So welcome.
My name's Stuart Easton from Transparent Choice,
and as you can tell, I'm not in the UK right now.
I'm in Dubai. Behind me here, somewhere here. There we go.
You can see it. Just, just there.
The Burj al Arab, the world's first seven star hotel
or some such thing, uh, where, uh,
and I'm actually at the PI, uh,
PMI is Dubai International, um,
project management forum this week.
And, um, just to give you an idea that it's all in the, in,
uh, in Dubai.
This is, this is the pool and the resort,
and it's absolutely beautiful.
So, um, just up here, just up here behind me, uh,
you have all the speakers from the event, uh, just about
to sit down to dinner, and we may hear from
one or two of them later on.
We'll see how we, how we get on.
Um, uh, but, uh, but I figured it'd be fun to, to maybe try
and put one of the two of them into the,
into the conference as well today.
Um, so today's topic is about executives, right?
And, and why, why don't they get it?
So I do lots of these conferences
and the most common question that I get on conferences
and webinars is some form of the question,
why don't execs support my pmo?
Why don't they get it? Why don't they understand project
management and, and so on and so forth.
And, and more importantly, how do I get their buy-in?
How do I get their support for the PMO
and all the changes that we need to make?
And so to help answer these questions, uh, we have
with us tonight, uh, a good friend of mine, um, uh, and,
and new dad Alexander David.
Yeah. So, um, uh, so Alexander
is a, um, came out consultant based in the uk.
Uh, he's been doing PMO work for Alexander.
Help me out in 20 years, something
like that. Some ridiculous period.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something, something. Yeah, yeah.
Too long to be honest, to remember.
But I think, um, like I said, um, yeah, about
that time really with different companies
and different challenges I've seen so far.
So I'll let, yeah, I'll let you finish
first with, then I'll go.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, and, uh, and Alexander's worked at, uh, uh, uh,
at organizations like, uh, Jaguar Land Rover Network Rail,
uh, and work with Starbucks and, and others to help set up
and, and build really high performance PMOs perform.
And, uh, the reason I invited Alex
for this session in particular is that his superpower
is exactly what we're talking about today.
His superpower is getting the execs to buy in,
helping take them on a journey to, um, uh, to understand
what the value is, um,
and, um, uh, how to
get their commitment to a plan of action to make changes.
So what we're gonna do, uh, what I'd like first is, Alex,
if you could just introduce yourself
and then talk for a few minutes, if you would, about why,
why is it an execs don't buy in?
Definitely, first of all,
definitely jealous with Stuart right now.
You know, I love to be there right now,
especially minus one in the uk.
And yeah, it's not nice.
I mean, yeah, I can tell you we're not
getting enough sun, for sure.
Uh, so how long have we known each other?
Probably 5 or 6 years now, Stuart. We know each other.
Yeah, so, um, we've been through
or been through quite a few challenges
with the different companies
and seeing some use cases, um, like should mention earlier,
been through some good companies, some bad, some
amazingly innovative,
and some, uh, really going
through the stages of improvement.
Uh, and one of the common challenges I should mention
earlier, keep coming back, is, okay,
how do I get my executive on board?
Because that's the one thing,
because how do I get the right sponsorship?
And I think it, for me, the way from
what I learned from my experience for the past years,
it all comes down to the language.
And it's quite simple for me to say, is,
what do executive care about?
So it is using their language.
And I know we, all of us as a PMO professionals,
we talk about process standards, the tooling, uh,
we talk about, you know, procedures and the workflows
and all the good stuff and controls,
but executive don't care any of that.
They firstly don't, they don't understand, they don't care.
And what matters to them is, is all about value.
'cause that's what they're focusing on.
'cause that's what they're getting
scrutiny for from the business.
So how do we make sure,
So, so, so
before we get into what they want,
yeah, let me ask you this.
Uh, what are some of the symptoms that, you know,
how would you know if your execs aren't buying in?
What are some of the symptoms?
And, and folks, on the folks on the call, please jump into
that q&a bit and, and share your stories
and, and your symptoms.
What is it that you observe
that is an indication the execs aren't buying in?
So there are three things they struggle
with is the visibility, not having enough visibility,
what's happening in the business,
and they're not getting it from the PMO they have,
and that's why they're not gonna buy into it.
The second thing is the controls.
They're now understanding of
what improvements A PMO will provide
or is providing to the business in order to minimize,
let's say margin erosions
or, you know, improving the
benefits, for example, for the business.
So they don't understanding that bigger picture.
And third one is, it's the execution.
In a classic, are we delivering more things
with the same number of people?
So how is the power people are doing?
How are the resources doing?
How are we delivering our projects?
So not having those three things quite clearly articulated
and not clearly translated to the executive.
And thus few of the symptoms that you start seeing,
they don't buy into it.
And some of the symptoms, you know,
other symptoms I've observed is they're saying yes
to everything, surprisingly,
with people saying they're saying yes
because they're not understanding the consequence
or they're not understanding they take
or involvement into the PMO change.
The second thing is they're saying no
to everything, which is quite classic.
You know, don't want to hear it, don't wanna listen to you,
you know, it's because they don't really understand.
They don't understand what the PO is
adding a value for them.
It's a cost center. I'm spending lots of money,
but I'm not getting anything out of this.
And the third classic problem is not providing you
with the right tools
and resources for you to do the job properly,
because you can't win
the PMO challenge without having the right support.
So you're not getting executive buy-in,
you're not getting a sponsorship,
you're not getting the resources
for you to do your job properly.
And those are some of the symptoms I keep seeing in the p
uh, most of the companies recently, uh, recently,
I was speaking to someone, uh, last week with I think, um,
she mentioned to me, she came to me saying, actually,
I've been hired to deliver A PMO,
but they haven't given me any resources
or budget to do anything.
They expect me to fix everything,
but they haven't given me any support.
And they, when I asked for some support, they're saying,
that's your job to go and do it.
So I'm, I'm currently helping her go, going
through a coaching cycle to say, okay,
how do we overcome those challenges?
But those are the so mean sort, the classic things.
I'm kind of start seeing where, um, the,
we start seeing those symptoms.
Were they either saying no to you all the time,
or they're saying yes, it means they're not getting it
because they're not providing the support you need,
or they're not giving the right resources to do the job.
So those are the three things for me.
I've seen in my, my past experience what keep happening.
