Postcards from the Brink

Clutching a program from the jaws of disaster and living to tell the tale

During the past year I had the pleasure of collaborating with a large team on a global MarTech initiative at a major life sciences firm. When my team walked in the door, the program was on the brink of collapse. As I write this, we are in the final third of our timeline with our program humming efficiently. It’s amazing what a little bit of process optimization and governance can do.

None of what my team implemented was groundbreaking. We’ve all seen and done these things before. But recognizing the needs and generating fit-for-purpose solutions seems to have been the missing piece in an otherwise complete puzzle. To be clear: the ground-level team was rocking before we arrived, and are still rocking today. But sometimes rocking at the ground level, alone, just isn’t enough to keep a program on the rails.

Sometimes rocking at the ground level, alone, just isn’t enough to keep a program on the rails

Below, a few high-level themes related to the issues we discovered, the solutions we put in place, and the impacts those had on the larger effort.

“Lead with Compassion and Humility”

Stealing this quote from a favorite colleague, Bobby Pennington. While it might sound hokey, it is truly the root of successful collaboration.

We are all humans, deserving of the most basic compassion and respect when we come to work each day. While we may work in different departments, or for different firms, and be focused on different parts of the larger process, we are all engaged within the service of the program.

Some enterprises have organically developed a culture of differentiation and blame. Leveling the playing field, clearly defining jurisdictional boundaries, holding everyone accountable, and enforcing a low-tolerance policy toward bad behavior in this area are critical to program success. We need clearly defined rules of engagement around how we work together, and must all play by those rules. If we can’t meet that most basic standard of behavior, we’re dead on arrival.

Lift & Shift Strategy

The program in question involved the migration of a large volume of content data from one system to another. Having been through similar endeavors before, leadership realized that the winning strategy is to limit change to an absolute minimum through this process and get to the target platform as quickly as possible.

There can be an inclination, especially for those new to this kind of migration, that, “Hey the hood is open and the tools are out, so wouldn’t it be most efficient to make all the other adjustments we need while we have this move underway?” This is a recipe for disaster. Every individual change, even the small ones, increases risk exponentially.

“Hey the hood is open and the tools are out, so wouldn’t it be most efficient to make all the other adjustments we need while we have this move underway?”

Our program is lucky enough to have this ‘Lift & Shift’ approach mandated, defined, and enforced from its very inception. Without the streamlining this approach engenders, we would still be wallowing in the first phase of the project, wondering why progress was so difficult to attain.

Effective Leadership Engagement

Speaking of our Lift & Shift strategy, it is enforced with compassion and teeth by an action-biased Steering Committee focused on removing roadblocks and creating program alignment.

The members of this SteerCo have the authority to make binding decisions on the program, and the wisdom to understand the importance of clear alignment in supporting those decisions. Convincing leaders to put the needs of the greater enterprise ahead of their own agendas is a major win in any business context. In the case of our program, it became among the most potent forces driving our success.

Shared Source of Truth

Among the most concrete and actionable changes we made in this program was to create a self-service list of milestones for the many stakeholders following along with our progress. These milestones represent the fusion of our own planning/progress, as well as constraints from the business, external partners, and some regulatory authorities that play a role in this enterprise.

Information that had been cloistered by bureaucracy in the past was suddenly clear and freely available for our stakeholders. They might not be thrilled with the dates we publish, but at least they experience the control that comes from knowing where to find those dates, and track their progress along the way.

Information that had been cloistered by bureaucracy in the past was suddenly clear and freely available for our stakeholders

In the event that one of those stakeholders requires more detail than that provided by these self-service materials, we do an on-demand deep dive to address their specific questions. When we do, those published milestones become a valuable shared point of departure for the conversation.

Maintaining synchronization across these materials requires a fair amount of effort from program leadership, but the payoff for our customers — and thereby the health of the program itself — is well worth that lift.

Jurisdictions & Responsibilities

Roles, responsibilities, and jurisdictions must be clearly defined. This is useful in all of business, but particularly critical where large programs are concerned.

When I arrived on the program, the customer had a poor habit of keeping responsibilities vague and then placing blame on a vendor — the party least able to defend itself — when expectations were not met. Identifying and agreeing to curb this behavior demanded some uncomfortable conversations.

Ultimately, the customer recognized that responsibility must be logically and equitably distributed across the larger team, those assignments must be clearly documented, and everyone must be held accountable to complete their own tasks.

This seems totally obvious in the light of day, but we all know how destructive culture and social norms can spread throughout a company if better behavior is not positively modeled and continually enforced by senior leadership. Que everyone’s favorite Drucker quote about culture eating strategy for breakfast…

Addressing those issues through clear definition of jurisdictions and responsibilities within the context of our program was a critical win.

Collaboration with Partner Orgs

The enterprise in this scenario is complex, global, and operates in a highly regulated industry. As such, our program is deeply dependent upon other groups to realize our own mission. To make matters worse, most daily operations at the company occur within existing organizational silos, while our effort uniquely required operation _across_ those silos.

Not recognizing the potency of these dynamics, we blundered around a little bit in the beginning, stymied by a lack of traction at every turn. During a timely reset, we politely reintroduced ourselves to these partner orgs, explained our mission, and worked to understand their own agendas. Discovering opportunities for our own mission to support and enhance those agendas has been useful to secure buy-in and associated collaboration.

Discovering opportunities for our own mission to support and enhance those agendas has been useful to secure buy-in and associated collaboration

We have also been lucky enough to find key resources within each partner group with the knowledge, authority, and willingness to become strong collaborative partners to our program.

All this complexity requires a fair amount of bobbing and weaving in our own planning to get us from point A to point B — complexity my team is happy to absorb if the alternative is spinning our wheels in place.

“We Succeed or Fail, Together”

I was introduced to the “We succeed or fail, together” concept during my embrace of Agile in the early aughts. I have delivered this message to many, many stakeholders and colleagues over the years, and once even needed longtime mentor and infamous digital troublemaker Scott Levine to deliver it to me during a particularly contentious integration program.

Like the ‘compassion and humility’ quote addressed at the top of this piece, this concept is existential to any program. As described by a leader from our primary vendor, “In bringing you on board as their own program manager, [customer] suddenly had more skin in the game.” That may sound crazy since the customer was always footing the bill, and desperately needed the program’s success to support its larger strategic goals. But he’s right.

Bringing OpsGov into the middle of this program was an act of defiance against the turnkey expectation of the original agreement. It represented the customer standing up and taking active responsibility for daily operations of their program. In doing so, they gave up whatever catharsic or political cover might be gained from pointing blame at a vendor for lack of success. With that bargain, they netted enhanced collaboration, transparency, and control.

With that bargain, they netted enhanced collaboration, transparency, and control

Paved With Good Intentions

I don’t mean to suggest that my team or these learnings represent the golden ticket to success with every complex program. Every enterprise is unique, and as program management professionals it is our job to enter into new situations with ears open and head on a swivel. Challenges must be understood first and addressed second, or we risk wasting precious time and treasure solving for problems that don’t actually exist.

My experience has been, however, that issues and mitigations like those described here represent a melody that gets played often when humans come together in large, complex, for-profit enterprises to address structural needs. So next time you are walking into a difficult and broken situation, hum this melody as you explore its dark corners. I’m betting you will find at least some of these recommendations applicable as you put your own solution strategies in place.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.