Book of Questions

Strategy & Organization In the fifth century BC, Sun Tzu wrote: "In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death. A road either to safety or ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected… Know your enemy, know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster… The supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." The future success of any company - whether it is a large holding company, a subsidiary, a start-up, or a public body - depends on how effectively the organization adjusts to new challenges and continuous change. What are the barriers to organizations implementing the organization strategy? Some of them I identified below, but I’m sure there are more: · Level of overall organizational maturity · Minor Internal Resistance for Changes of progressive improvement · People like to do things the way how they did it before · Age factor of employees · Organizational Structure · Clear defined roles and responsibilities · Poor communications · Governance Model · Clear understanding of Org strategy · Autocratic processes in Organization · Government Regulations · Market Changes/Dynamics · Competitors plans and actions · Legal and Regulatory Compliance · Fair of changes that people may lose their jobs or positions · Fair of increased business risks · No internal trainings how to use new processes and template documents · Not every department or division is adopting new processes and / or new templates at the same time · Poor prioritization of the changes – H/M/L · Leadership change during strategic changes · Not timely decision making · Poor Leadership · Same team working on Ops activities and projects · Understanding of risks associated with strategic changes (internal and external) · Selection of right projects at the right time · Corresponding business goals not aligned with new org strategy · Technological changes Achieving fundamental change in an organization is at least a 2 to 3 year process, but organizations often run out of energy or lose focus after 9 to 15 months. Each Organization in order to avoid barriers listed above should avoid the following mistakes during the implementation of the new organizational strategy. Starting too late · Pressure to act quickly undermines values and culture · Leaders take drastic steps quickly with no time to explore alternatives · Values about participation, involvement, or concern for people disappear · Cynicism grows No winning strategy · The best strategic change program in the world won’t do any good if organization doesn’t have a strategy for getting where it wants to go Fanfare · Too often organizations announce big strategic changes and new programs with big events and fanfare, but then very little actually happens · The initial energy and enthusiasm fades, specific changes are never identified let alone implemented, results aren’t realized, managers don’t adjust, or maybe something better comes along leading to a new ‘launch’ with new fanfare Employees hear from the media first · Journalists dig for information, and items can run in the media before employees hear about them · Middle managers look dumb and uninformed · Employees feel insulted and left out Failure to make a compelling and urgent case for change · Failure to create a strong sense or urgency causes a change movement to lose momentum before it gets a chance to start · Establishing a true sense of urgency without creating an emergency is the first objective achieved to overcome the routine of daily business Only focusing on the rational elements · Organizational change will be extremely difficult in most cases if managers rely only on making a case to the rational, analytical, problem-solving side of the brain · Instead, they must also make an emotional case for change and align the rational and emotional elements of the appeal · Before you can get buy-in, people need to feel the problem Not dealing proactively with resistance · Managing resistance to change is challenging and it’s not possible to be aware of all sources of resistance to change · Expecting that there will be resistance to change and being prepared to manage it is proactive step · It’s far better to anticipate objections than to spend your time putting out fires, and knowing how to overcome resistance to change is a vital part of any change management plan Lack of communication · Change management communications need to be targeted to each segment of the workforce, and delivered in a two-way fashion that allows people to make sense of the change subjectively Not enough leadership · Too many leaders focus too much on management and too little on leadership Ignoring current corporate culture · All change in organizations is challenging, but perhaps the most daunting is changing culture · When people in an organization realize and recognize that their current organizational culture needs to transform to support the organization’s success and progress, change can occur. · Do not under-estimate the status of quo culture · Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner Failure to understand and shape the informal organization · Organizations usually have networks and coalitions of people that are not visible on the formal Org chart. There networks and coalitions help shape opinion · They can either accelerate or retard change. Ignoring or circumventing these groups can result in actual resistance Not involving the employees · Leaders must actively involve the people most affected by the change in its implementation · This will help ensure employees at all levels of the organization embrace the proposed changes Over-reliance on structure and systems to change behavior · Structural and systems changes help create a new context and orientation. And they have the surface appeal of being visible and fast · But people do not become different just because you put them in a new context Failure to distinguish between decision-driven and behavior dependent change · Getting people to change their behavior requires a different mindset and a different set of leadership skills than making decisions about strategy Lack of skills · Change does not happen through goals and exhortation alone. Like any business operation, it also calls for the right skills and resources · Organizations often simply fail to commit the necessary time, people, and resources to making change work · Paradoxically, successful behavior change often demands the very skills the change is trying to create Focusing only on the long term · Large-scale organizational change is a long process · Break down your vision into smaller short-term goals, and communicate short-term successes at each opportunity Failing to plan small successive successes · An important part of sticking to the vision is to create opportunities to achieve smaller goals along the way · These small successes will not only work directly toward achieving the desired change, but will create positive feelings of accomplishment and the drive to pursue the next goal Assuming that change is complete once initial goals are achieved · If you declare victory too soon, the focus will be taken away from your efforts, and all traces of your hard work could soon disappear · Successful companies consistently re-evaluate their change efforts to determine where area can be improved, such as employee development and retention, new projects and new systems and structure Conclusion: Strategy is an art and science, and metaphorically, confining ocean into lake or expanding galaxy into universe is her greatest art and defining what is real and what is not real is her pure science.

