Welcome to the September Bulletin
With the new academic year on us we thought it might be timely to look at the theme of work-based learning. At CITI we have always believed that practical application of sound principles is a powerful development approach. We’ve never had faith in the ‘sell a man a fish and your feed him for a day’ philosophy; we’ve always preferred to ‘teach him how to fish so that he is fed for life’. But such an approach means breaking out of the confines of the classroom and putting a rod in the student’s hand and stand with them at the water’s edge; you can’t learn to fish in theory alone.

Enough of the analogies, lately, over the last few years, we have seen an increasingly common trend amongst several of our clients who are benefiting disproportionately from experiential learning based approaches. The latest epitome of this is the 70:20:10 model of individual and corporate development so this month we are going to focus on this.

Some might argue it is a formalisation of what already happens in reality; others that there is nothing new under the sun as 70:20:10 harps back to the day of the old-fashioned apprenticeships and yet others might suggest that it is little more than management consultant hyperbole and ‘spin’. Whatever the truth, In this issue of the Bulletin, we’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons of such an approach.

In addition we provide a round-up of the latest Project Challenge and also offer access to CITI’s new corporate video.

We hope you enjoy your copy of Bulletin and, as ever, look forward to your feedback and input.

Your comments and questions are welcome – or feel free to join the debate by commenting in the linked articles!

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The logical step, for him, was to focus on the ‘engine of change’ – individuals and their belief systems. Working in a wide variety of change projects and programmes, in both public and private sectors, Nick has been particularly successful in helping individuals at all organisational levels to review and, where appropriate, positively modify beliefs and behaviours.

In a vague attempt to keep the consequence of Nick’s passion for cooking, food and drink at bay he tries to squeeze in as much cycling, swimming and hill walking as possible.

Nick can be contacted by phone on +44 (0)1908 283 600.

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They shape the very way the group conceive of their purpose. For this reason it’s very hard to deliberately shift the ‘deep’ culture. Attempts to do so often evoke the characteristic cycle of resistance, anger, and poor morale, with enormous disruption to activities and loss of invaluable informal patterns of relationship and procedure.
Yet, all healthy cultures constantly evolve. An organisational structure evolves in response to changes in the environment, guided in part by its culture, but at the same time the culture itself adjusts to the changing demands of the structure and the environment. But when the rate of change demanded by the environment requires specific organisational
responses, it is no longer safe to rely on unmanaged ‘evolutionary’ cultural change. After all, evolution has left humans with appendixes, ear lobes and a propensity for bad backs!

For many organisations, managed successful cultural change is not an option – it’s a fundamental requirement. All the usual caveats of leadership, clarity of objectives, and commitment from the top go without saying, but how do you actually make it happen? Real cultural change is a dynamic process. It depends on a constant re-examination of the
effectiveness of the methods used and constant vigilance to detect the establishment of informal fiefdoms and unofficial perks arising from weak points in funding control, as these often provide the focus for people’s resistance to change.

A key factor influencing acceptance is the balance between rewards offered by new opportunities and penalties incurred by old behaviours. Large institutions are most vulnerable
to cultural ossification because the opportunities and penalties are rarely linked directly to individual behaviours, and the shared ‘higher’ values of the ‘deep’ culture always show strong self-preservation tendencies.

The problem is that, as Francis Bacon said years ago, “He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for time is the greatest innovator”. And the times have changed – unless an institution changes to match them it, de facto, has changed whether it meant to or not. Projects are now too signifi cant a part of most organisations’ investment to let them be. You are going to have to dust off the cultural change process and get it to work.

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For those less than familiar with the 70:20:10 model it is, in essence, a formalisation of what has long been recognised as one of the most effective ways to learn. It proposes that only 10% of an individual’s development time should be spent in the classroom undertaking formal education or training. 20% of development time should then be directed at structured learning events which are relevant to the workplace and not conducted in formal training environments; for example work-shops or coaching schemes. The vast majority of development, 70%, is to take place in the working environment through managed exposure to the full variety of experiences any role might be expected to encounter.

This is where the model mimics reality; as far back as medieval times the guilds of individual trades recognised the value of work-related experience to learning. The entire concept behind the apprenticeship and the journeyman was that you couldn’t reasonably learn your trade to a skilled level without five years of experience in practice. Indeed, to this day, some professions, notably medicine and the law, appear to implicitly recognise this as they continue to style their work as ‘practice’ – you never become the finished article because you are expected, and expect, to constantly develop. The current National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) scheme could be viewed as an attempt to replicate these time-honoured behaviours in a contemporary context. But herein lies the rub; many people appear dismissive of the NVQ as a cynical attempt to short-cut formal education or rigorous professional training.