So, so, and,
and our shock's thrown a couple of others in,
which is they tend not to read your reports.
I like that one, a shock. Um, and they don't turn up or,
or complete actions that you need
them to, to approve, right?
So, so if decision making is slowing down, um,
that's probably a good sign
that someone's not buying into something Yeah.
The information they need, whatever.
Um, and then Alexis, like yours as well, this is great.
Um, so very much execs focusing on projects within their own
area, um, at the expense perhaps of projects in other parts
of the organization and, uh,
and possibly even cutting the PMO out altogether.
Exactly. Um, so, so all of that is, is kind
of a, uh, a question.
Now, one of the things, so there was a while ago, um,
probably five, six years ago now, um, that looked atmos
the question, um, is basically is the being called into
and, uh, 72% ofs
were being called into question the executive.
So the people around that executive table are sitting there
having a conversation basically saying, does this PMO,
does this project delivery
organization actually add any value?
Yeah, they may not be having that discussion with you.
That doesn't mean they're not having it.
So you've gotta look for these other symptoms.
So please, everybody, you know,
this is a learning exercise together.
If you have other, if you have other, um, uh,
if you have other symptoms, uh, so
Steve Paige, welcome my friend.
Uh, Steve's talking about execs gaming the process.
That's a great symptom, right?
So if execs trying to game the process
or trying to force you down one path
or another path, it's a great symptom that they're not into
the processes
and decision making, governance,
portfolio management kind of processes.
Um, so, so you're seeing these, seeing these, um,
uh, these symptoms.
Alex, what in your experience are some
of the key causes,
you were touching on some of them earlier on.
What are some of the key causes of, of these problems?
This, this lack of trust and buyin?
So I think, um,
so I think there's some you've gained in now,
but I think I got what you mean.
So I think, um, for me, uh, what I've observed, again,
I've used my observation
and the past experience,
rather than giving you hypothetical answer, I want
to give you the recent examples I've seen.
It's more around not understanding.
So exec have their own problems.
So they ask things which keep them awake day and night.
They have investors sitting on the door
asking for the payback.
They have boards, needs, reports, they need
to understand the performance of the business.
But what they struggle with is not understanding
the process, the controls and the governance.
How does it help me to deliver those values?
And I think those are the, some of the areas where
I normally work on,
and we working on some of the businesses I've become
currently helping is to the link
between the problems the exec having
or the languages they understand
to the stuff the PMO can provide
because they don't really understand the full remit
of PMO can have for me, the way I see PMO,
and I'm sure people on the call will have the same
view, PMO is like a clay.
How far do you wanna mold it?
You can turn into the shape you want it to, you can make it
as wide as possible, but exec need
to understand that benefits.
They need to understand the value,
but they can only understand if you bridge those link
to say, okay, here's your problems,
here's the things we can fix for you.
Unless that link is clear, it becomes really hard
to translate, or you're trying to say
and what they actually need.
And that's why I use a terminology
where Stuart is now bored off.
I've, I've used it so many times
in all the calls we've been in.
I call it case for change,
which is different from a business case, which is all about
what case are we making to change the business?
Because PMO is not a change. Sorry.
The change you make on PMO is not led by PMO.
It's a business change and it's led by the business,
the benefit stage of the business.
So that connection is really important.
So, so a shock has made an interesting comment here,
which is very relevant, just beginning to go into next,
next part of the discussion.
Um, so says when funding requested, um,
basically doesn't turn up, right?
So that's, that's, that's a symptom, right?
That's a sign that there's, there's no buy-in.
And so the next part of the conversation is how do we start
to build the buy-in to get the resources, to get the budget,
to get the, it's not always about people and resources.
Sometimes it's, it's about just support, right?
People turning up to meetings. Uh, it could be that simple.
So, um, so as Alex said, you know, we
work when we're working together, do something case change.
Um, so, so do you wanna talk about
that process and, and take your time,
because I really want people to, to think about this and,
and to think about how they can do it in their organization,
implement it within their, their own organization.
No, that's, I think, um, when,
unless I'm gonna go slightly a couple of steps back.
So when people think about the PMO transformation
or portfolio management change, the first thing
to think about the process standards or tooling, um,
and people jump to the conclusion, oh,
I need a tool in order to deliver my PMO,
or I need a tool to help me get those visibility I need.
But what the case will change from my ex, from our, um,
or my learning over the last few years
with businesses we've established,
a high performing PMO is always saying,
let's takes two step back, the first two steps all about
do we know what the problems are in the
business, what we're trying to fix?
Why do we need A PMO in the first place?
Why do we need to pay X amount of PE uh, uh, x amount
of, uh, funding, X amount of, uh, salaries
to those individuals to do that piece of work?
Why do we need them? So
what are those problems in the organization they're fixing?
So that's what the case will change,
does take it all the way back to the root cause.
Understand the needs of the business units, the functions,
the, you know, your product cycles
or whatever functions you have in your businesses
and executive to understand what they need to put together
a, a plan, a roadmap to say how are you gonna fix them?
The different, the difference
between the normal business case
and the case will change, it focuses on
the high value outcomes you can deliver in the sprints.
So we do this in three,
three month sprints or 90 day sprints.
What that does is it creates the momentum from the executive
all the way down to the function leads
that they can understand
what value they'll be getting from A
PMO in the coming months.
Because if you tell them, okay, I need a tool
that I need the process, I need the people,
but you're not gonna get results in 18 months time,
you're not gonna get any buy-in.
You know, I made those mistakes myself long time ago trying,
doing it that way, but doing in 90 day sprint,
because people want to see their value quickly.
They want to say where we are now
and how you're gonna make the changes.
But that's the only way
of getting the buy-in from executive, keeping them excited.
But at the same time, you have other stakeholders,
so don't forget, executive, yes,
we talk about talking about executive over here,
but as a PMO, the what the job is quite difficult
because you, you have executive,
but you do have project managers.
In some cases you have, let's say other head of functions,
so you have to please everyone.
But I'm not saying you have to please everyone.
You have to take them through the journey
because part of the PMO job is you will become that person.
People hate 'cause you're gonna be shed light on some
of the areas where they should,
shouldn should be doing something, but they're not doing it.
But in some areas, as long as you get people to go through
that journey with you, that's the main thing.
And that's what the case for change does.
It focuses on the high value improvements you can
deliver on those 90 day sprint.
