Project Assurance

Effective project and program governance requires a carefully measured balance between prudent and effective risk taking, allowing skilled project teams the flexibility to tailor and improve processes to enhance success and effective surveillance to ensure the organisation’s objectives are being achieved.

An excessive focus on ‘due process’ stifles innovation and improvement and can easily lead to ‘process induced failure’ where every one focuses on producing the correct document in preference to dealing with the information contained in the document… There is absolutely no point in being able to say that ‘every risk that adversely affected the project had been identified in the risk register’, if the risks could have been avoided by proactive management.

Good project management, good business management and good governance requires appropriate and timely action to mitigate or remove risks that can sensibly be managed, and recognition of the fact that the decision to take action is risky because there is no certainty the risk being mitigated would have occurred anyway: there is always a probability a risk won’t occur! Similar issues requiring balanced decision making occur across the full spectrum of project and program management.

Balancing the cost of action against the possible cost of inaction requires good business judgement; the definition of ‘good judgement’ being, ‘you are right more often than you are wrong’; not the ridiculous expectation of perfect foresight (it does not exist), nor systems that are biased in favour of ignoring preventative actions until it is too late.

The role of project surveillance systems should be focused on this type of issue assuring the organisation’s senior management and other stakeholders that their project and program management teams are making the best decisions to protect and enhance the overall value of the projects and programs to the organisation. ‘Due process’ is important, but only to the extent it either assists the decision making process or provides information that is required by law or regulation.

Our new White Paper ‘Proactive Project Surveillance’ looks at the different types of review and the way they can be structured to both assist the projects and programs being reviewed to generate value for the organisation whilst providing assurance to the organisation’s executives and stakeholders that the projects and programs are being managed effectively.

You can download the White Paper from: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1080_Project_Reviews.pdf

Stakeholder Circle in the ‘cloud’

The Stakeholder Circle® methodology and tools have been in use for several years. However, many potential business users found accessing the system difficult, with company policies preventing the installation of the necessary software.

By moving to ‘the cloud’ and transitioning to a standard Microsoft operating environment these issues should be in the past. Anyone on any computer platform can access the tool running on our secure servers and larger corporations can elect to install the system on their own intranets. The flexibility of ‘the cloud’ has also allowed us to offer an increased range of options to suite organisations of all sizes.

As part of the overall system upgrade, we have also enhanced our websites:

• Our Stakeholder Relationship Management website has been overhauled and is being progressively developed into the world’s leading resource for stakeholder management information. See: http://www.stakeholdermapping.com 
   
• The Stakeholder Circle website has been simplified and now focuses on the Stakeholder Circle® tools, methodology and a comprehensive help system, see: http://www.stakeholder-management.com

We have set up a separate server to allow interested people to try out the new ‘cloud’ version of the Stakeholder Circle® register on-line at http://www.stakeholdermapping.com/free-trial and your access information will be emailed to you within a few minutes.

Persilience: A key to success!

Persilience is something that is essential to success of any endeavour you undertake, whether it is achieving project success, business success or virtually anything else.

Definition:

Persilience: an amalgam of resilience and persistence that recognises the importance of both characteristics.
- Resilience is the ability to recover readily from adversity;
- Persistence is about perseverance, resolve and determination.

The two elements are not always combined in equal measure; sometimes you just need to get on with it (this is persistence) but at other times you need the strength of flexibility.

Resilient people bend before excessively strong forces, absorb the energy and then recover, if necessary reframe or modify their approach and move on, their personal integrity intact.

The origins of persilience

The idea of persilience came from a meeting earlier this year with colleagues in Paris where we were discussing the topic of successful implementation of programs in organisations. It was -10 degrees in Paris at that time. Despite (or because of) the extreme cold we met for dinner at a restaurant in the heart of Paris.

We were discussing the central theme – ‘what makes projects work?’ What is the key to success? A Brazilian colleague told me a story about a PM guru of the 80s who said was that you only needed one characteristic to be a successful PM – you had to be ‘tough!’

