There’s no shortage of complexity when running a large project within a big organisation. Managing the people, process, budget and timeline, along with stakeholder involvement provides many opportunities for issues to arise. Now multiply those projects and add in high-level business strategic decision making and it’s easy to see why programmes can be tricky to execute. Take a common business programme initiative like digital transformation – this requires input from virtually all parts of the business from IT, Communications, Finance, Marketing, Risk, Legal…the list goes on. As business areas and stakeholders have different objectives and KPIs, there can be tension when it comes to implementing change.
Misalignment slows progress, prevents decision making, and can cost money. In this article, we’ll talk a bit about the alignment of business areas within a programme, with suggestions on making internal relationships better.
Stop and review the state of the programme
If you’re a programme manager, director or part of a board or steering team concerned about misalignment and disagreement across the business, it’s incumbent on you to pull the emergency brake and slow or stop some activity until these issues are resolved. You’ll want to conduct a review of the programme’s objectives and the status at which each objective is in terms of being achieved. Programme leadership should lean on its reporting, governance and communication processes to extract the information it needs from each business area involved, highlighting issues or risks.
Some initial questions to ask about the programme:
- Does the misalignment between business areas exist in a few spots, or across the programme entirely?
- How is the disagreement manifesting? Progress, budget, timelines, morale, outcomes, etc?
- Are there key stakeholders who are continually involved in the disagreements?
- Is there a key theme or themes emerging from disagreements?
- Does the programme’s scope, charter or strategic direction have unclear parameters?
- Has each business area and stakeholder been adequately briefed and primed for their involvement in executing the programme?
- Do all project managers have the space and time to build strong relationships between each other and leaders within the business?
As you start to unravel these questions and surface problems, the full picture of the challenge can start to come to light. You may wish to engage independent help for this review, giving an impartial and outside perspective that can identify the issues quicker.
Understanding if the misalignment is borne from personalities, KPIs or the programme’s scope itself is a huge step in the right direction to resolving the problem. Without due care taken to uncover this, there’s a risk that the solution will be ineffective or incomplete.
Compare KPIs of business areas against the programme’s objectives
Now it’s time to conduct a review of each involved business area across the organisation and their KPIs. A very common point of tension is that business objectives are in part conflicting with the desired outcomes of the programme. This can cause stress to leaders within those units, and prevent the organisation from taking the right steps towards strategic objectives. This is also a risk associated with having a ‘BAU’ or business as a usual mandate for business areas, with a programme and projects occurring amongst this work. Programmes are typically ‘future-state’ thinking, while business teams attempt to keep the wheels turning in the here and now.
All of your teams who will be impacted by or involved with the rollout of a programme and its changes, need to have KPIs that speak directly to these. That may mean adding in a layer of objectives associated with business change, technology or whatever the programme’s goal may be.
By aligning your business areas and their teams with these strategic objectives, the organisation’s leadership can enjoy much more confidence in the programme’s likelihood of success.
Open the lines of communication in person
Communication is a huge part of the puzzle of rolling out a winning business programme. And it’s still an area that most large organisations struggle with. It’s natural for our people to have limited view and time for communication outside with their immediate team and direct manager.
But with a programme that’s suffering from continual misalignment around decision making within an activity, there’s nothing quite as effective as getting stakeholders in a room to resolve issues. Programme leadership needs to facilitate this and use the opportunity to reinforce the strategic objective and outcomes of the programme before specifics around delivery or approach are debated. It’s also an opportune time for leaders within those business areas to raise concerns that impact them and their teams; like anything in businesses programme’s are not set in stone and changes for the positive can and should be made.
In-person communication breaks down the pattern of lengthy emails where it’s typical for interactions to become cold and combative. Meeting and sharing challenges quickly builds empathy, provided meetings are structured properly. If there are still strong opposing viewpoints, it’s up to programme leadership to mediate and ultimately make the decision with the senior leadership team if required.
But these meetings shouldn’t be done only when a programme has halted due to misalignment – communication between stakeholders should be largely proactive, getting on top of problems well before they present risk to the programme. In-person stakeholder meetings conducted at least once a month is a good start, with more frequent communication even better.
Ensure any concerns from stakeholders are heard and addressed
It’s hard to reach a proper resolution to misaligned business areas if the concerns are not aired out. The programme director in an organisation will often be the best person to ensure that underlying issues are captured with an action plan to resolve these. In some cases, the outcome may be an adjustment to the approach of part of the programme to better suit the business’ needs. Perhaps the programme is headed for a big obstacle – stakeholders can often see these coming at a day to day operational level first.
Addressing a concern does not always mean making a change that’s favourable to a stakeholder. Sometimes it will require implementing a compromise between the business objectives and the programme’s scope.
And in other circumstances, the programme’s objectives simply need to be adhered to – the goal here is to make sure all business areas understand the expectation and their role in helping to realise this.
Meet with all business representatives regularly for programme updates
Keeping everyone informed mitigates small issues from becoming large ones. In these meetings, stakeholders or representatives (often leaders) can hear and see progress updates on the programme’s strategic objectives, and understand how each particular project’s deliverables affect this. Attaching the broader objective to the daily activities and decisions that business areas see can provide valuable context and rationale. It’s our experience that when communication is low or non-existent, teams rarely assume something positive. Regular updates are an investment in future cohesion between teams and support for the programme.
Share wins with all business areas
As much as communication and updates are important to surface issues and garner buy-in across all involved, the outcomes being achieved are similarly important. Tangible, realised outcomes from a programme are sometimes difficult to see and feel at the operational level, with programmes ultimately having more of a broad strategic mandate than a project. However, organisations can help to articulate these outcomes through acknowledgement of milestones being met.
As an example, a digital transformation programme may involve the implementation of a number of systems and processes. A programme management team can work with internal communication to highlight these milestones being achieved, ideally with support and input from senior leadership. Furthermore, speaking to the involvement of each business area in this comms helps to connect those teams to the results of their hard work.
Reinforce the wider business strategy
Programmes are the result of strategic business decisions made at the senior level. They encapsulate the people, projects and practises required to take the organisation from the status quo to the desired state. But while projects have an easily-definable beginning, end and output, programmes by nature need to be defined by the business strategic goals they’re trying to affect.
Reinforcing the purpose and vision behind a programme across all business teams gives them that north star. If it’s repeated enough through company-wide, team, and individual levels, the day to day decision making will start to be guided by the business strategy. This is the key to an organisation achieving what’s best for its growth and success. Remove this clear purpose, and your programme and projects are subject to the personalities and motivations of teams or even individuals.
Never assume everyone knows the business strategy. Heavy communication of this keeps everyone informed while holding the organisation to account for delivering towards that strategy.
Need help aligning your business areas to support better business outcomes?
We’ve seen first hand the risks that are presented to a programme when business areas aren’t in agreement about deliverables or approach. As expert programme and project assurance specialists, we can help you establish a level of governance, process and communication that empowers the business to do its best work in support of a programme. We’re able to work from the start of the programme, but are equally as comfortable being engaged when a programme is suffering from stakeholder disagreements.
Chat to our team to learn more about how we approach programme assurance.