And the first 90 days is all about
how can we get executive buy-in
and the 90 days focusing on the pain points the executive
have and trying to fix them as quickly
as possible to show them the benefit.
So we have that buy-in going
through all the way through those cycles.
And the way, sorry, go on Sue.
So, so, so Alex, sorry, just, just to interrupt. Yeah.
So we've got a question from Guy, which I'm gonna come
to in just a, just a second.
Uh, good to see you guy, by the way.
Um, so, so you, you talked about some
of the pain points from executives.
Let's slow down a little bit, right?
You've done this more times than
almost anybody else I know.
Um, you know, you, you, you probably to, to, to, to talk
to someone who's done this more than you have,
you probably have to get to a, a Laura Barnard or a Joe Pu
or somebody like that, right?
So when you talk to the executives, what,
what is the pain that they have?
And, and to get started, I,
I'm gonna give the obvious ones, right?
So every executive I've ever talked to says
that projects take too long, they cost too much,
and usually they don't actually deliver the benefit
that was desired in the first place, right?
So, so those are some of the pain points
that executives have.
Those are sort of the, the big, you know,
real top level ones.
What are the, what are some of the other kind of more
detailed, perhaps pain points that you hear from executives?
Um, and you men you mentioned
things like visibility earlier.
Yeah. So, so talk us through some of
that in a bit more detail if you would.
Just some of the, some of the,
some of the pain points that you hear.
Uh, some of the pain points usually
are strategic alignment.
So what I mean by that is
businesses have their strategic plan
and goals, like, for example, let's, you know, I need
to grow my business by 10%,
but what does it mean in actual terms
and how are you gonna make it happen?
You know, that translation of real term
outcome based planning is not there in most companies.
So you have your projects running in the cycle
and you have a strategic objectives,
but they don't link together properly.
And that's one thing this executive struggle with to say,
okay, I've got these strategic objectives I need to meet,
but I'm not really sure the stuff I'm doing actually
aligns with what I'm doing. And that's
One of, and, and, and, and,
and that, that's a great point.
So some of the, some of the things you might hear, there
are comments like, well, we're always starting
and stopping projects, or,
or they may say explicitly there's no, you know,
we don't understand the link between the work we're doing
and the strategy of the business.
Um, or they may be saying things like,
why are we doing that project?
I don't think it's important. Someone else might think it's
important, but I don't.
Right? So, so around that strategic alignment,
there are lots of ways for people to tell you
that there's a problem with strategic alignment.
In my experience, they don't usually sit there
and say, strategic alignment's broken.
Right? They'll say something that's related to it.
So, so your job is, I, I dunno if any
of you have come across the concept of active
listening, right?
So active listening isn't just sitting there listening
really hard, active listening is asking questions
and interacting with the answers that you're getting
to discover more, right?
Yeah. So this whole process of discovery that Alex,
Alex is talking about here is an exercise in active
listening and asking questions, listening to the answer
and interpreting the answer
and then validating, have I interpreted that correctly
by asking more questions?
Yeah. Um, so, so, so strategic alignments one, what else?
What else Alex? Uh,
The other one it comes down to,
and I know people talk about lesson learned.
Lesson learned is a classic one, which I'm seeing recently
with a client that we're currently working with.
But people see lesson learned, oh, I need to wait
for my project to finish and I'll learn my lesson,
or I need to initiate a lesson learned
session at the start of every project.
That's a normal generic way of thinking,
but lesson learns are you learning all the way through.
You're not waiting till
the end and say, okay, what did I learn?
Let's look back. You're learning all the way through,
you're capturing it, but it's
how do we understand from all those lessons, you know,
what are the systematic issue in the business
and what are the just BAU kind of stuff you're finding?
So what executive struggle with this?
Why we not learning our lessons?
We made this mistake last month,
we made a a mistake last quarter.
Why are we not learning these things?
So how can we make that lesson learned exercise much more
collaborative and effective and more real time?
So we are not waiting until the end of the project
and maybe two years a year down live,
we are actually acting on them straight away.
We are finding a fix. You fix it.
Like in a software company steward, you see them, you know,
they have a bug, they go and fix it.
Why can't we do this in a, in, in a project cycle?
Why can't we do this in a big corporate companies?
And that's what we're doing in real time.
I can't tell you the name of the client,
but we are currently doing the exactly the same real time
lesson learned deployment into the
systematic issues the business have.
The other one is classic one,
which I know you must have listened.
Multiple people saying it, this is a benefit realization
or revenue or margin, depending the terminology you're using
is how do we realize those benefits into the business?
And if you are on the other side of the customer, people
who are actually delivering projects for customers,
they have a problem with margin
erosions, okay, I'm losing money.
How do I improve on, you know, not losing that much money
or not not losing the margin.
So, so I think those are the three things I've seen.
But the, the last one
Is quite interesting.
And, and the other, and the other, the other really big one
is resources, right?
How do we, you making decisions about resources?
Yeah. And that comes down in the execution really.
I think where we have problem, um, you know,
firstly capacity.
And that goes back to where people wants to utilize people.
The 90% wanna be my staff to be 90
to a hundred percent utilized.
But then you start hang a minute.
If they a hundred percent utilize, when are they learning,
when are they collaborating,
when they actually have the off time basically
to train other staff.
And I've, I'll, to your honest, so I've attended few of, uh,
Stewart's webinar, so I know, so you talk about the 75
to 80% utilization, which is exactly what I'm doing
with some of the clients you're working with, is you need
to allow that time to grow your staff.
Otherwise you're never gonna fix the problem
because you're gonna keep bringing more people,
but the people you already have are fully utilized.
So who's gonna train the many people coming in?
Absolutely. And if you're overloading your people,
having more people just, just makes it more complicated.
Exactly. It doesn't solve the problem. It makes it worse.
Exactly. Um, so, so, so there's a couple of comments, Alex,
I'm gonna jump in with it if that's okay.
Uh, from the, from the q and a.
So the first one, as shark know,
that is not a blue screen behind me.
Um, so this, I, I came over here
because lemme see if I, I just need to get back to
so I can see what I'm pointing at.
Okay, so this building here is the conference center,
and this building here is the hotel.
My room, just so you know, in case somebody wants
to send me a box of chocolates later,
is roundabout there, right?
So I've got a great view out here.
Um, but the reason I'm showing you this is look at this
place, it's beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's expensive.