By ‘tough’ the guru meant being able to maintain faith and support in the project in the face of adversity and carry it through despite all setbacks. The meaning of the word ‘tough’ has changed over the years so we had a discussion about what word would best fit the characteristic – we didn’t disagree with the characteristic but needed a better word to describe it in today’s terms.

We decided that what was needed was a mixture of resilience and persistence in building and maintaining the relationships that mattered for PM success. And thus with the help of some fine wine the new blended word persilience was born.

Used wisely, the concept of persilience recognises Abraham Ribicoff’s concept of ‘the integrity of compromise’ where this is necessary and in the best interests of everyone whilst also allowing for stubborn persistence when ethical standards or other core values are being challenged.

Ethical persilience won’t resolve every problem but it can offer a benchmark characteristic for us all to aspire to achieving.

Real Risk Management

Are risk management and gambling are two side of the same coin? Both involve investing in an attempt to tip the outcome of future events in your favour so you are better off. The similarities between the two processes were highlighted in a Melbourne Comedy Festival show presented by English eccentric and holder of 4 world records, Tim Fitzhigham see: http://www.fitzhigham.com/

Apart from being a very enjoyable hour, we learned a lot about gambling in the 18th century around the time considerable intellectual effort was being put into understanding risk by mathematicians such as Gauss, Leibnitz and Newton. Most of the recorded bets involved the considerable redistribution of wealth, often involved one Lord’s ‘man’ doing something strenuous, dangerous or both against either the clock or another Lord’s ‘man’ and generally any horses involved in the bets did not survive. However, the amounts at stake would certainly focus ones attention on anything that may tip the odds in your favour……

Whilst the show was great fun, and the comedy festival wraps up this week for another year, I’m left wondering is there is any real difference between a bet on which raindrop will reach the bottom of the window first and responding to a bank’s suggestion to fix (or un-fix) the interest rate on your home mortgage which in Tim’s view is a bet against the bank on the difference between current interest rates and those that will be being charged in 5 or 10 years time??? I guess as he pointed out, we are all gamblers, only some of us know it! Certainly Tim’s effort to recreate 10 of the most bizarre recorded bets in history makes entertaining listening and involved some big stakes and some serious risk management…… or was that a just a bet????

Either way, the historical fascination with gabling has influenced modern language, bets were recorded in ‘Gentleman’s Club Betting Books’ – the origin of the term Bookie and Book Maker, and the original meaning of the term ‘stakeholder’ refers to the independent, trusted person who held the ‘stakes’ during the course of the bet.

Project or Management Failures?

Google ‘reasons for project failure’ and you get nearly 5 million responses! The question this blog asks is how many project failures are caused by project management shortcomings and how many failed projects were set up to fail by the organisation’s management?

The Project Delivery Capability (PDC) framework described in our White Paper Project Delivery Capability (PDC) offers a useful lens to separate the failings generated by project performance from those imposed on the project, inadvertently, or otherwise by organisational management.

The list below separates the root cause of failure into four categories based on this model:

Initiation: failures associated with project identification, business case development, requirements definition and portfolio selection; including establishing initial realistic time and cost budgets based on pragmatic risk assessments.

Project: failures associated with the project team failing to apply effective project management processes as defined in resources such as the PMBOK® Guide, ISO 21500 and PRINCE2

Support: failures associated with the lack of effective senior management support to the project (Capability Support), including inadequate sponsorship, failing to provide appropriate resources, inadequate business inputs, lack of direction/decisions and allowing excessive change.

Benefits: the failure to realise the intended value from the project’s deliverables associated with poor organisational change management, end use adoption and cultural resistance (for more on the overall scope of change see our White Paper, Organisational Change Management).

The table below is based on an amalgamation of dozens of lists found through a Google search.

