quote unquote,
with your language, with the stories you're telling
to leadership in your updates, right?
Mm-hmm. And that you can begin to make that expectation on
that KPI closer to what you're actually accomplishing.
And if you can't do that, you probably don't know your own
case well enough.
Do you follow me? I'm not saying it's
your total responsibility.
Leadership has a responsibility
to not set unrealistic expectations,
but on our side, we can still do something
Super. So just,
uh, Sal, we're gonna come
to your question again in a, in a minute.
'cause I, I think that's a really cool question.
So one of the things that comes out of that, that example
that Rebecca gave is that if you remember, you know,
when you strip it down, strategy is
about saying, we're here.
We want to be over there and
to get there, we need to take these steps.
And what Rebecca was talking about there was helping the
leadership team understand bridge the gap from
where the organization is and where the services are today,
and helping identify what are the steps
that get us to our goal.
So the leadership was, was, you know, again, we're back
to the 5-year-old, only this
time we're not offering the cake.
We're on a long road trip
and they're sitting in the back of the car
going, are we there yet?
Are we there yet? Right.
So, so we just need to help 'em say, I tell you
what our first goal is, we're gonna get
to this service station, which is like an hour
and a half down the road, and then you can have
a burger, right?
And then we'll drive for another hour
and we'll, we'll get to this place,
and you can, there's, there's a play park there,
and you can run around and burn off some energy,
and then another hour, um, then we'll be there.
Oh, okay. Right? I understand that. Right?
So this is, that's sometimes that's the role that you have
to play, is just help them understand what's the
reality of where we are today.
And you are closer to it and,
and you have access to the subject matter experts
who are living it day to day.
And so being that, that, that trusted advisor,
you don't get there immediately.
Right? So we talked about the case
for change earlier on, right?
The case for change, you know, a good case
for change is how you can do that.
Better yet, um, you know, let's have a conversation.
If you need help having some of these conversations
with the leadership team and you know, we can help you
or Rebecca can help you have those conversations, right?
That that would be a good thing as well.
Well, and I just wanna also, one more quick thing about
that homeless shelter example.
So the fact that you're right, I mean, right, that,
that it was an unrealistic expectation, right?
However, the funder having
that expectation caused my client, the homeless shelter,
to have to think about how the shower pass connects to this.
And if they could make that case that this is step one
to reach self-sufficiency.
You see, so the leadership, the, excuse me, the leadership,
the funder in that case, their expectation
or their view, shed helped the, the, the shelter
to get their story.
They, if they could say, we're the gateway,
we're the shower pass, we're step one.
But that is how we start to get to this. Do you see?
So the leadership's expectation, even if it's unrealistic,
helps you to fine tune your story about how to get there.
So everything's valuable, I guess is what I'm saying.
Excellent. So, so Selwyn asks a question,
we've got three minutes to do this.
That's, that's a big ask.
But the, the question is, in the public sector
where efficiency is poor
and there's lots of overspend, right?
How, how can we, and, you know, any tips?
Um, and, and I think, you know,
I think my first one would be make sure
that you really understand what the goals are
and have agreement on that.
Because if you've got lots of overspend very often,
that's actually the, the root cause of that is
that most organizations try and do too much.
When you do that, you people become really inefficient
and then you end up with overspend and late projects.
So if you have the clarity that we've been talking about on
what the strategy is, that lets you say no
to stuff which accelerates delivery and,
and matches your capacity,
and there's a whole other webinar we could do on capacity,
right, Rebecca?
Absolutely. But, Um,
and making that no transparent
and owned by everyone, so it's not the PMO saying it,
or even leadership saying it.
Leadership doesn't like doing it either,
to be honest, right?
So if we can make the criteria transparent, then when we're,
then the no becomes obvious
to everyone from just looking at the results, which is,
you know, great.
'cause now we're sensitizing the entire organization
to the criteria and the strategy.
Yeah. Yeah. So we need to wrap up.
We're top of the hour, Rebecca, this was a lot of fun.
I think people, people seem
to have found this really useful.
So we should, we should try
and do a little bit more of this kind of thing.
Um, and, uh, but, but I really just want, you know,
before you disappear, give us a quick round of applause,
thumbs up parts for Rebecca.
Uh, really appreciate you coming in
and giving up the time to do
This. Well, I, the other thing I wanna
say is thank you
to everybody and I feel like Stuart,
we could design something that is much more interactive
because these folks have very specific types of,
of situations that they're asking us about,
and I'd like to use those Yeah.
So we can get into more specifics with them.
So maybe we can talk about that next time.
How to, how to really work with what
We've got on. And what,
what we will do is, uh, when we follow up, um,
I think what we should probably do is, is um,
specifically just ask people, do you wanna have a session
with Rebecca to go to di dig into the specifics Yeah.
Of your organization? Yeah,
Let's, let's do it. Let's do
It. Yeah. So if
you want that,
Thank you so much. I love
this forum. I love you Stuart, and I love this group.
So thank you. Thank you, all of you.
Awesome. So everybody, thank you very much for joining.
Um, we've pretty much gobbled up the time.
We always seem to do that. Um, there,
there are more webinars coming this month's demo webinar,
if you've been on one of our demo webinars before.
Fabulous. Um, but the, this month is a little bit special
'cause we're actually gonna also do the demo, the,
the webinar with Smartsheets.
So we're gonna show the, the, the,
the portfolio management piece
and then we're gonna show the connection into Smartsheets,
which is one possible way to manage the execution.
So that should be, that should be fun.
Um, so watch for the emails, uh, uh, around that.
Um, and uh, again, just watch for emails from Pretty,
because that will have all of the follow up material from,
uh, from, from this session.
So everybody thank you very much
and I'd love the energy you all brought to it tonight.
So really appreciate you all and uh, and thank you Rebecca.