This conference is sponsored a amongst others by the RTA,
the road, road and Transport authority here in Dubai.
The government has sponsored this conference.
Think about that. This topic today is about executive
sponsorship sponsoring this.
I, I, I have no idea what it costs
to put on this conference, but it's, it's gotta be,
you know, half a million bucks,
a million bucks, something like that.
I dunno. Um, uh, they've flown people from all
around the world to come and come
and talk at this conference.
Um, and there's three
or 4,000 people here eagerly soaking it up, right?
So the vision from the, from at the government level that
for the nation to be successful, they need to, they need
to get their arms wrapped around this.
Projects are important for
delivering the goals of the business.
And the, those businesses are important
for delivering the goals of the country, right?
That's serious vision, right? Those guys get it.
And, um, so, so I'm not, I'm not bragging and showing off
and trying to make everybody jealous.
Well, I am obviously, but, um,
but the point I'm trying to make is
that this is a really good example of where executives kind
of get it and they're putting the money
where the mouth is, right? And saying, okay, and just
To clarify, Stuart, it, RT is not
sponsoring this webinar. Yeah.
No, no, no, they're not. No, no,
that's no, that's very true.
Very true. No, there's no, there's no link
between the PMI or any of this stuff.
Just, it's coincidental that I happen to be, um, fantastic.
So, um, so that was, that was kind of the first comment.
So no, it's not a blue screen. Ashok, thank you for that.
Um, uh, one of the things that, uh, Tom, I wanted to come
to yours, uh, was it Tom?
Yes. Um, uh, so Tom was asking just he wanted to come back
to something you said earlier, you know, can,
can you include the retrospectives during the delivery cycle
to adolescents learned
and to deliver change throughout the process?
You know, so while the project's
live, in other words. Exactly.
Exactly, exactly. Tom. That's the point.
So because there are some two kind of lesson learned,
you're gonna have, you've got systematic issues.
You're gonna be finding to change the overall process,
or you're gonna have a project specific one.
Again, like I said, real lesson learned is a real time game.
It's not something you wait till the end.
You do it all the way through.
But what you need is a clear
ownership on those lesson learned.
Somebody you owns it, it's something is systematic.
It's not one-off exercise.
We fix it at this project and let's forget about it.
You have to make sure that's been embedded in the business
and somebody's owning it
so we don't make the same mistake again.
But that's the problem I had with the recent client.
They cave making the same mistake on five projects.
Could you believe that five projects they had,
they had same thing in a matter
of six months, they will release.
Wow. Wow. That's brutal. That's brutal. Excellent.
So yes, as, as close to real time as you can then folks, um,
okay, let's, so let, let's come back to the, to,
so we've talked about what some of the symptoms might be.
Yeah. Uh, we've talked about what some
of the problems might be that the execs have.
Um, and, and very often those problems can be broken down.
We, we, we sort of, we, we joke about it, right?
Where we say there are only three problems that they've got.
They've got a lack of visibility, a lack
of control, and a lack of execution.
And, um, and if you can fix that, you can fix everything.
Uh, and of course we're being,
we're being a bit funny when we say that, but,
but, um, you know that, that,
but it's, it's also kind of true.
Do you think, Alex?
It is, to be honest, I think those are the three buckets
where most of the stuff we talk about.
'cause when you and you interview, I,
I'm gonna use Laura's language now, I'm, me, me
and Laura have been speaking quite frequently recently.
So if I use her words, so, you know what's, you know, it,
it's about interviewing your stakeholders.
What does your stakeholders want?
What is your executive wants?
You know, it's, it's,
and when you start interviewing them, going back
to Stuart's point earlier, the Stuart made,
which is a good point actually.
It's not active listening. Active listening.
The key part, which is not just listening
and just, you know, taking in,
but it's actually understanding, oh,
is it the visibility you're lacking in
or is it the controls?
Because they will be talking a lot of stuff
'cause they've got so many problems in the mindset.
But now you actually start, you know,
shoot, I'm street holding.
But you start making them focus on the things, what matters.
Is it the controls we are lacking
or is it the visibility you don't have?
Or is it the execution we are executing properly?
You start have to, because there's
so many things people have problems with,
but you need to start filtering
them down to those three things.
And from my observations, well,
I think you've seen this few times as well,
which is those are the three things we keep seeing.
Those are the buckets we always have.
Either you don't have visibility to make decisions,
you don't have controls to make sure, you know,
project executed properly or you don't have good execution.
Either you don't have right people or skills
or resources to execute those projects,
or you're overburden with loss of stuff in order to do them.
Um, but those are the three things we,
I keep saying more and more basically.
And, and, and, and here, here's the,
here's the really fun piece, right?
So, uh, Alex just mentioned Laura.
So he, he means Laura Barnard.
Uh, so if any of you don't know Laura, um,
go follow her right now.
If you're in a PMO and you don't follow Laura
Barnard, shame on you.
Uh, Steve Jenner's on this WIS webinar as well.
I would say the same thing about Steve, by the way.
Um, I can't quite see who else is on.
I've seen Steve make comments, so I know he's on.
Um, so Steve Jenner, I would go follow him as well.
Um, and Laura's actually just up there
having dinner right now.
I spent a bunch of time with her today.
And when she talks about this process, she talks about,
you know, yeah, interviewing your execs,
doing this active listening thing,
and then writing down their comments in their words
and then, and then go away and,
and sort of, you know, pick the top three
or something, right?
And, and do a root cause analysis of where
that pain's coming from.
And, uh, once you've, once you've done that,
what you usually find is that
the same root causes
keep cropping up again and again and again.
So for example, um, I was on and um, uh, thank you.
I think it was guy Yeah.
Would you be able to share an example?
So let me give you one quick example.
Um, I, I happen to sit on one
of Laura's mastermind sessions a few weeks ago,
and one of the people on, in, in that session, one
of the PMO leaders had just gone through this process of,
of, um, uh, interviewing the leadership team,
doing the root cause analysis.
And what she found was, you know, let's, let's say
for example, they had 10 pain points
that the execs identified.
She looked at, three of them did the root cause analysis.
And what she found was that the, the same three that,
that she basically came down to three
root causes of the pain.
One of 'em was project prioritization, one
of 'em was resource planning,
and I've forgotten what the other one, the third one was.
And then what she did was she then followed it forward.