Reason for Failure	Cause
Inadequate business case A good business case will clearly demonstrate the business benefit of delivering a project and define the objectives, requirements and goals.	Initiation
Undefined objectives and goals This is always a problem, if the organisation does not know what it wants, it is impossible to scope a project to deliver the ‘unknown’.	Initiation
Inadequate or vague requirements This is only a problem if the organisation fails to allow adequate time and appropriate contingencies in the overall scope of the project to define and firm up requirements. Defined requirements are essential for the project to be able to deliver a successful outcome.	Initiation
Unrealistic timeframes and budgets; unachievable objectives Fact free planning is always a problem. Initial ‘rough order of magnitude’ estimates need appropriate contingencies in the initial business case. The project outputs need to be feasible.	Initiation
Lack of prioritisation and project portfolio management Causing competing priorities leading to inadequate support and resourcing for projects.	Initiation
Estimates for cost and schedule are erroneous Estimates should be based on solid foundations. Unrealistic targets are unlikely to be achieved.	Initiation / Project
Failure to set and manage expectations Unrealistic expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled. From the start of the initiation through the life of the project effective communication to set and maintain realistic expectations is vital.	Initiation / Project
Business politics Lack of discipline within executive/senior management. Only present is the organisation is poorly governed and lacks a rigorous portfolio management process. Selected projects should be supported by management.	Initiation / Benefits
Cultural and ethical misalignment Misalignment between the project team and the business or other organization it serves will inevitably cause problems.	Initiation / Benefits
Lack of a solid project plan The failure to develop an effective project plan guarantees the project will fail. The type of planning required depends on the project methodology. Some specifics are included below	Project
Poor estimating Failing to use historical information, formulae, and questions to make sure that the estimate is not a GUESStimate.	Project
Poor processes/documentation Appropriate processes and documentation are essential for project success.	Project
Poor risk management All projects are inherently risky. Effective risk management reduces the degree of uncertainty to an acceptable level.	Project
Overruns of realistic schedule and cost estimates This is a project failing. Either due to poor management/motivation of the project team or poor risk assessment (leading to inadequate contingencies) or poor estimating.	Project
Failure to track progress Tracking progress against the plan and adapting performance is central to effective project management.	Project
Poor Testing Failing to adequately test project deliverables; including: - Poor requirements which cannot be tested - Failing to design a testable system - Failing to develop a realistic and effective test plan - Failing to test effectively with skilled staff - Inadequate time and budget allowed for testing.	Project
Poorly defined roles and responsibilities The organisations management is responsible for defining roles and responsibilities in the overall management stakeholder community; the project manager is responsible for the organisation within the project team.	Project / Support
No change control process / Scope creep A lack of effective change management processes is primarily a project failing, however, organisational management should require effective change management to be in place and support the change management processes.	Project / Support
Team weaknesses – Inadequate / incorrectly skilled resources Having people who are ill-prepared to complete a task can be worse than not having anyone. The organisation is responsible for providing adequate internal resources for the project, the project is responsible for defined training and procuring appropriate contracted resources.	Support / Project
Lack of user input The organisation is responsible for organising the necessary input from end users. The project is responsible for requesting and defining its needs and making appropriate use of the information provided.	Support / Project
Lack of management commitment / Lack of organisational support The organisation is responsible for properly supporting the projects it has initiated.	Support
Ineffective or no sponsorship Ineffective project sponsorship is almost a guarantee of failure.	Support
Poorly managed – project manager not trained/skilled The organisation is responsible for appointing an appropriate project manager and providing him/her with appropriate support, training and coaching.	Support
Inflexible processes and procedures, templates and documentation Any imposed process needs to be as light  as practical to meet the governance needs of the organisation without inhibiting the work of the project.	Support
Insufficient or Inadequate resources / lack of committed resources (funding and personnel) The organisation is responsible for properly resourcing the projects it has initiated. If the resources don’t exist or are already fully committed elsewhere, this is an initiation failure; if they are simply not made available it is a support failure.	Support / Initiation
Poor communication / Stakeholder engagement People tend to fear what they don’t know, therefore effective communication with stakeholders is vital if the project is to capture their support, and keep it. The project is responsible for project based communications; the organisation change manager (sponsor) is responsible for communication in support of the overall change initiative.	Benefits / Project
Poor or ineffective organisational change management The organisation has to implement, accept and use the project’s deliverables to generate value. Failures at the organisational change level mean most of the planned benefits cannot be realised.	Benefits
Stakeholder conflict The organisation is responsible for properly supporting the projects it has initiated. This includes the ‘through life’ management of stakeholders starting prior to initiation and continuing through to the realisation of the benefits.	Benefits
Inability or unwillingness to stop a project after approval ‘Death march’ projects destroy value. A key element of effective portfolio management is to stop wasting money and resources on projects that can no longer contribute value to the organisation.	Benefits

