Learning Leader

It's not what you know ...

In the course of this week's P3O Practitioner event, we touched on how portfolio, programme and project offices could support Knowledge Management, how these people could support programme and project managers put their hands on the right material and the right time. This sparked an interesting discussion around 'taxonomy', search engines and other tools.

The challenge for busy programme and project managers is this: how do you find valuable stuff within the organisation quickly? When it comes to enterprises of any size, it's not what you know that counts, but how quickly it can be appropriately mobilised; how you can recall and apply it quickly.

Knowledge in this sense, does no good if it is permanently lost in the labyrinth of some corporate server. When was the last time you were frustrated that you simply could not find a particular file that you knew you had and you needed 'to hand'? A lot of lost time and frustration can accumulate in that way.

Then I came across this article - Taxonomy Fairy Tales - in Patrick Lambe's excellent Green Cameleon Blog. It contains a fascinating video discussion between Patrick in Dublin and Matt Moore in Sydney.

The conversation didn't just focus on the potentially abstract and arid idea of taxonomies, but also gave me some fresh insights into why the Google approach probably won't work on most intranets for such knowledge management purposes, on the whole subject of Governance, and on the use of Experts in this context.

I liked the conclusion around the part of the conversation on Experts: that the actual practitioners should work out classifications empirically, from experience and then ask for help. This links with my growing belief on finding internal examples of best practice, the 'Bright Spots' as Dan and Chip Heath call them.

Recommended.

Clarity on an Enterprise's Change: MoP

How does an organisation of any significant size begin to put its arms around all the changes that are happening within it? How can it begin to ensure these changes - its projects and programmes - are all moving the organisation in the right direction strategically?

Senior managers facing such challenges also know they will have to make tough choices. There is never enough time or money to do everything on the enterprise wish list. Some projects need to be canned or put on hold. But which ones? Some of these projects depend on others.

Also, how does the organisation make sure that the changes are approved, are done in a way and at a time that does not do injury to operations?

Such is the subject of Management of Portfolios (MoP), the latest guidance from OGC, the UK Government body that has brought us PRINCE2 project management, MSP programme management, P3O and other Best Management Practice guidance. MoP is now available as a qualification and, of course, pearcemayfield will be offering it.

I was interested to receive my copy of the new book only yesterday, the last day of a P3O course, were the delegates and I were more than a little interested in whether it is consistent with the P3O guidance.

Well, it broadly is.

My first impression is that it is good and takes us further in agreeing what senior managers should already be doing in larger organisations, whether they give it the title of 'Portfolio Management' or not.

After listing five key principles the book begins to set out a clear cyclical process.

Then it takes a somewhat disconcerting turn - not of content but of presentation.

My problem is with some of the techniques. My first reaction to some of the techniques for prioritising initiatives were, whilst being suitably sophisticated, they came over as very complex. I think this might deter many a senior manager from going further.

As we know from Management Dashboards these days, senior management needs rolled-up summaries, perhaps with supporting text, perhaps with the ability to drill down to offending detail from what they see. But some of the treatment in the Guide seems to dive down to such an extent that it would incline many a legitimate senior reader simply to give up.

I feel that much of the content of this first edition is the rightful province of the Portfolio Analyst, the  professional who sets out the choices for these senior decision-makers.

It is purely an issue of presentation, but nevertheless an important one. The management of portfolios is an emergent area and it needs selling to senior management teams many large organisations. Reading this cold could put them off, IMHO.

Learning in the Cloud Pt.2

This week finds me leading a P3O Practitioner course. (The delegates have all taken their Foundation Paper - and passed with good marks (!) - and now they are preparing for their Practitioner paper later this afternoon.)

Again I've been experimenting with a shared Evernote notebook with the class. See my previous post on this.

What is beginning to emerge for me is that this is a very helpful way of gathering topic-based resources gathered through Evernote. I've brought together here for the class references to items touched upon in the class discussion but not adequately defined in the set materials. P3O, as with most of the OGC Best Management Practice Guides, pulls in concepts, techniques and tools from a diverse range of management areas.

For example, this week the question of 'What is a Requirement Planning Tool?' came up, and I was able to insert into the notebook a definition from Wikipaedia, which in turn has illustrative references to Requirement Management tools.

As with the Change Management Practitioner notebook, I included my topic-specific reading list.

I suppose I'm wondering now if I should do this for every course event, or whether simply to maintain a growing and enriched shared notebook for all future delegates.

 

How to be a Leader

I write this here in Bombay (Mumbai), two thirds of the way through a very stimulating 3-city conference series at the invitation of APMG-India. I've been speaking on P3O (Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices), a very clumsy and obscurely-titled product from the OGC Best Management Practice stable that is really quite powerful and well written. I've  had some very positive reactions from Indian delegates, particularly to my use of Prezi.