So you start with the top, you know, two
or three problems, you go backwards, root cause why, why,
why don't stop, keep going.
Why, why, why till you get right back to the root.
You all know, you all know the five why's
and six why's, whatever it is.
Yeah. Right? Everybody knows that we all know
that technique, right?
So, so use your five why's, get back to that root cause.
And then what she did, and it was, it was brilliant.
This, this slide was so compelling.
She started with those, with those three root causes.
And then she mo carried it forward.
So she said, okay, if we fix these three root causes,
what else do we fix?
And and what she showed was that if,
if you fix just these three things,
it would actually fix every one of their 10 pain points.
So, so in other words,
when you follow the root cause back from all these different
pain points, you will probably find
that there's a very small number of root cause problems
that are driving the pain, right?
And, and as I say that pain could be something like, oh,
I don't understand why we're doing that project.
Or the guy in the next office to me, he always seems
to get his projects done
and I never get mine done or something.
Right? So those are obviously prioritization problems.
So you do the root cause analysis
and you'll eventually get back to prioritization.
Yeah. If you have, if you have too many pro, if,
if you don't have enough resources, by the way,
that's not a resource management problem.
When you do the root cause analysis, you will get back
to a prioritization problem.
It's not that you have too many resource, uh, it's not
that you don't have enough resources, it's
that you've got too many projects
or not enough focus, which is a prioritization problem.
So when you do this time,
and again, you will come back to these same few root causes
that you see again and again and again.
Sure. There's something about basic project methodologies,
getting them in place.
There is something about training your SROs so
that they can be actually,
they can actually sponsor projects.
There's usually something about resource resources, right?
Capacity planning or resource management, right?
And there's, there's almost always something
about the prioritization.
So the, and you'll notice that most of, of that is
around portfolio management,
not project management.
And that, to me, anyway, I, Alex I dunno if you agree
with this, we're not, I don't think
we've, I don't think we've talked about this.
To me that is the definition of why A PMO should exist
because that portfolio management stuff is something
that cannot be done within a, by definition,
it can't be done within a project.
You have to do it at the portfolio level.
And that's why you need a PMO.
The execs don't know enough, right?
They don't understand projects.
It's not their job to understand projects.
So they need somebody to be their business partner
to help them translate their, their vision.
To understand their pain. Yeah.
To understand where the business is going
and to help them shape that portfolio,
to deliver that, yeah.
Efficiently, effectively,
and with low risk, that is your job as a, as a PMO.
It's to maximize the ROI from the investment in,
in the portfolio, in other words.
So, um, so anyway, there's a lot, lot in there to unpack
Alex, what I'd love to do,
'cause we're, we're, we're sort of 40 minutes
in Yeah, well, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead. No,
No, I was just giving guy an example just
to know, just to give you
That that's what I was gonna,
that's exactly what I was gonna ask. Go for it. Perfect.
Um, without naming the companies, the reason one, uh,
the customer, the way they do,
they have customer projects they're working on
and they have their own internal projects
to improve transformation kind projects,
things like process improvements or expansion or,
or on factories and so on.
So, you know, without any
the customer, that's their portfolio.
So what we did was they wanted A PMO,
but like Stuart said, the definition
of PMO is different from executive point of view.
They think PMO means project manage and office.
Okay, your job is to do projects,
you know, go and do this. Yeah.
And to do the reporting and the,
and the compliance and that stuff.
Exactly. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
One of the first thing, like Sue said, we firstly we did,
is actually what you need based on your symptoms
and what you're telling us your problems are,
you need a portfolio management office.
And we start showing them the capability mapping,
which apologies I don't have in front of me right now,
but happy to share maybe
after the call with you, which is,
I think Stuart is in your blog, which is coming out soon.
It's a hexagon map
and it talks about all the capability
a portfolio management office
or A PMO should be able to provide to the executives.
And for, for the first time when they saw that view,
they were like, oh, wow, I didn't know my PM can do this.
I can have this, I can have that, I can have this, this,
all the stuff I've been looking for.
There's all the problems they had.
We linked it back to the capability of people can deliver.
Based on that, we then we started going into
fixing the basics.
So we picked up five things we wanna fix first.
First thing was let control the intake.
We need to get the visibility on all the customer projects
they're working on, and we need
to stop people initiating any internal changes
without going through the intake process.
Let's put that filter in first.
So again, control the amount of work coming through
because the people actually
doing the work is the same people.
And that's where you have this overload coming in.
And going back to source point, the prioritization part,
we need to provide, so we do the first intake,
we kick off the prioritization exercise to say,
how can we prioritize the workload?
Have we got the right things? Are we doing the right
things with the right people?
And are they aligned to our city objectives,
what we should be focusing on?
The third thing we focus on is around, uh,
and this is more going into, um, you know,
demand and capacity management.
So looking at what the work we are doing from the intake
and what is the capacity we have?
Is it the skills we are lacking
or is it the, you know, some are behavior issues,
some are systematic issues.
What do we need to fix in order to unlock the capacity?
And, you know, one
of the fix we're putting in is just an example.
We to improve the long-term sustainability, a skills gap.
We, you know, we reaching out to universities
and students to bring them in.
And again, like I said, PMO is doing it.
So PMO can do a lot of stuff people are not aware of.
So we are doing that workforce analysis to say,
what option can we put in place to help, you know,
bridge the gap with the skills.
So we created a skills matrix
and we came up with options saying,
how can we fix it over the next six months
and how can you fix it systematically over
the next 12 to three years?
And then the fourth one, which is we talked about earlier,
I think Tom mentioned, which is the lesson learned.
We need to start making sure those things are fixing
as we're seeing them all the way through the cycle.
So those are the four things we've gone
after first, which exactly will start the value. And then,
And, and, and the key thing with this, right Alex, is
that you are not waiting to have a plan to fix everything
before you do stuff, right?
So just talk about that, that
that 90 day cycle thing a little bit more in this context.
Yeah. The, the main part of the 90 day cycle is, um,
you know, breaking the whole plan down into 90 day chunks,
but 90 day chunks has to be aligned
to the value and the benefits.
That's the key part. When I keep saying the value
and benefits is doing the high value things first.
Just imagine if you're doing anything,
you know, you want to get your first lap.
If you're racing, you're gonna get the best time in your
first lap, you know, you know, to win the race.
They're exactly the same.
