The Capital Crime

A recently published, free e-book, ‘The Capital Crime’ focuses on the massive loss and waste of capital being perpetrated on an ongoing basis in most organizations across the world, through their executive management, failing to effectively ‘manage the management’ of projects and programs.

Cobb described his Paradox more than 15 years ago , but organisations still deliberately set up projects so they are almost guaranteed to fail and waste vast amounts of capital as a result. However, fixing Cobb’s Paradox and doing projects ‘right’ is only part of the answer, a wider capability is needed focused on using capital effectively in support the organisations strategy to generate real value for the organisation’s stakeholders!

We refer to this as ‘Project Delivery Capability’ or PDC; the e-book’s authors use a wider definition, ‘Value Delivery Capability’. Regardless of the name, we agree with Jed Simms, the only piece of the value delivery chain that is understood is the piece in the middle called ‘project management’. The surrounding envelope of organisational abilities to only start the ‘right projects’, set the selected projects up for success and then make effective use of the project deliverables to create value is poorly understood – the strength of a chain is defined by its weakest link, not its strongest!

The consequence of this lack of understanding of the ‘value chain’, at the very top of the organisation, is organisations setting their project up to fail, failing to support projects during their execution, and failing to make use of the project deliverables to generate value. The failure of any of these ‘weak links’ reduces the organisations ability to achieve its strategy and a return on investment. The associated waste of capital caused by sub-optimal project outcomes is the core of the ‘capital crime’ discussed in an easy to read ‘story’ format in the free e-book, ‘The Capital Crime’.

You are invited to download your copy of ‘The Capital Crime’ from: http://www.thecapitalcrime.com/