Of the 29 causes of failure outlined above, only 7 are exclusively the province of project management. The other 76% involve or are exclusively the province of the organisation’s general and executive management as part of an overall ‘Project Delivery Capability’!

This overall capability of an organisation to realise value from an investment in a project starts with selecting the right project to do for the right reasons, then doing the work of the project effectively and efficiently, and then making effective use of the project’s outputs to create value. Mess up any of the early stages and there are no benefits to manage. If the organisation fails to implement the changes effectively, the potential benefits are not realised.

The project manager is only responsible for the bit in the middle – the ‘doing of the project’, a steering committee, sponsor or other management entity is responsible for the beginning and end parts of the overall process involved in PDC. Even the 24% of failures assigned to project management have a link back to the role of the Project Director within PDC. The organisation should provide oversight, training and support to ensure effective processes are used by their project managers and teams. Conversely, a skilled project manager may be able to overcome some of the organisational failings identified above; by managing upwards and operating effectively within the organisation’s political systems a skilled project manager can cover some failings, others are fundamental and will result in a failure regardless of the efforts of the project team.

Therefore based on this table, it is reasonable to determine PDC is an executive and general management responsibility. The ‘project governance’ requirement within PDC is for the Board to ensure executive and general management accept this responsibility and excel in creating value for the organisation.

Based on this assessment, my personal feeling is we as project practitioners need to stop referring to ‘project failures’  every time a project fails to deliver the expected value and start talking about ‘business failures’ when the organisation’s  management fails to effectively manage or support the work and as a consequence, fails to achieve the intended/expected value.

Organisational Change Management

We have just posted a new White Paper that looks at Organisational Change Management. We have focused on ‘organisational’ for two reasons:

• Firstly, any significant change is a change to the organisation – projects and programs cause the change but the organisation has to adapt to the change.
• Secondly, the only valid purpose for a change is to create value and the only way to generate value is through sustained improvements (changes) in the way the organisation operates.

This new White Paper, WP1078 Organisational Change Management, consolidates and augments a range of posts over the last couple of years. The full set of original blog posts can be viewed at: http://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/category/governance/change-management

The Management of Project Management

A significant gap in the current standardisation of project, program and portfolio management relates to the senior management functions necessary to effectively manage the projects and programs initiated by the organisation.

Project Management, as defined by PMI, ISO21500 and a range of other standards commences when the project is funded, and concludes on the delivery of the outputs the project was established to deliver.

Program Management focuses on the coordinated management of a number of projects to achieve benefits that would not be available if the projects were managed in isolation. Different types of program have been defined by GAPPS ranging from optimising annual budgets to maintain a capability (eg, the maintenance of a railway system) through to creating a major change in the way an organisation operates.

Processes for identifying the best projects and programs for an organisation to invest in through portfolio management and tracking benefits realisation are also well defined within the context of strategic management, but are generally not as well implemented by organisations.

Finally the overall governance of organisations and its key sub-set, project governance is recognised as essential for the long term wellbeing of the organisation.