If this sounds a bit like Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses “The University of Life, Faculty of Hard Knocks”, well, that might be because it is very close to that. What differentiates it however is how well structured and managed it is. Everyone is familiar with that old adage that fifteen years in the same job does not necessarily equal fifteen years of experience. It can simply be one year of experience repeated fifteen times. The trick with the 70:20:10 model is to avoid this potential pitfall. This is achieved through understanding the full range of experiences that a role occupant might reasonably encounter given their level of skill, ability and responsibility. This understanding can then be broadened out in a managed and safe way to guide development to a shape that suits both them and their employer.

The attractions are self-evident. With structured development based on what is happening to you and around you in your own work environment the learning is immediate (there is no delay whilst you try and equate classroom theory to practical application). It is also clearly relevant as the problems are real and your solutions either succeed or fail to varying degrees and, often, in short order. Peer support and advice is available from colleagues who share the same environment and constraints rather than through theoreticians. Perhaps most importantly the ‘pay-back’ on the development investment is more-or-less immediately apparent.

However the problem doesn’t lie with the concept or the framework; it is more with the behaviours and attitudes to those that operate and are affected by it. The two potential pit-falls are firstly the learners’ engagement with the process and their ownership of their own development. Secondly the degree of management focus on an individual’s development needs and their contribution to promoting and managing the development process in partnership with their direct reports is crucially important.

Without an explicit focus on their development it is easy to let the ‘day job’ dominate working life; in such situations development is piecemeal and at an organic rate of progress. At the same time it is hard for the developing worker to know what they need to learn because, by definition, they have not yet been exposed to it. Here is where effective management pays dividends; not only will they encourage and guide the learner’s efforts but management is ideally positioned to help identify the detailed learning needs having, as they do, an overview of both the role and the individual discharging it. They are also ideally placed to identify the necessary learning experiences and a safe environment in which they can be practiced.

This dependence on management, both by the learner and their manager, can prove one of the main stumbling blocks. With pressure to achieve whatever production or management targets the business sets it is easy to allow development to become the poor relation with insufficient focus on the individual’s needs or their contribution to the overall goal.

What appears to stand in the way of effective deployment of the 70:20:10 model is a lack of management comprehension, ability and appetite on behalf of both the learner and their manager. Yet, once harnessed we have witnessed its effects as transformational on not only individuals but also departments and even whole enterprises.

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The CITI Change Diamond® model was developed to structure the different facets of projects and change, linking value to costs, strategy with operations , and delivery to adoption, so that the investment of effort, time and money is channeled into the realisation of benefits not producing outputs – and thus focused on delivering effective and valued change.

The ‘change’ lifecycle in the CITI Change Diamond® is separated into three stages:

1. The first stage is to make the change wanted – this is the fundamental step of engaging stakeholders, establishing the value and aligning the outcomes with the values and needs of the business. From this come the benefits and business cases, the enterprise portfolio and the translation of the deliberate strategy to the emergent or delivered strategy.
2. The second stage is to make the change happen. Though much of the cost arises in the delivery side of the diamond, much of the really important work in structuring the organisation to achieve the benefits is done during this step. For many IT-intensive organisations, the management focus and urgency of making the delivery overwhelms the attention needed by the change process leading to its neglect – which is the cause of real difficulties later in converting the project deliverables into valued outcomes. The change diamond draws attention to change governance concerns that are often overlooked. Experience shows that by giving the change agenda primacy during this stage; reversing the common approach of defining the project and its strategy from an analysis of deliverables, tasks and resources and instead using the temporal and logical needs of the change to shape the way the project is planned and executed yields far better results.
3. The third stage, and the one least well addressed by many change processes, is making the change stick. Though this is where the value of the investment is returned, it commonly receives the least senior management attention. Making it stick means passing the baton on from informed teams heavily involved in delivering the change – whether as members of the project or as part of the change agency – to business-as-usual individuals with considerably less participation to date. ‘Tacking on’ benefits realisation to the end of project delivery is an unsafe and uncertain process.

The change diamond illustrates the linkages that can and should be established, and the impact on the flow of governance of the delivery and adoption processes of focusing on realising the value of project investment.

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This free event with 40 inspiring presentations also includes a seminar by CITI Principal Consultant Bernard Murray-Gates will be speaking on “Holding difficult conversation with senior managers” at 2:00pm.

This scenario occurs in projects and programmes time and again…At the outset of a change initiative, disagreements about a business change project or programme must be handled wisely to retain high stakeholder commitment and engagement.

Later in the change lifecycle (as setbacks and ‘bad news’ inevitably emerge) the project team can find themselves in the ‘firing line’: this situation also needs careful handling.

Bernard Murray-Gates, Principal Consultant at CITI, will discuss what you can do about some of the trickier challenges that can predictably arise when dealing with senior business stakeholders.

Find out more by going to:
http://www.projchallenge.com/case-studies-expertise-zone/

You can register by going to:
http://www.projchallenge.com/register/

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Case study Tesco – Business transformation programme

Value realised

Having a well-structured business transformation programme, with the projects organised to give rise to the necessary business changes, and led to the earlier release of benefits and a quicker embedding of operational improvements. The structuring dealt directly with the problems that the four-quadrant management style, which while so effective in optimising the operational capability of the organisation, had stalled progress in delivering change.

