What it takes to lead a successful organisational programme

by Nicki Carruth | Mar 8, 2022 | Programme Assurance

Leadership is never easy. It’s not just a matter of effective delegation, but communication abilities, strategic thinking and the ability to go deep on a challenge where necessary. When an organisation attempts to transform or evolve through a long term programme, there’s a number of factors that can influence its success.

How can a business lead the programme towards success? In this article we talk about what some of these programme leadership qualities are.

Getting buy-in from the organisation

Many programmes stall or succeed due to the internal support (or lack of) they’re able to garner from business units across the organisation. Without advocates for the programme’s outcomes and underlying project deliverables, the programme will remain an unrealised strategic goal. The challenge for getting buy-in for a programme is that the final outcomes may be years in the making. Therefore it’s vital that stakeholders are invested in each initiative that contributes towards a programme, such as:

Each project’s scope (e.g. roll out of a new financial management system as part of a digital transformation programme).
Meeting regularly to get updates on the programme and provide input into strategic decisions.
Budget and progress reporting.
Helping to allow change to be made through the actions of individual business units.
Supporting the programme with hiring of required talent into the organisation.
Putting the needs of the organisation ahead of the needs of their specific business area.

The programme manager or director will be looking to facilitate this buy in throughout the whole lifespan of the projects. This may be more of a challenge early on, but becomes easier with stakeholders who’ve developed a good understanding and support for the programme and its various requirements.

Communication and PR

Usually “PR” is an outward-facing discipline, designed to help shape or manage the public perception of the business. But the same principles can apply internally, too. A public sector programme will typically have a mixture of audiences with an interest:

Staff inside the department or organisation
Staff in other government agencies
The New Zealand public

Leading the programme’s success is more than just the work itself – communication around the rationale, vision and benefits of a programme are highly important. When relevant stakeholders don’t know what’s going on or fail to see the benefit, progress can really slow down as they don’t share in the programme’s view of the world and question its validity.

Proactive comms or PR of the programme can be initiated by the programme owner but managed by a communications team. This may be done through marketing, emails, social media and in person workshops or meetings.

The programme owner will need to ensure that comms are maintained throughout – no information rarely leads to assumptions that everything is going well!

Detailed planning

Given the long duration of most transformational programmes, the ability to plan out different stages is crucial for programme leadership to work. Whilst the programme owner or director may be dealing with more strategic imperatives in their day-to-day, they’ll also need the confidence that project teams that ladder up to the programme’s success are maintaining a healthy level of governance and planning.

Planning is more than projects and work being completed, however. The programme manager or director may work in a team with analysts and other roles to prepare for certain stages of the programme. In the case of a digital transformation (very common in today’s public sector) there will be checkpoints at which the migration to technologies will require adjustment by the end user – that could be a process, set of tools, new teams or policies that need to be established.

Consider the implementation of a government tool for the NZ public to use to manage their details or complete a particular action – the transition across will be tougher without adequate communications, testing, and pilot roll out. The programme leadership personnel will be looking to ensure this process is managed effectively.

Strategic vision over a long period of time

It’s true that many programme managers have days where they are focused specifically on the granular details, but ultimately their remit is the success of the programme insofar as strategic objectives are met. The programme manager, along with the leadership team will need to keep an eye on the long term, and see potential challenges or opportunities before they arise.

Leading the programme requires directing project managers so that their delivery supports these broader business goals effectively. There needs to be confidence that each piece of the puzzle is correct and is scheduled in such a way that the business outcomes are met. Project managers are focused on a particular set of deliverables, with less expectation around what the organisation is looking to ultimately achieve.

A close relationship between programme and project managers

The programme and project manager relationship is such a crucial one to the success of the programme. While one is strategic and the other more deliverable-based, there’s a need for both to understand each other’s objectives and challenges to work effectively. Project managers rely on programme managers to take care of ‘the why’ around a project’s existence, to allow them time to focus on leading a delivery team to budget and schedule.

Successful programmes are often enabled through a positive culture and teamwork between project managers and programme managers or directors. In an ideal world, the project manager can escalate political or strategic roadblocks placed in their way to the programme leadership, and conversely programme managers can delegate out the delivery decisions to project managers.

Programme managers are often interfacing with multiple project managers at any one time, if the requirements of the initiative require simultaneous projects to exist. This can understandably put pressure on programme leadership to manage their time and communications carefully, and know how to get the information they require to make decisions and report effectively to a leadership team.

Adaptability to change or roadblocks

A lot can happen in a matter of years. And it’s typically years that a programme takes to complete. Scope and planning is important, but so too is the preparedness for threats to the programme. This could be a combination of business changes, market forces, policy changes, or technological evolutions that change the game. Programme leadership needs to stay responsive to such changes, and be able to carry the programme through these periods by making sound decisions. They’ll need to bring these issues to a leadership team and stakeholders to get the support for what can sometimes be considerable changes to the approach.

Ultimately though, leading a programme to success requires strong protection of the original scope and strategic objectives. Knowing which projects or initiatives will meet these needs within a changed landscape is a sign of an experienced programme leader.

Engaging with the right 3rd parties to deliver

Most transformational programmes rely on both internal teams and specialist providers to deliver. Strong leadership through a programme will make use of each type of resource to best meet long term outcomes. A vendor relationship might be years in duration, so maintaining and leveraging these for the best possible delivery is key.

Programme leaders will typically interact with vendors at a higher level, keeping them accountable for their contribution to the programme and its broader outcomes. Project managers will have much more to do with vendors on a day-to-day basis, keeping track of costs, tasks and short term deliverables, such as those outlined in a given sprint.

Clarity on progress at any given moment

Programme managers require data and good intel to be able to provide comprehensive reporting to a senior leadership team at any given time. The way to achieve this clarity is a mixture of reporting functions (budget, milestones, weekly reporting etc) and actual conversations with project managers and stakeholders across the business.

If a programme manager lacks clarity on a particular element of the programme (or doesn’t know how to obtain certain information), there is a higher risk of underlying issues becoming a real threat to success. While project managers reporting should ensure that problems make it to programme managers, the lack of this information needs to ultimately be addressed by programme leadership who will be accountable when they’re unable to provide a full picture of progress.

Quality control practices

Programmes involve a lot of money, time and effort. Implementing robust quality measures can catch problems early on, preventing them from derailing a programme’s objectives or its underlying projects. A programme assurance layer preferably begins as the transformation is being planned and scoped, helping to introduce the principles of quality control from the outset. Unlike project assurance, which seeks to refine and guide the day to day delivery of work, programme assurance provides confidence that the programme is set up and supported to deliver upon large scale changes within the organisation. While there may be some shared concepts around the idea of governance, budgets, scoping etc – the actual business challenges faced and therefore questions asked will be different.

Looking for guidance around programme leadership?

IQANZ are experts in supporting programmes over the duration of their life to deliver better outcomes for businesses and ultimately succeed. We apply a broad range of skills and experience to support some of New Zealand’s most complex and large businesses to deliver transformation properly.

Chat to our team to learn more about how we approach programme assurance.