What's the best thing we can deliver to give you
that visibility to give you the buy-in
and give you the voice around the executive?
And that's what we pick.
Part of that case will change is picking up the right things
which can deliver the maximum value.
So in this case, with the customer.
So just, so just, just just pause there
for a second, Alex, if you would.
Okay. So, so really quickly, you're gonna deliver something
that solves one of the problems that the execs have
that delivers value.
It could be something small.
It doesn't have to be anything big.
It can be something small. Exactly.
It's gonna solve, it can be, it's gonna solve a problem now.
So, um, a couple of, couple
of the comments coming in. So one
More point to add to that story just
before forget, okay, is the,
the terminology which I'm keep on using that more,
more clients are working with, is piloting good enough is,
okay, don't look for perfection, executive hate.
If you're spending too much time under a desk creating
amazing process, amazing thing.
At end of the day, they said, oh, don't like this. Hate it.
What, what this about you.
It's, it is better to take them through the journey,
piloting things, you know, taking them
through it, testing it, trialing it.
And that's what this case change is about.
It's, you know, you're not good enough, it's okay,
you're taking, because it's all about the journey, you know,
change management 'cause you're learning and growing
and you're improving all the way through those sprints.
So you don't reach the perfection straight away.
You're going through the perfection to get to
that end goal you're looking for.
So I wanna come back to change case for change. Yeah.
You know, it's not a business case, it's a case for change.
It's living, breathing thing that evolves.
So I wanna come back to that idea in a, in a minute, but
before we do, um,
so a shock made an interesting observation.
Lots of PMOs simply do not
get involved in portfolio management.
You're quite right. A shock. No, they don't,
but I bet you they're being held to,
to account for delivering the projects.
And I bet you they're struggling.
And the reason, and the root cause
of those challenges in many,
many cases will be portfolio management problems.
So in that case, in that situation, you have two options.
You can suck it up and just suffer.
Yeah. Yeah.
You could do that or you can
build yourself a case for change.
Because if the problems are portfolio, if, if the root cause
of the problems is portfolio management, then you know,
you either gotta learn to live with the problems
or you're gonna go and fix it at portfolio management.
I'm not saying every problem is portfolio
management, by the way, that's where I live.
It's where I'm most comfortable. So I, I talk about that.
But the, the most important thing in that is that just
because today you are a project
management office, not a portfolio level management office,
um, that doesn't mean that's how it should be
or that's how it should be forever.
But, and, and this is
where these 90 day sprints really come in, right?
You don't necessarily, you, you wouldn't go in in
that situation and say, well, we're a,
we're a project management office where we just do reporting
and what we need to do is we need to jump straight
to this amazing, all singing, all dancing, high maturity
portfolio management office, right?
Because that's a, it's never gonna work.
B, they won't even understand what that means. Right?
And, and so, and, and,
and so this this case for change that,
that Alex is talking about here is how you get them there.
So the case for change is a living thing. Yeah.
It's about solving their problems.
It's about evolving over time.
It's about continuously listening
to what are your challenges now?
Yeah, what, what's the next problem we're gonna solve?
And building that into 90 day cycle. So it's a journey.
So it's a living thing.
Yeah. And I think just to add to Stuart's point,
I think one of the work stream we make sure is embedded all
the way through our sprints.
In that case for change, it's called organization design.
And just to give people an example, we had
a client be working with, they had a PMO sort
of a reporting function,
just doing reporting and basic admin.
That's how they saw the PMO to be.
And the end of those sprints, four sprints, we run
with them in 12 months time.
The PO end up becoming a transformation office reporting in
the CFO, the people are realizing all the way
through those sprints, actually the
PMO is not in the right place.
Oh, my PO should be assuring why is in delivery,
why am I marking my own homework?
But PO shouldn't be here. It should be in finance.
Oh, it should be in finance, should be the CFO.
So, you know, people, it starts finding its own way
through the benefits it's delivering into the right place.
It should be either the CEO,
but has to be at the executive level to make sure
that you're providing that the visibility.
'cause the visibility, like going back to your point
through I think the, you know, executive level,
the PMO is the advisor.
The how I see them at PMO to be is their strategic advisor
to tell them when and how
and what things we should be investing our money on.
And that's what the PO should be doing
in helping them to make decisions.
Absolutely. And, and, and it's important
to meet the, meet them where they are.
Right? So Americo Pinto, so the, the, uh,
president of the PMO Global Alliance, um,
so they were bought by the pmi.
So the PMI has just launched the, the PMO value ring
and the certification and all this kind of good stuff
around PMOs
and Americo talks about, you know, being context sensitive.
So if you've got, if you've got an executive team
that has tried to set up A PMO before it's all failed
and gone horribly wrong, then the last thing you wanna do is
walk in with this vision of this huge PMO
that does all these amazing things
and ask them for a headcount of 30
that's never gonna work in that context, right?
So you've gotta meet them where they are
and find those quick wins.
Um, you know, guy, I am right with you on,
on your comment there about, um,
about getting those quick wins.
Um, and, uh, so, so those quick wins are
how you establish credibility.
So you may not go straight to,
let's set up full portfolio management.
You might start off with, Hey,
let's just put in place some basic reports so
that we at least know how much money we're spending.
You would be astonished, right?
So one of the questions I ask on, on when I talk to new
prospects is, you know,
how much do you spend in in on your portfolio?
And I'd say half the time the answer is we haven't a clue.
Okay. Okay. So a really quick win
for the execs is probably just
figuring out how much you're spending.
Exactly. It's not that hard. It's not that hard.
Exactly. And just two other one is classic, one simple
to do, guys, which I'll always do with my first sprint.
Okay, how many meetings do you have?
How many meetings I should be attending?
Have I got lead governance? It's a classic one.
You can win pretty quick.
Okay, let's do a governance mapping.
All the meetings we are having in business at the portfolio
level and way do we have overlaps
so you can start getting meetings down.
What to help them is, oh, look, I don't have
to attend 10 meetings.
I've got 10 hours free. I can make decisions now more
quicker because I don't have to attend all these meetings.
You know, the simple quick wins like that you,
we can deliver quickly is it's just going
after those things, you know,
and making sure you're delivering them. So,
So we're talking about taking
executives on a journey, right?
Yeah. So again, I can't emphasize this enough.
