Inflight reviews of your transformation programme
Freshminds
A global network of on-demand consultants. From analyst to expert, we help businesses grow, transform and innovate.
In this latest edition of Freshminds Insights - we explore how some organisations have been supporting their transformation initiatives and ways in which the benefits can be better delivered through the application of "inflight reviews".
Read on for a nine-point plan of how to take a step back and assess whether all aspects of your transformation are on track. The full version of this article, authored by Lindsay Murdoch, can be read here.
Transformation – what has been happening?
The world of transformation is constantly evolving, partly due to the upsurge in political, economic, and social uncertainties. This has led to some CEOs putting their transformation programmes on hold.
Transformation programmes are complex and require experience and courage to manage objectives, activities, behaviours, and the ever-present cultural challenges surrounding change.
This comes with experience built up over a number of years, by delivering successes, making mistakes, building on lessons learned, and being given the opportunity to try it out again in a no-blame culture.
“Balancing transformation against BAU is the critical resourcing challenge for most organisations. Underinvestment on either side of the coin brings real risks. The key is flexibility and agility – to be able to move resources quickly and effectively toward the activity of greatest impact.”
Thom Cunningham-Burley, COO Freshminds
So how are your transformation programmes going? Are you delivering the business case and the overall benefits? Are your stakeholders aligned? Are your employees motivated and engaged? Is this programme seen as a success or a draw on the budget?
These are all good questions that can be better understood by undertaking an inflight review of your transformation programme.
InFlight Reviews
These are reviews of the overall transformation programme, designed to help business leaders understand the likelihood of success, the realisation of the business case, and the sustainability of the changes.
The review can also be undertaken to understand whether the transformation programme is still relevant and necessary.
These are challenging and sometimes difficult objectives. Resistance can be met from stakeholders at all levels of the organisation due to internal politics, structure, and sensitivities. Those involved may have something to gain or lose by continuing or changing plans and structures.
Such a review is best undertaken by someone not directly involved in the programme – whether within or external to the business - and who has the skills, capability, and experience to dive into the activities without bias or prejudice.
The Process of Conducting Reviews
This is a process that requires planning, commitment and engagement and includes interviewing stakeholders, programme leads, and a cross-section of programme team members and employees.
There are typically nine key phases as identified below - although every organsation and every programme is different, and will have differing priorities:
Check Relevance
Review the Vision
Review the Business Case
Understand Stakeholder Engagement
Skills Analysis
Review Approach
Review Workstreams
Check Financials
Deep Dives
The Deliverables
As with most aspects of transformation and change, the inflight review needs to be structured and comprehensive. A full review of the programme allows for best practices to be recognised and enhancements to be made.
Typically, one would seek to identify:
This is not only about what is happening today but about planning for the longer term. Project drivers also need to appreciate the nuances of making recommendations; to ensure that participants and teams are on board with changes.
Setting Change in the Process
Whatever the results of the review, there is rarely an ‘instant fix’. The necessary improvements only come as the recommendations are planned and implemented.
Inflight reviews can lead to a turnaround of the programme with a sharper focus on the delivery of the business case, the overall organisation engagement, and the sustainability of the change.
More challenging is the decision to cancel the programme altogether, and how to manage expectations and communicate the decision and why it was made.
Lindsay Murdoch, founder, and co-leader at Intaconsult, collaborates with organisations to drive Business Transformation activities, ensuring the delivery of sustainable business benefits while transferring essential skills and capabilities to clients through Programme and Change initiatives.
Freshminds supports transformation and change programmes at all stages through our Consultants on demand network. Find out more about how we work here:
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Providing Transformation, Change, HR and Coaching services to you and your teams, with skills developed at PwC and KPMG, bringing sustainable business success in today's challenging markets (Global, International, Local)
3moIn-flight reviews provide a great overview of programmes and give you the opportunity to see what is going well and where you need to focus your effort to deliver the benefits Happy to talk further
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3moFrom the large outsourcing deals world, one of the key skills of the most successful sales talent was "deal qualification". While the average talent took it as a "one time" activity, the true geniuses were continuously qualifying what they were leading. The moment they realised that they cannot win they stopped throwing good money after the bad one and told their bosses to kill the chase. Like a lion in serengeti, who sometime abandons the chase for his prey, it is as much art as science to kill promising self recommended programs "mid way". Apart from all the stated processes in the article it also requires a different kind of individual - someone who is great at large deals and challenger sales. I assume that is the #differentiator Freshminds provides to its customers.