Learning Leader

Navigating through Complexity: the MSP Flow Navigator

First, I wish everyone who reads this a Happy New Year!

At pearcemayfield we are continually innovating, mostly in small, but rapid improvements.

Recently we launched an online navigator for people who book on our transformational change MSP courses. This works as a sort of digital wall chart that you can pan, zoom and inspect how the transformational flow (process model) in MSP interrelates with key themes and documents, something that the traditional book format cannot convey.

The Navigator shows clearly, for example, how and where transition planning happens in the MSP scheme of things.

One of our talented associate trainers, Nathalie Collister, said:

 I just went through this in detail and I think it is an outstanding document. I like the fact that you go from overall picture to details. The explanations are clear and it's really easy to move around. It looks very snazzy. It is brilliant... Great work, very impressive.

And a customer who was re-sitting on one of our recent MSP Practitioner courses responded:

Thank you Patrick, this is great. Exactly what I need to help with my revision! See you next week.

(She passed, BTW!)

Here's a short instructional video I've uploaded for our MSP customers.

 

 

If you would like to access the chart, then book yourself on one of our courses, and we'll be pleased to give you access free of charge.

 

Related articles

Transition Planning and Leadership: the Cinderella of #Change?

Transition Planning and Leadership: the Cinderella of #Change?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been delivering a modular MSP Practitioner course ("Managing Successful Programmes") for our partner, Cardiff University, at their premises in Cardiff.

I was pleasantly delighted on a couple of counts. First, the delegates were a great group, from different backgrounds. It made for some fascinating discussions. Second, I realised it had been awhile since I had myself led our MSP course, and I really loved it! I enjoy the fact that this framework really can get its arms around adaptive change.

One of the core concepts in MSP is the idea of catering for transition, behaviour changes following what the projects deliver. And the model is pretty robust. I realised again that it is so powerful a concept that it pops up in a number of other places - behind some of the change management models we take people through on our Change Management Practitioner, in the newly-published Managing Benefits, and, of course, in Management of Portfolios.

So I've put what I have rehearsed many times with clients onto this video.

 

It seems to me, like Cinderella in the Fairy Tale, far too often the whole transition piece gets forgotten and isn't invited to the Ball. And this is a tragedy - for all concerned.

So it seemed to me appropriate, at this Christmas season, when Pantomimes, including Cinderella, are very much in people's minds, that I remind everyone of transition, the need to plan for it, resource it, and lead it.

P3O: The 'Big Idea'

 

 

I have found myself frequently sketching out the same diagram on what I see as the fundamental 'grand idea' behind P3O. So I have converted it to a sub-seven minute video.

Let me know what you think.

No time for change?

From strategy to implementing it, we bring programmes and projects into play. PPM (programme and project management) is the expertise about building new or changed stuff, delivering good change, right?

However, there are a still number of obstacles to achieving the prize, some of which lie with managers of operations.

One objection from operational managers is "We don't have time to lead change. The impact on the business must be minimal."

What's wrong with this response? What's behind it?

Apart from the obvious error of abdicating responsibility for leading the new operational change into a successful outcome to the PPM community, there are a couple of other systemic problems with this:

1. Lack of the big picture: such managers appear to be striving to minimise impact on the business, but the longer term impact is likely to be worse, but such managers do not see it. They are thinking and acting in a short-term perspective. There needs to be clear ways of showing them the big picture, such as OBASHI.
2. Lack of time: often these managers allow themselves to be fully assigned to other urgent matters of a more familiar, operational nature. It demands a conscious effort to push such matters back and spend priority time on matters that have a strategic priority.

Now, what is interesting about these two problems is that they lie at the opposite ends of the scale; the first is strategic, the second tactical. And yet they are related. "Think strategic and act tactically" is similar to "think globally and act locally". This will stretch people's abilities to the limit. They need help, but unless the first problem is addressed - seeing a compelling strategy and their own personal contribution in the strategic mix - they never not be ready to take on unfamiliar, risky work that could make them look incompetent.

What makes us tick: more lessons from the dark side

This week I've posted articles on Viktor Frankl, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Virginia Satir, all of whom have brought us valuable insights into how we deal with change from observing people in very bad situations - in a Death Camp and when told they are dying.

Forgive this rather morbid streak of posts this week, but it reminded me of what I wrote a while back about observations of patients who had critical cardiovascular disease. This was pulled together in Alan Deutschman's book Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life . In this instance these patients could do something about it. By lifestyle changes - more exercise, eating more healthily, giving up smoking, etc - they could either avoid costly invasive heart surgery or prevent the same thing happening again.

The remarkable evidence is that so few of them seemed to have the will power to sustain these life-giving habits longer than about six weeks! One in nine, in fact. And the same seems to be true of all of us.

However, Dr Dean Ornish, in remarkable research with a group of patients with acute heart disease, was able to buck this trend with a combination of:

  1. making the change radical. It seems we can engage with more radical change than keep with minor changes of habit. Others have pointed out that people are rallied to BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) or WIGs (Wildly Important Goals) that connect with emotions;
  2. repeat: positive visualization through meditation, etc., help establish new habits drawn by a positive vision rather than a negative threat; and
  3. relate: working in small support groups and communities where there is mutual accountability and encouragement.

Put these three things in place and it seems that 80% stuck with the changes some two years after, thus avoiding heart bypass surgery. Quite a reversal from the statistic of 9 to 1 against prevailing with a change, wouldn't you say?

There are vital lessons here for embedded transformational change in our organisations. Are these three things in place to help people form new habits and stick with them?

The Bookmark Test of Vision

I'm often asked for examples of good Vision Statements. Usually this is when talking to clients about the MSP approach to delivering such a profound change that the 'world' looks quite different once the change has been made; so called 'transformational change'. Bad vision statements abound. One client of ours has a document that sets out the vision over about eight pages of text(!!), mostly in abstract corporate language that leaves many in that organisation none the wiser, and if anything even more confused and skeptical.

Well I came across this example from a surprising source the other day. The image shown here is a bookmark, given to me by an associate who is working on a project to revitalise the museum in Abingdon, a town near where I live in Oxfordshire, UK. It contains several of the features of a good Vision Statement.

As you will see, it's short. Vision should be short. But this one has to be laid out on a bookmark. It's laid out in a series of bullet points, some clearly stating what in the 'old world' will be preserved, but describing the new from the client perspective.

Also, I find it quite appealing. I'd quite to visit this museum when this vision is realised.

And that's another characteristic of a good vision: it is verifiable, we will know when we are now living in the vision.

We often talk in business about the 'elevator pitch', getting your proposition across in the time it takes to travel in the elevator with the decision-maker. Maybe we should apply, in like manner, the 'bookmark test' to our vision statements.