Engagement focus

Six months into the business transformation programme progress was stalled and dissent among stakeholders was growing. Projects were competing rather than collaborating in bringing about the necessary changes, with sponsors focusing narrowly on achieving their project’s purpose.

CITI analysed the business transformation programme interdependencies that existed within the programme and was able to demonstrate that the approach to sourcing and funding, which ultimately derived from the four-quadrant model used by Tesco was artificially creating interdependencies and it was these that were causing the programme to stall.

By taking a pan-quadrant approach we reduced the number of interdependencies from 54 to 11, and introduced two types of business transformation programme interface management meeting (PIMM No.1 and PIMM No.2) to address these irreducible eleven.

Approach to solution

With the focus now exclusively on the delivery of business change and the benefits they would bring about – progress was rapid. Using a number of CITI consultancy tools, we shaped and restructured the projects and what they produced into tranches so that the organisation could step from one transition state to another. One of the tools that starts ‘with the end in mind’, called BIP (benefits – impacts – projects) was used to create a clear route map – showing what was necessary to achieve the changes required – and in what order.

This led to significant modifications to the resourcing, the sequencing and the governance of the projects – and all were seen as positive gains by the Board as the momentum of the programme, measured in terms of delivered value was visibly increased. By taking this approach, we reduced the interdependencies between projects, realigned business sponsorship to focus on organisational gains rather than functional ‘wins’ – a problematical approach when large-scale cross-functional change is the outcome sought.

Lessons learned

Programmes are sets of projects that are interlinked and therefore have interdependencies. However, good design finds ways of reducing the number of interdependencies to an irreducible minimum and that is one of the keys to releasing the extraordinary power of business transformation programmes to bring about complex organisational transformations.

Models / tools used

Business transformation programme management evaluations
Business transformation programme consultancy
Benefit – impact – product modelling
Tranche construction
Programme management toolkit
RACI

Value proposition

You can read more about the strategies used during this engagement here:

Further reading

We also discuss business transformation programmes here:
http://www.citi.co.uk/orange-merger-programme-delivery/

Your thoughts?

What are your thoughts – do you agree with our approach, or do the symptoms sound like the ones you are experiencing in your organisation? We would love to hear from you either by adding a comment at the bottom of the page or by emailing one of our consultants at consultants@citi.co.uk – or call +44(0)1908 283610

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How can my PMO add more value to the business? – By Costas Chryssou, CITI
Today’s competitive global environment is forcing businesses to be more flexible, responsive to change and efficient than ever before. Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage is one of the biggest priorities and challenges that all organisations, in both private and public sectors, face.

How can I create a business-focused PMO? – By Julie Black, OfGem
There is something gratifying in being able to create order from a previously erratic project management landscape. In 2009 I was part of a team which was specifically set up as a PMO in response to a business problem. It was exciting to be part of a developing profession in the organisation, and by the time I left change was better controlled and implemented.

You ask the questions – By Hilary Small, CITI
In this month’s questions and answers column, Hilary Small answers the question “How can my PMO start to add more value to the business?”

Your comments and questions are welcome – or feel free to join the debate by commenting in the linked articles!

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Stopping projects early whitepaper

By Louise Worsley

Project culling is an essential part of the portfolio management process. The challenge is to ensure it is systematically and beneficially applied. Recent work by CITI has focused on the need for a project ‘culling’ process which maintains the linkage to the normal portfolio decision-making processes while taking into account the ‘termination risks’, i.e. the risks associated with stopping the project and realising the benefits from stopping the project.

Stopping projects early poorly is a ‘double whammy’ hit on portfolio performance. Not only are the planned project benefits lost or reduced, but cost savings anticipated from the termination are not realised. In a recent analysis of a three large portfolios which had undergone a ‘torrid’ cut-back exercise, we found that over 30% of curtailed project activities were continuing under the portfolio radar. In these cases the project office was reporting the projects as finished while effort, directly trackable back to the project, was still being applied in the organisation.

In deciding which projects to cull, we must therefore also consider whether we can be successful in turning off the effort and expenditure being applied to the project. If the focus of the culling is on reduction in costs; then can CAPEX costs really be avoided? If the focus is on release of resources; then how quickly and effectively will these resources really be redeployed?

To view the full Stopping projects early whitepaper, please supply your email address (to prove you are human!):

Further reading

We also discuss Stopping projects early here:
http://www.citi.co.uk/2009-spring-bulletin/

Your thoughts?

What are your thoughts – do you agree with our approach on stopping projects early, or do the symptoms sound like the ones you are experiencing in your organisation? We would love to hear from you either by adding a comment at the bottom of the page or by emailing one of our consultants at consultants@citi.co.uk – or call +44(0)1908 283610

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