You know, this, this concept of the case for change
isn't a one-off thing, it's a living, breathing thing
that evolves over time as you're, as you're ticking,
you know, one set of, if you're knocking down one set
of problems, you've gotta make sure you're,
you're tackling the next set
of problems and so on and so forth.
And we're talking about change management. Yeah.
So guy, guy, the rest of guy's question was about, um,
you know, do you, do you follow any specific sort
of change management approach?
Uh, like, like kotta eight stages or something like that?
So, so do you, do you, do you do that
or do you just kind of adapt to the organization
or what do you, how, what's
your take on that? To be honest,
I think abuse at car
and fewer change management, uh,
frameworks, but I think yeah,
Yeah, yeah.
On and, uh, o Joe's a big fan of a car as well. Yeah.
Yeah. So, but being on being done it so many times now,
I think it's all about what is the need of the organization.
It's about the flexibility and the pace
and the change management.
The way I see it, it's try not to bo the ocean.
It's more about are we communicating enough?
Are we hitting the right stakeholders? There you go.
And are we taking people through the journey?
You know, are people are impacted?
Are they aware what they're being impacted on?
Are we just pushing it to them saying,
guys going use this, but, so hang on a minute.
When did this was decided and who told me?
I need to be trained on this? So those
kind of things are just simple.
We don't need, you don't need massive, massive excel
or different formats to be using.
It's just keeping it really simple. Don't bother the ocean.
Focus on the people I impacted.
Who do I need to inform my first one-on-One thing I do in
any company, I normally goes my stakeholder map,
who my stakeholders are.
And that's basically I use to do the change management.
Who's gonna be impacted by the things I'm gonna be doing?
Who do I need to inform
and who do I need to keep on the journey with me?
And who's gonna be my followers?
So being the champions, who's gonna be my champions,
who I can use to make sure these things are
getting embedded in the business?
And those four or five things are the right mix for,
for my, the way I see it.
That's basically the flexibility.
It gives you that flexibility and gives you that agility.
So I'm gonna give you a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give,
paint you a scenario, Alex,
and I want you to tell me what happens next.
Okay? So fun game, this one. So here's the scenario.
You go through this process of active listening. Yeah.
You come up with a really cool case for change, where,
where you've, you say, great,
here are the problems you said you've got.
And we're, we're gonna address problems one, two, and three.
We've done the root cause analysis,
and this is, this is, these are the,
if we fix these three things,
we're gonna solve all this pain over here.
And the execs say, yeah, that sounds great.
Then you go off and you start executing
and you never talk to the execs again.
What, what happens next?
The next would be they won't buy into it.
They will either reject it
or they will struggle to make a decision on the next steps.
And they will find any, any way they can to not
to make a decision, to delay things
because they don't feel comfortable.
And I'll feel the same. I'm sure you'll feel the same if
somebody's telling you to buy into something without taking,
telling you each step of the way, what was the history?
What was the concept? What was the context?
Why, what and how.
I won't be comfortable making a decision into the next step
because has an impact on the business.
So making sure they're informed all the way through.
I know it's, and it is, that's, I know it sounds, it is
that simple, really, it's just speaking to people,
making sure they're aware of what you're doing. And,
And, and, and I, and, and, and I have to say folks, um,
and again, the reason I invited Alex on here is
that this case for change thing is his superpower, right?
Everybody's got a superpower of some form, right?
Um, and, and Alex's is doing that case for change
and getting XX to buy in.
And part of it is the active listening part
of it is coming up with a plan and then the
90 day cycles and everything else.
But I think the biggest part of Alex's success doing this
and landing these, these high impact PMOs, taking them
through a transformation process, um,
I think his biggest success driver is the fact that he is
relentless at communicating and going back again and again
and again to the leadership team.
That doesn't mean that you
necessarily have to be meeting them.
You might, you might drop 'em an email or a newsletter
or something, right?
But constantly giving them feedback when something works,
when something's delivered.
Yeah. Alex always goes back
and says, Hey, I've just delivered this.
Did that solve your problem?
Now of course you are asking, did it solve the problem?
But what you're really doing is,
as you're saying, oh look what I just did.
Aren't I clever? Right?
And simple things, I mean, is, is doing a SharePoint,
you know, SharePoint becomes your communication
channel, things like this.
Anything you can find where you can, in fact,
all hands call, you know,
newsletters Stuart mention earlier, yeah.
What other communication channels available in the business?
Where can I tap to get myself out there?
You know, because the business have so many things.
When you speak to your communication team, you speak
to your marketing team, you will understand
how many channels of communications out there.
And then you, which one can I tap all of these things
to gimme more visibility?
It's all about visibility.
I think, you know, that's always about
how can I provide visibility what I'm doing?
'cause if they don't know
what you're doing, they will struggle.
You will struggle to get that seat on
the table. You're looking for,
I I'm gonna be more specific than that, Alex.
If they don't know what you're doing,
they will assume you are doing nothing.
Oh yeah, sorry. Right? Yeah,
That's, yeah.
If they don't, if you are not telling them,
if you are not sharing successes,
they will assume you're doing nothing.
So I have, I have two more questions.
Um, the, the, uh, the, the,
the last one is I'm picking up a vibe from some
of the questions that people would like to talk
to you to follow up.
So, so the last question is gonna be
how do people get in touch with you to ask more questions?
Um, for everybody. We, we do record these sessions.
You will get sessions.
There will be some, um, um, uh, you know, webinars
and things like that, that we're gonna send, send you,
that will be related to the topic.
Uh, so one of 'em will be a, a webinar we did
with Laura Barnard, for example,
that's that's related to this.
Um, uh, so, so that will be coming.
But before we get there, right,
we've been talking about PMOs,
but we're actually talking about delivering business
value and business strategy.
So is PMO the right name?
Sounds like a silly question, right?
But does, does it make a difference?
Because you, you talked about
one being called the transformation office earlier,
you uh, one of the ones you mentioned.
So, so does the name matter?
Should we be married to being PMOs
or should we just call it whatever the business wants?
What's your experience?
I think it makes support.
I think, um, calling it changing the name, like, you know,
changing the name in the first system is probably the wrong
thing to be doing until you have those, I call them stripes.
Get your stripes first on your shoulders,
and then you tell, tell them what you wanted to call.
You can call it, I mean, I call
P-M-O-V-M-O before Value Management Office.
I call them Transformation Management Office.
They're doing the same thing. But what that differs,
but people's perspective.