One of my fellow presenters has been explaining MSP (Managing Successful Programmes). Now, MSP is close to my heart; I wrote large chunks of the present edition. So when this colleague touched on Leadership and said, "Of course, MSP doesn't give you much help in how you actually lead..." it made me think.

First, a best practice guide like MSP can't include everything. The brief is not to be an attempt at an exhaustive body of knowledge. Rather it positions topics such as leadership, benefits realisation, and so on, within the work of a programme; emphasises their importance; illustrates some major techniques perhaps; and shows the interconnections with other aspects vital to delivering a successful programme. It leads you into the subject. It doesn't attempt to be the last word on it.

However, my main issue with the observation that it doesn't explain the 'how to' of leadership is a misunderstanding of leadership. Leaders deal in direction and meaning. Managers manage process and tasks. For a manager, the 'how to' is very, very important indeed, but asking "Why" and attempting to answer that big question for any change - large or small - begins the journey of becoming a leader.

So let's not apply a management approach to conducting ourselves as leaders. Let us engage with finding and engaging with people on the reasons why we need this change, and why it is important them. Then we find we are beginning to grow as leaders.

 

Speaking at Best Practice Showcase in India next week

I've been invited to speak at APMG-India's launch conference across three cities next week. The organisers have asked me to speak on P3O (Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices) which I delighted to do. I'm agreat fan of this management guidance. It has helped me an others make sense of an otherwise confusing management landscape - how to control and make agile timely decisions at a senior level across a complex mix of projects and programmes.

I'll be using the metaphor of a backbone (hence the diagram). We have found clients can exploit a P3O framework to support the frame of the 'change investment' - all the projects and programmes that are happening - as well as using it as a conduit vital and immediate central nervous system supporting timely decision-making.

If there is anybody reading this that will be there, please come and say, "Hello'" to me.

The Conference runs  from Tuesday evening in Bangalore, then Mumbai, finishing on Friday evening in Delhi. Will I get a Tour T-shirt at the end with the dates and cities printed on the back, I wonder? :)

A Model of Everything

The Holy Grail of the physical sciences, we are told, is the “Theory of Everything”. By this

I understand scientists to mean a single unifying theory that underpins the Universe, from the behaviour of the smallest atom to the movements of the 100 billion galaxies. We are seeing different sciences peek over their boundaries to others and realise that they are attacking different facets of our physical world with very similar models.Could there be a unifying theory that explains everything? That is the great quest.

In recent years we have seen something similar happening with the changing shape of management methods.  Models of change and methods from previously separate areas – such as project management and organisation development – are now beginning to ‘talk to each other’ and synthesise. We are seeing the emergence of common terms and of what some call ‘joined-up thinking’.

This is particularly evident in the area pearcemayfield comes from: methods and models whose development has been sponsored by the UK’s OGC and promoted by APM Group. Over the last fifteen years we have seen a convergence of language and a dovetailing of models in the following:

·         Project management (PRINCE2®)

·         Risk management (M_o_R®)

·         Programme management (MSP®)

·         Change management

·         Portfolio, programme and project support and assurance (P3O®)

·         IT service management (ITIL®), and

·         Maturity models (e.g. P3M3)

The OGC ownership of these has been significant in that it has worked towards convergence in successive publications of PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R, for example, in a way that the ‘free market’ of ideas in business and academia might not have achieved so fluently; hence the significance of all the Registered Trade Marks above.

In particular, I would point to two ‘unifying’ pieces in particular:

1.       P3O, which has a unifying diagram. The position of a P3O system of support and assurance is such that it must move across all these different management areas with some kind of cohesion. A P3O insists on joined-up thinking.

2.       Change management. Although not yet adopted by OGC, this has been pioneered by APM Group. As a topic it is far too inclusive to insist on neat boundaries, such as with PRINCE2 project management. Effective change involves thinking about strategy, values, benefits realisation management, individual motivation, leadership … the works.

As we introduce clients to more members of this family of models, we are less likely to show disjointed links. Rather we find clients appreciate how much the recent editions of PRINCE2(2009)  and MSP(2007) build upon one another and other approaches.

Of course, we would claim some credit for that, having had a pearcemayfield author on both….:)

Traffic in India: a self-organising system

What happens when:

1. Everyone disobeys the formal 'rules'?
2. Everyone observes consistent values?

Answer: you get an unlikely emergent property.

I've just come back from a trip to India, where I was delivering a P3O course to a very agreeable and able group of consultants. (All passed with flying colours.) Since this was my first trip to this fantastic country I was, like most westerners, fascinated by the etiquette in the apparent chaos of traffic. It looks dangerous - and it probably is by our standards - but it seems to work. (See video below.)

'Respect' is a high value in India. Also, there is a pecking order, my driver told me:

• Lorries and buses
• Cars
• Rickshaws
• Motorcycles
• Pedestrians

There is a sort of precedence according your vehicle 'caste'.

Emergence and emergent property are concepts we try to illustrate in our changement management training. Now I have an excellent example from first hand experience.