Within this overall framework, the element not well defined, that is essential to achieving the optimum benefits from the ‘doing of projects and programs’, is the organisation’s ability to manage the management of its projects and programs.

At the overall organisational level, the management of project management includes developing and supporting the capabilities needed to provide executive oversight and leadership so that the organisation is able to undertake projects and programs effectively. This includes the organisations ability to develop and enhance its overall project management capabilities, develop project and program managers and project team members, implement appropriate methodologies, provide effective sponsorship, and achieve the benefits and value the projects and programs were set up to facilitate.

At the individual department level, the ability to manage multiple projects in an effective way is equally critical. Typically the role of a Project Director, multi-project management differs from program management in a number of key aspects:

• There is limited correlation between the objectives of the various projects, eg a number of design and fabrication projects may each have a different external customer.
• The function is relatively stable and permanent (programs close once their objectives are achieved).
• The primary focus of this management function is resource optimisation, minimising conflicts and process clashes, and developing the project/program delivery capability of the department/facility.

A number of recognised roles such as the Project/Program Sponsor, project governance and PMOs contribute to the organisations ability to manage the management of projects and programs and develop effective multi-project management capabilities, what is missing is an overall framework that supports the ongoing development of these functions to facilitate the effective governance of projects, programs and portfolios.

Peter Morris and Joana Geraldi have recently published a paper focused on ‘Managing the Institutional Context for Projects’ (Project Management Journal, Vol.42, No.6 p20-32), this paper defines three levels of project management:

Level 1 – Technical ‘project management’; the processes defined in standards such as the PMBOK® Guide and ISO21500.

Level 2 – Strategic ‘management of projects’; the overall management of the project from concept to benefits realisation, starting with identifying and validating concepts, through portfolio selection to delivery and the creation of the intended value.

Level 3 – Institutional context; developing an institutional context for projects and programs to enable them to succeed and enhance their effectiveness. The focus is on creating an environment that encourages improved levels of success in all of the organisation’s projects and programs.

The theoretical framework described in Morris’ paper covers the same concepts (but from a different viewpoint) to the technical framework of organisational entities and roles defined in our White Paper, a PPP Taxonomy (and the linked White Papers focused on specific elements of the structure), see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1074_PPP_Taxonomy.pdf

What developing the PPP Taxonomy identified within our White Papers, and Morris highlights in his paper, is the critical need for organisations to develop an intrinsic capability to manage the overall management of projects and programs. Over the next few weeks I hope to complete two additional White Papers to start filling this gap:
- The Management of Project Management – the institutional context.
- Multi-project Management – the departmental context.

In the meantime, a PPP Taxonomy defines the overall project governance and control framework these two critically important elements fit within.

On reflection, many of the project and program failures identified in our earlier posts as generic ‘governance failures’ are likely to be shown to be directly caused by the absence of systems designed to ‘manage project management’, this is still a governance failure but now the root cause of some of these failures may be able to be specifically defined.

This is an emerging area of thinking, you are invited to download the White Papers and post any thoughts, comments or disagreements, as well as make use of the ideas to help improve your organisations. There’s a long way to go, at present there’s not even a clearly defined term for this aspect of project governance/management……

No sensis® and no sensitivity

In October 2011 we were persuaded to switch our Australian Yellow Pages advertising from print to on-line media, based on a shift in sensis’ overall direction. The package and price offered was good.

The process of sensis staff creating the advertisement took several weeks rather than several days despite me supplying a complete set of text for the advertisement (but I was assured there would be no bills from senses until the work was done). Delays in completing the work and publishing the advertisement cut out all sales opportunities pre Christmas 2011.

Before the advertisement was live, we had received a bill for the work that at the time had not been done contrary to earlier promises. A written objection was lodged in early December. To date no action has been taken on this written complaint by senses apparently ‘the complaint is in the queue….’ But this has not stopped their credit department following up on monies that were billed for work not done – a potential breach of the Trade Practices Act.