So they're used to having a project management office doing
reporting, attendance, tracking, you know,
time tracking, pos and so on.
But now they have a portfolio management office.
So you're trying to defic yourself. Makes sense.
But unless you get the stripes,
and if you change your name too early in the process,
people will just say, okay, they're just rebranding it,
but with the same management.
So it's gonna be s**t show pardon of my language, but,
but it's gonna be the same problem again.
Sleep deprive. Daddy,
You dad. Exactly.
I need to remember more words. Yeah, thank you.
Uh, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't worry.
I'm, I've said worse on, on, uh, a lot of what on webinars.
Um, so to Tom says strategic
portfolio management, I love it.
Um, and, and, uh, you know, some
of our partners actually ask the executives once they've
earned their stripes, as Alex said.
So get in there, deliver the value,
some value first, get some momentum.
So they're excited about it. And that's the point.
You wanna say, what do you guys wanna call this?
And they, if you ask the leadership team that they never,
ever, ever call it a PMO,
they will call it, you know, a, a value realization office,
a strategy execution office.
Yeah. A Strategy realization office.
A business transformation office.
They'll call it all kinds of things,
but they will never ever call it a PMO.
Um, but I love your point, Alex,
don't change the name too early,
because then it looks like a cynical attempt just
to rebrand the same old nonsense.
Exactly. And you'll,
and you'll just lose them right there, right then.
Um, so, uh, so in this, in this journey,
just a little bit about, um, about us.
So those of you know us, um,
so Transparent Choice is a software company
and underpinning all of this stuff,
this portfolio management piece in particular, that's
what we do, right?
So we, you know, our software really helps do that.
Um, leverage, you know, really great decision science,
collaboration capabilities, ai, all kinds of things
to really make that, that portfolio management piece,
if you dis, if you discover that's part
of your root cause, right?
The, the prioritization
and the resource capacity planning, things like that, um,
we do that really, really well.
But, and I will say this to anybody
and everybody, usually the first thing you need
to do is not go buy software.
First thing you need to do is take time
to build that case for change.
So Alex, if somebody wants help to build,
Hey Becca, good to see you as well.
And Mohamed, actually I should have said hi to Mohammad.
Um, uh, if somebody would like some help
thinking through their case for change
or starting their process, where should they go?
How can they find you? How can they reach out to you?
So they can reach out to me through my website,
or what I'll do is may, I will drop in my email address, um,
after this call through Lenora, I'm happy to put on the chat
or part of the material we're gonna be sending out.
So please free, feel, feel free to reach out
to me and happy to sit down. Fabulous.
Take you through. So Lenora is, Lenora is on the call.
So Lenora, if you could make a note
and just add Alex's de contact details to the email
that goes out, that would be fantastic.
So, so reach out directly to you. Uh, the company name is
Value Matrixx.
Value Matrix. Fantastic.
I just wanna show something Stuart was talking about,
you know, prioritization
and, you know, the tooling version show something,
by the way, guys, look, the Ducks
Fantastic.
So I've got a collection of them happening. So, um, well,
You know, one of the, one of the people I'd prepped to,
uh, to maybe step in,
but we, we didn't have time in the event, so I apologize.
But one of the guys I'd prepped to maybe step in, uh,
is Ike, who is the chairman of the PMI.
And, uh, so I see Ike at all these conferences.
So he's now up to four ducks.
He's got, so he's got a little,
little duck farm going at home.
Uh, so every conference we meet,
we, I give him one more duck.
Um, so the ducks, ducks are great, um,
and anyone who doesn't know about ducks,
but head over to our website
and just start watching some of the videos and things.
And you, it won't long
before you start seeing rubber ducks appearing.
Fantastic. If you
Have to find, Alright, so anyone that's,
that would like some, go ahead Alex.
I'm just saying, where can you find you next?
Basically, where, where are
you gonna be next off the bottom?
Maybe Lenora can pitch in with an answer on that one.
Um, Lenora just tells me, I, I wake up on a Monday morning,
it's like, Lenora, what country am I in this week?
Um, but the next one I can think of on the top
of my head is gonna be Riyad in May.
No, no Barcelona. We're doing Barcelona right in April.
So the PMI is doing the Global summit in April.
Um, I'm gonna be giving a talk there
and we're gonna be talking on a very similar sort of topic.
Uh, so why execs hate PMOs to paraphrase.
Um, but I'm gonna be looking at four specific techniques,
portfolio management techniques you can use to fix it.
So once you've done that, once you've done that, um,
root cause analysis
and if you discover the portfolio management piece is
broken, I'll be talking about how you can take, uh,
four very specific portfolio management techniques
and really massively ramp up the value
that you're gonna deliver to, to the business.
So hopefully I'll see some of you in Barcelona in April,
But if you want to catch the deal, me
and Stuart together, we are gonna be in Riyadh in May.
I think we are coming together. Yeah,
That's the plan. We,
we'll be in Riyadh, uh,
the Global Project Management Forum, the GPMF.
Yep. Uh, in, uh, in Riyadh, uh, which will be fun.
And I think you're gonna see an incredible
group of people out there.
Uh, Barcelona's got an incredible group of people.
We're still working on who the speakers are gonna be, um,
uh, for Riyadh,
but I've started to see some of the, some
of the nominations come in
and there's some phenomenal people.
So that's gonna be an amazing event as well.
So depending where you are in the world, come find Wally,
come, come, come.
Uh, or in America, if you're in America, it's Waldo.
Um, uh, uh, you know,
we'll be appearing at a conference center
near you very soon.
Um, so, uh, so thank you very much.
If you're new to our webinars, thank you for joining us.
We do this about once a month.
We do a demo webinar once a month,
and we do one of these once a month where we look at kind
of best practice and, and thought leadership stuff,
and we bring in, um, you know, we, we try
and bring in the best of the best
to, to share their knowledge.
So Alex, I wanna thank you for sharing your knowledge today.
Um, we pleasure. We barely, this is such a big topic.
We barely even scratch the surface, so, so thank you
for sharing your, your knowledge.
Uh, and I do encourage everybody to, to get on,
connect on LinkedIn with Alex, uh, a Alexander David.
Um, uh, go connect with Alex online on LinkedIn, uh,
or drop him a note, uh, if you want, want a little bit
of help with that case for change.
Awesome. Thank you everybody. I.