A False Sense of Urgency

I’m enjoying John Kotter’s latest book, ‘A Sense of Urgency’. For those who know Kotter’s work and his 8-step change model, they will recognise this as the first step in his model. 

Kotter suggests that a lot of change initiatives fail at this first step: either the sense of urgency is not high enough, or complacency has not been reduced. Immediately I began to think in terms of Lewin’s force field analysis (see
 diagram). 

However, he goes further and explores the idea of a false sense of urgency: frenetic activity that is unfocussed and unaligned with strategic issues. I recognise this. I’ve seen this. To my shame, I’ve done this.

In recent years we have seen the rise of portfolio management, and responses to supporting this has been a Portfolio Office as part, perhaps, of a P3O system of support and assurance. One of the keys to practising effective management of a change portfolio is strategic alignment: making sure all the projects and programmes tell, contribute to the war effort as expressed in the organisation’s strategy. If they don’t it simply produces a lot of motion without movement, a lot of busyness without any real and lasting benefit. 

I was schooled in Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  where in the Habit 'Put First Things First', Covey develops a strong distinction between the 'Urgent' and the 'Important', arguing that many confuse the two. In the 7 Habits analysis we engage with two types of 'Urgent': the non-Important (perhaps other people's important) and the Important Urgent. It seems to me that what John Kotter is describing a false sense of urgency is, in Covey's terms, the Unimportant Urgent, but almost at an organisational level.

So who defines what is 'important' within the organisation. Leaders do. This is a fundamental job of leadership. Leaders clarify meaning, explain what is important to everyone they seek to influence.

I’m getting too old for aimless thrashing about. Now I need to use my energy and the energy of the organisation as a whole wisely. As a leader, I need to make it tell. So I appreciate Kotter's analysis of a false sense of urgency and how to identify the real thing.

I’ll write more on this book shortly.

New P3O Practitioner Qualification

The mysteriously-named P3O (which stands for 'Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Offices') is the most recent new branch of best management practice guidance to emerge from the UK Government's Office of Government Commerce (OGC). OGC is also responsible for commissioning PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R. 

The point is that P3O has been generating quite a number of growing enthusiasts since its launch about 12 months ago. We have already helped several organisations use this management framework to improve their delivery of programmes and projects.

Over the last year we have welcomed quite a broad church of delegates: some were senior managers directly involved in shaping and implementing strategy, others were logistical support people in project offices. This led to a few interesting challenges in designing and delivering a learning experience that engaged everyone, but without exception every P3O Foundation course we have run has stimulated and stretched everyone involved.

We launched our P3O training to the only syllabus and qualification available at the time - Foundation level. The Foundation paper is a set of multiple-choice questions testing one's knowledge of the P3O guide. Our experience has been that nearly all of our delegates really appreciate what P3O has to offer, but the Foundation exam? Well, they find it slightly 'under-whelming'. People want to go deeper and apply it.

On Friday I and few other training leaders were invited by APM Group to be briefed on the new P3O Practitioner qualification. If you have taken a PRINCE2 or MSP Practitioner exam recently you will be familiar with the format: a realistic scenario against which questions explore the application the framework, as well as testing one's evaluation against P3O work done by people within the scenario.

We sat two papers, the first as a 'warm up', and we sat the second knowing that we had score 66% or more to qualify. (No pressure, then!) The exam paper has 7 question categories, with 10 questions within each. We found the questions varied in difficulty and covered all the syllabus areas, as well as testing us on application at the portfolio level, as well as at the programme and project levels. We were given two hours (2 1/4 hours normally) and I found this more than adequate - I had half an hour left to spare.

On the basis of this, we will be designing and launching a combined P3O Foundation and Practitioner course shortly - probably a public course for December or January. My initial thoughts are that this combined course will be about 4 days duration - but don't hold me to that!

If you would like to be kept notified of course for this Practitioner level exam, please register your interest here.

Missing Link, Gold Mine or Glue?

Now we have run some early P3O courses, how is the Guide and the course being received?

From the courses I've personally delivered, I've found this a very positive experience. P3O seems to generate some stimulating discussions on our 2-day course and is emerging in the minds of these early delegates as the 'Missing Link' in Best Management Practice Guidance from OGC about change through programmes and projects.

Last week, I trained a group of consultants in the Netherlands, and their consensus was that the Guide was a Gold Mine of nuggets that they could immediately use with their own clients. For example, the Value Matrix was a keen topic of conversation.

Whilst in the UK, a senior manager from the public sector said to me:

"The P3O model is the 'glue' [between portfolio, programme and project management]."

Here is an example of an early discussion in the Guide on 'Balancing the Portfolio' as we've represented it graphically in this Mind Map:

As an executive director myself, I found this helpful and clarifying in how we in pearcemayfield engage with our own change agenda.

So how has P3O been received so far? I would say it is creating a growing 'buzz' and a growing community of enthusiasts.

P3O, Portfolio Management