Dozens of phone calls later, in mid January 2012 the situation remains:

1. No one from senses has contacted me (apart from the credit people)
2. The advertisement as created by senses is incorrect and inaccurate and has not been corrected despite numerous telephone calls
3. I’m now being billed monthly for an advertisement that is wrong and does not reach our specific market – we are refusing to pay this bill as well
4. No information has been provided on how to manage the advertisement and its on-line content
5. Telstra/sensis management continue to hide behind call centre staff who have generally been more then helpful as individuals but are helpless when faced with internal bureaucracy and indifference

To add insult to injury, the on-line form for contacting sensis in writing has been defective since December 2011 and every telephone call takes over 30 minutes ‘on-hold’ before contact is made with the call centre staff, who listen to the complaint, log the call and escalate the problem again so that nothing happens.

My strong recommendation to any small/medium business operator is to do almost anything with your on-line marketing budget other than wasting your time with the incompetent systems created by sensis. You may be lucky to get things 100% right first time otherwise forget any notion of customer services – based on my experience, as far as sensis is concerned anything they do is good enough and you should be grateful, even if as a small project management training company, you get listed as a miner.

Maybe in 2 to 3 years time the glacial bureaucracy within sensis may have worked out how to implement on-line systems that are responsive to their customer’s needs, until then the cost of the time you will wast trying to deal with their processes will be 5 to 10 times the cost of any bill for the actual advertising.

Change is essential

If you don’t like change you had better get used to irrelevance! By 2006, of the approximately 60 highly successful companies listed in ‘In Search of Excellence’ (1982, Tom Peters & Robert H. Waterman, Jr.) and ‘Built to Last’ (1994, Jim Collins & Jerry Porras), only 33% remained as high performers (source: Beyond Performance, Scott Keller & Colin Price). Of the rest, 20% had ceased to exist and 47% were struggling.

The message from ‘Beyond Performance’ is that focusing on current performance such as return on capital is never enough. The primary driver for long term success is focusing on the health of the organisation, supported by performance. Sustained excellence needs an organisation that has a vision of a medium and long term future as well as performing effectively in the current environment. This requires investment in change to meet those futures with no guarantees the investment will pay off, in the short-term, or at all.

A ‘healthy’ organisation has a clear sense of direction, inspirational leadership and an open and supportive culture of shared beliefs. Within the organisation, the people are motivated and empowered to take responsibility and accept accountability for their work, within a coordinated and controlled environment that deals effectively with risks, issues and opportunities. The organisation is effectively governed and designed by its leaders to execute strategy effectively; it is outwardly focused on a wide range of stakeholders and most importantly, creative and innovative.

But innovation is not enough; the key enabler of sustained excellence is the ability to implement change! This requires good project capabilities to transform innovative ideas into the elements needed to enable the change such as new processes, products or procedures, supported by the ability to implement the change effectively within the organisation to realise the benefits. There is no magic formula for this; different styles of leadership can be equally effective. However, what is certain is that organisations that don’t create the ability to continually change and grow quickly fade into irrelevance as the world around them moves on.

This applies equally to private sector companies and government departments and agencies – there are very few government processes that can’t be privatised, commercialised or simply abandoned if the public service executive don’t rise to the challenge. Australia Post makes a profit for the Government; the Royal Mail in the UK carries far more mail over far shorter distances with a far greater population density and charges far more for its stamps but despite all of these advantages is only marginally profitable through the sale of property assets – guess which organisation’s future is in serious doubt!

All types of organisation need to embrace the ability to change or the cultural inertia I’ve been discussing in a series of posts over the last few weeks will have its inevitable consequences sooner or later.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast 2!

In my first post on this topic I suggested that:

• Even where a smart business has aligned the project with a sensible/necessary strategic intent, and then properly leads and resources the effort, failure is still likely if the power of culture is ignored.
   
• And culture can be loosely defined as ‘the way we do business here’ and incorporates attitudes, expectations and the way both internal and external relationships work. The people in the organisation are there because they can operate in the culture as it currently is and embody the culture; they are predisposed to resist change.

