Breaking the Boom-Choke-Bust Cycle: Embracing Integrated Value-Realisation Teams

Apparently, I’m getting old. At least if sundry colleagues and friends are to be believed – and they may have a point. But getting length in one’s teeth isn’t all bad. For instance, I’m old enough to have witnessed – and learned – from a few boom-then-bust cycles of methodologies caught up in the perennial business hunt for the-next-silver-bullet. Today as a member of the collective Project-Agile-Change community I argue for a different approach: the formation of integrated value-realisation teams to navigate complexity and achieve better outcomes.

The Problem.

A couple of quick examples will suffice – and perhaps bring back memories to some of you. Does anyone else remember the early 90s heyday of ISO9000 standards? Yes, that’s right – the time when having a coveted sticker on a product or service offering was the shining path to our business success. Do you recall how energetically many of us threw ourselves into creating libraries of detailed procedures? How we detailed and measured anything that moved – right up until we simply choked on all the labour and paperwork – and cried, “Enough!” and scaled it all back to something far more sustainable and effective.

Fast forward to the (very) early 2000s and Project Management. In 2001 I recommended to a government agency that they adopt the principles being established by the Project Management Institute, on their larger projects – “We are not engineers” - came the reply. Inside a couple of years organisations – including that one - were furiously competing in the race (it seemed) to build the biggest PMOs. In fact, as if that wasn’t already enough, businesses doubled-down on the PMO-behemoth and threw in PRINCE. Before long, more organisations started choking on a plethora of PM templates, decisions, and delay, until - “Enough!” – and again we set about building leaner, more effective structures.

The Beat Goes On

The boom-then-bust of the latest sexy idea continues to this day. Insert whatever discipline or methodology you like - Project management, Agile, DevOps, and yes – even my beloved Change Management. In fact, SEEK and Linked-In are currently pushing out an astonishing number of change roles. I guess everyone’s in the business of building up ‘change capability’ right now. Or to look at it another way – change is on the build-up (boom phase) that will precede the choke phase, before the inevitable scale-back (bust).

Of course, the issue doesn’t lay with the methodologies per se; it is far more often the case that we ask too much of them. We face situational complexities that simply aren’t amenable to delivering through the dominance of any single approach. So, where does that leave us? What if there was a way to tunnel through the bell-curve, so to speak? To simply go from the fast adoption phase and head straight for the smarter deployment, with a minimum of pain in the middle? It seems that there is, but only if we’re ready to abandon our respective methodological fortifications, and proceed down the path of integrated value-realisation teams.

Multi-disciplinary team structures that promote flexibility in approach, maximise our skill transfer and learning, and in the process, better prepare us to face the challenges imposed by our complex and competitive environments.

How is This Different?

If anyone is telling you right now that this isn’t so different to matrix-working and various other ‘integrated’ approaches you may already be employing– I suggest you go look at your results. Specifically, how much time ($$$) is being lost to meetings and activities being conducted in the name of ‘alignment’ (vs efforts leading to outcomes). You may well be unpleasantly surprised. I put it to you that it is only when the accountability and the dependent activities come under a single point of command, that you can truly realise integration’s potential.

Successful Implementation

The question must still be asked and answered around what we must do if we’re to avoid the boom-choke-bust-reset cycles that have plagued methodologies and practices individually? The ingredients aren’t likely to come across as surprising, but the devil lurks in the implementation; specifically, in how much your extant business model will have to be reset at a couple of levels of your business if you’re to get the benefits. Let’s start with the most fundamental ingredients -

- Shared vision (one waka - everyone paddling the same way – no exceptions).

- A Strategy for realising value (not for ‘delivery’).

- Facilitative leadership.

- Highly functional communication channels.

- Intel-driven planning and decision making (note it says ‘intel’ – not that hoary old chestnut “we’ll look at the data and see what it tells us”). And finally,

- Coherent application of practice – after all, driving up value through change; is both about knowing and doing.

Nothing in that list should come as any surprise, and if you’re reading this, the chances are that you’re experienced enough to immediately sense how those contribute, and how readily you can fail without them. But now is the time to take a moment and ask yourself what particular elements have to be in place, or developed, if your business is to get the best from its investment – and note that some of these may be somewhat more challenging to established practices -

• Unity of leadership; your multi-disciplinary team must not be slaved to a committee. Of course, governance is critical in any complex operating environment – but the leader must be an individual - not a group of senior practice leads.
• Experienced and savvy leadership – an MD team will often evolve into an amazing talent ‘hothouse’, but your central leadership position is no place for a ‘development opportunity’.
• Excellence in constructive challenge (‘Red Teaming’ and the like should be, or become second nature to the members).
• Transparency, Respect, and Trust.
• Getting the bread-and-butter right - solid decision-making and implementation routines. Consistency in deployment must be continually reinforced. Not very sexy, I agree, but credibility spends like currency.
• Direct engagement with the ‘go-to leadership' present up, down, and across your organisation. For those of you yet to take a good look at social network effects and change, I heartily recommend Leandro Herrero's book, "Viral Change" for your reading list.
• Check your ladder: if efficiency is getting up and down the ladder smartly, and effectiveness is leaning it on the correct wall – know which ladder you are on, and why – and then fearlessly measure your results – and not just those of the business.

A Call to Our Professional Community

Clearly this is a bigger discussion than that prompted (provoked?) here, but the repetitive boom-and-bust of otherwise useful methodologies is a signal that something is systemically wrong with the dominant approach to change. The perpetual hunt for the this-time-we’ve-found-it silver-bullet starts to look a lot like desperation - Let’s throw the newest jelly at the wall, and see what sticks.

Few organisations can afford to continue this way; it’s hurt before, and it's sure to hurt more in the future. Harnessing the collective talents of people who’ve made a choice to invest themselves in the futures of their organisations (why else does one become a PM, Agile Coach, or Change Manager?) under highly focused structures, is a singular opportunity to ‘tunnel through the bell-curve’.

It’s time to park old change structures framed around methodologies, and instead bring these together in a way that enables our talent, fuels organisational learning, and tightens our focus on the only thing for which we really exist – the creation of value.

I share these thoughts with the aim of stoking some discussion. Feel free to comment, share, or reach out in any way as part of that same inter-disciplinary community – I’ll appreciate your time and thought.