I was facilitating a leadership course focusing on organizational transformation at Northeastern University! Learners came from Human Resources, Project Management, Informatics, and Leadership concentrations. In one of the discussions related to reasons for organizational failures, learners discussed initiatives failed because because of poor market research, management myopia, process overhead, ethical oversight and overreliance on technology instead of people. When I asked a few follow-up questions related to the reason for these failures, everyone narrowed in on bad strategy!
How could strategy by itself fail? After all, strategy is to create a "competitive advantage" and failure lies in people not paying attention to the warning triggers and make the required course corrections! So, I explained to the learners the thoughts behind what I call as SEED warning triggers. This is an approach I developed over a period when managing the Program Management Office working with C-Suite directly and clients delivering numerous programs supporting a few portfolios.
Success Measure: An organization is like a big family taking care of members of the family. Some family members may be children while others adults. What makes one happy may not make others happy as everyone has specific goals and objectives. If organization is a family, every member's longer term needs are like the organizational initiatives. Most initiatives focus on achieving specific goals and objectives. So, this is frequently one of the things people identify in various documents, such as the business case, benefit management plan, benefit register, project charter, etc. Some metric driven organizations may have specific objectives & key results (OKR) to evaluate interim progress as well that are used in the governance framework to prioritize and optimize initiatives aligned to the enterprise environmental factors and related resource management needs as well.
Entry Consideration: An organization is a living entity with every portfolio, program, and product a healthy organ working holistically to sustain life. It is therefore important to have interim reviews to evaluate the level of success achieved until then and reevaluate what initiatives should continue moving forward. Even a successful initiative that has met all the criteria may be parked for a different initiative because of the external and internal events. So, it is always better to have predefined milestones (it could be functionality or schedule based) to evaluate if the initiative should continue to enter its next phase based on its own success criteria met.
Exit Criteria: One of the major challenges with any initiative is failing to understand, recognize, and act on exit criteria. In my humble opinion, this is one of the main warning triggers people ignore. If one's lifestyle changes causes an unhealthy situation (e.g.: prolonger exposure to construction work causes hearing loss, longer commutes to work causing family imbalance, toxic work environment causing increased stress), then, one has to make lifestyle changes which may sometimes involve looking for options (e.g.: a different role in the company, remote work options, an alternative job) to exit from the current challenges. Similar logic applies in a portfolio, program, or project where we should first have the exit criteria and monitor the warning signs to determine when it is time to "STOP." Continuing to do the same thing expecting different results is not smartness!
Decision Delay: This is the final and more challenging issue. Even when one knows that the heredity may have possible diabetes, people follow specific lifestyle (eating sugary foods) leading to diabetes diagnosis. Despite the diagnosis, they don't exit the current lifestyle options creating more challenges for their family members. Their reason is delaying the decision to act on the earlier warning signals. This delayed decision-making is the cancer that kills all the initiatives. When products delay customers' requests for newer functionality for a long time, for example, customers are dissatisfied (relate to Kano model here). When portfolios defer rebalancing the initiatives or reskill the employees and programs delegate program level risks constituent project sustaining benefits, such delays seal the failure of any initiative. This is where the skilled and timely governance really matters!
So, in the end, my SEED triggers are example of things that leaders should constantly monitor and manage. Otherwise, failures are just accidents waiting to happen. I felt some learners in the class felt thrilled to learn about this experiential approach. What are your thoughts? Please share.
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