This post looks at the entrenched nature of culture and its affect on change.

Surveys by the Australian Institute of Management and others consistently show that around 30% of people in an organisation are looking to leave; which means 70% are content. This majority are comfortable within the current status quo and know how to ‘work the system’ to their advantage. The 30% who aren’t happy may be open to change but are also already disaffected and therefore probably disinterested.

Introducing a new ‘best practice’ will inevitably change the status quo and change the relative power balances within the organisation. A couple of examples:

• The organisation decides to introduce an effective scheduling system (possibly supported through a PMO). The people involved in doing the schedule gain ‘power’ they develop the schedule and report progress against the plan. The project teams lose power, they need to conform to the plan (losing the flexibility to do what they feel like on a day-to-day basis) and failures to achieve the schedule are highlighted to management much sooner than if the schedule was not being used. We can prove having an effective schedule improves the probability of project success (see: Proof of the blindingly obvious), but what’s good for the organisation as a whole is not necessarily going to be seen as good by the individuals affected by the ‘improvement’.
   
• The organisation decides to introduce a Portfolio Management process to select the best projects to undertake to achieve its strategy, within its capacity to properly support the work. This is a great strategic initiative that maximises the value to the organisation but will mean rejecting more the 60% of the potential projects it could do if it had unlimited resources. This means 60% of the pet projects supported by various members of the executive will be canned! Which means these people will lose power and status firstly to the team making the portfolio decisions and secondly to the executives whose projects were selected. Another group disadvantaged by the selection process (or more accurately the rejections) are the teams who develop the idea and build the business case for the non-selected projects.

In both cases what’s good for the organisation is potentially bad for a large group of individuals who are currently happy and effective working within the current culture and structures of the business – if they weren’t happy they would not be there!

In Culture eats strategy for breakfast! #1, I raised the concept of creating ‘space’ in the existing culture for the change initiative to move into and fill. This ‘space’ is created by crafting a general acceptance within the culture that the current status quo is not working well for the majority and some sacrifice of existing power and ‘comfort’ is generally warranted for the good of each individual as well as the organisation. This objective can be achieved in a number of ways:

• by identifying a ‘clear and present danger’ that is threatening the group and the organisation as a whole – the need to change to survive;
• alternatively a competitive challenge to beat an opposing organisation may work or;
• best but most difficult to achieve a engendering general striving for excellence simply to be part of something great.

Engendering the move towards accepting or desiring the change requires powerful leadership embodying credibility and a clear message that identifies the reason for the change and generates buy-in to the concept of changing and improving before the specifics are even discussed. This leadership has to come from the top! (see more on leadership)

The more established the ‘culture’ is the harder creating the desire for change becomes. Small and medium sized businesses can link the well being of the business to the benefits of the individuals far easier than large businesses. Commercial organisations can link their success to the well being of individuals far easier than stable government organisations with permanent employment as part of the public servant’s culture. The more resistant the culture, the more important effective leadership linked to powerful communication becomes in creating the space for change.

Once the ‘space’ has been created and the desire to improve is generally present, a careful two-way dialogue is needed to define the best options for change and build engagement, to recognise those who will inevitably lose power or be inconvenienced by the change and to help these ‘losers’ re-gain their losses (or perceive a better future despite the losses). Altruism is wonderful but it is unwise to rely on it as the primary mechanism for change.

There will always be resisters to change, the challenge is to shift the majority to a point where they want the improvements (or at least recognise the changes are essential). In addition to leadership, this also requires effective stakeholder management (see more on stakeholder management ). Once this shift is achieved, traditional change management processes cut in to deal with the implementation of the change, supported by project management processes to create the necessary deliverables to implement the change.

However, if the organisation fails to create the ‘space’ in its existing culture for the new processes to work within, the existing culture will definitely eat the intended strategy for breakfast!