PPM provides Project Managers in large, project-driven organizations with the capabilities needed to manage the time, resources, skills, and budgets necessary to accomplish all interrelated tasks. It provides a framework for issue resolution and risk mitigation , as well as the centralized visibility to help planning and scheduling teams to identify the fastest, cheapest, or most suitable approach to deliver projects and programs. Assessing risk at the project, portfolio, and business levels helps us understand risk, make better decisions, negotiate fair contracts, create risk mitigation scenarios, and improve teamwork. By understanding risk to both individual projects and portfolios, management will be able to make better strategic decisions. Cost commitments, revenue pipelines, and profit forecasts will be accurately stated for each level of risk. The sensitivity of the forecasts will be better understood. When informed by the risk assessment, the entire business will be more profitable. Why do projects fail? A project fails when the plan is not met. Failure means that a project exceeds the timeline, overspends the budget, or underperforms expectations. There are only two reasons why the plan is not met: The plan is too optimistic. Overly optimistic plans are very common. They arise when actions and costs are forced to meet predetermined targets. Underbidding, scale-to-fit, and political spin are also common causes. External events have an impact on the plan. Scope creep, insufficient resources, unanticipated work, and extraordinary events are some examples. Risks Assessment Benefits for Project Project contingency can make or break a project. Having too much contingency is uncompetitive; having too little contingency increases the chance of failure. Risk assessment—or allowing for uncertainty within estimates—helps set contingency levels, with a preferred level of risk, and gives the confidence level of outcome targets. Contingency is often set at the task level, and it is common to add some contingency to every estimate. The amount of contingency added may even be a fixed amount—10 percent, for example. However, it is much better to set contingency at the project level. In other words, use the ranges on the task estimates to understand what contingency should be set for the project as a whole. Setting contingency at the project level reflects the reality that some tasks may be delayed whereas others may be completed on time or be finished early. The amount of management reserve can be set by the same principle—allowing drawdown against risks that were identified at the start of the project. In addition to setting the right level of contingency, risk assessment also benefits the project team by giving it a forum for expressing concerns and for challenging or defending assumptions. Removing the restriction of having to work with deterministic (single-point) estimates allows team members to give open and honest opinions of what is likely to happen. A risk assessment workshop is an important—but often ignored—occasion for the project team to come together. It can lead to discussion and clarification of the scope of project tasks, and missing work is often identified. As a result of the workshop, the project team reaches an improved awareness and understanding of the status of the whole project. Although the cost and schedule disciplines for a project are often separate, it is important for these groups to confer with each other. A risk assessment workshop can bring these disciplines together. Risk assessments also enable risk response and mitigation strategies to be expressed. Cost/benefit analysis can be used to compare risk mitigation strategies and understand how effectively the money would be spent. When the cost of implementing the response is included in the comparison, it can show the net effect of the response on the project cost. The response can then be judged in terms of whether its net effect is to increase cost and whether that increase can be justified by the time it saves. Assessing risk mitigation strategies makes it possible to fully understand their effects. Risk assessment enables contracts to be fairly negotiated, bids to be submitted at the right price, and sensitivity to be appreciated. In summary, risk assessment means that the project is better understood, can be better planned and managed, and can be more profitable. Risks Assessment Benefits for Portfolio Assessing the risk facing a group of projects leads to a better overall view of risk to the portfolio. Looking at the entire portfolio enables individual projects to be compared and understood in terms of their risk. This helps in selection of projects and focusing of management attention on the projects that most need it. Contingency is best set at a portfolio level. Although not every project will suffer from risk, you know that some will, but you don’t know which ones. Management reserves for the portfolio can be set and drawn down by adherence to the same principles as those discussed in the previous section. Projects in a portfolio often have interdependencies, shared resources, and shared goals. In risk assessment, they need not be considered in isolation. At the portfolio level, it is important to express risk arising from project interdependency. Risk at the portfolio level can be shared and balanced across projects as a way of mitigating it. In summary, risk assessment enables to better understand and manage the portfolio as a whole. Organization can use the whole weight of the portfolio to manage the risk. Risks Assessment Benefits for Business Risk assessment increases profitability. Contracts can be selected and priced at the right level of risk, and the business can be managed with risk fully understood. Specific risks can be negotiated, it can be made clear who bears them, and they can be built in to contracts. Cost commitments can also be understood and budgeted—with risk taken into account. Risk assessment can give cost commitment curves at preferred levels of confidence. In addition, revenue estimates can be expressed as ranges, so revenue pipelines—as well as profit forecasts—can be understood. Investment decisions can be made at preferred levels of risk while taking into account all the best knowledge available. Besides an understanding of cost and revenue pipelines, business decisions also require an understanding of risk sensitivity. Risk assessments deliver such an understanding. Business can benefit from risk assessment by making better decisions based on accurate information. You benefit from realistic forecasting and an understanding of sensitivity, and you can make management decisions by taking into account the best current knowledge of the future. Conclusion In itself, the process of performing a risk assessment can give project, portfolio, business a greater chance of success. Assessments lead to the expression of outcomes as ranges, the development of risk mitigation plans, and the ability to set contingency. Organizations have to make sure that risk management part of portfolio, need to identify risks at defining process of portfolio, need to communicate with all stakeholders about risk, consider both threats and opportunity, prioritize risks on regular basis, constantly analyze risks, plan and implement risk response, register portfolio risks, track risks and associated tasks, risk ownership. Organizations have to ensure all the portfolio management processes, plans, policies, and procedures in the light of PMI standards on portfolio management are in place