From Strategies to benefit realization. Closing the gap

In my post yesterday, I highlighted why the BRM concept is useful for any management that is serious in steering the organization towards realizing strategies. Today, I will discuss how this gap can be bridged through BRM. Having known the importance of BRM, management outght to come up with a good approach on how to implement it in their organizations. To do this, we will look at the following factors:

Portfolio management based on strategic outcomes: As explained in my post yesterday, most organizations still assess the value of their projects based on yesteryear parameters such as time, scope, and budget. Naively, they use these metrics and consider that projects that are completed punctually and within the provided budget to be great success, even though they may have no connection to the strategy of the organization. To turn around this, the organization needs to start thinking along the lines of project management and how they can measure success differently. This is a daunting task, even for BRM-mature organizations. A case in study is an organization that goes ahead to develop an app for its customers to help them boost sales and lure their customers towards more purchases. It could be the case that the IT department develops and delivers the software as agreed on schedule and within the budget. This will be touted by the organization as a great success. However, if the customers aren’t using it, then it won’t in any way have an impact on the cash flow or improve the company’s financial status. There needs to be a clear roadmap that neworks strategy and project portfolios for projects that are being undertaken. This needs organizations to develop a culture of genuinely defining, managing and tracking progress against KPIs that are explicitly tied to strategic outcomes. The mangement needs the nerve to kill projects which wont yield any strategic improvements.

Communication arena between executive and leadership team: There should be an active engagement and shared responsibility among theexecutive management who set and approve strategy, business owners who translate the strategy into projects with targeted outcomes for their area of the business, and project managers who manage the execution of projects to realize those outcomes. Getting these three stakeholder groups to be engaged is a key priority for ensuring benefits realization. In many organizations, ensuring shared responsibility across these groups to meet strategic business outcomes is a clear opportunity, that should not go unrealized. Continous dialog between these stakeholder groups is vital during project execution. Transparency on how well projects are helping to achieve strategic outcomes does help to create space for dialog and gives the executive the need in-depth information and insight they need to have broader strategic discussions early on and on a continuous basis. This creates room for making course corrections where it may be necessary.

Creating an environment for success and having the right team: To grow to a level of BRM maturity, there is need for organizations to invest in the right environment. They need to understand the needed behavior and where they may be forced to change company culture. These may include the needed to have frequent assessment and realignment of projects to meet strategic outcomes, high level of accountability for project progress, quick decision-making characterized by solid problem solving and ability to prioritize solutions, and give early warnings on issues that could be risks. The management should embrace constructive dialog with the project managers to forge a united working team and improve BRM growth. Additionally, project managers should be supported to acquire the right skill set and be acquainted with their working domain.

With the right insight, the management should provide a big-picture perspective and guide the organization to pivot both individual projects and the overall portfolio to be able to better capture the projected value. BRM helps create this visibility and insight, serving as a compass that points to “true north” regarding the company’s strategy, highlighting deviations between project objectives and outcomes and that strategy, and giving leaders the opportunity to course-correct at a point where small changes can still make a big difference. That ensures that the management can take decisive action to support those projects that most directly link to strategy, hence closing the gap.

BRM in organizations. Why bother?

Benefits realization management (BRM) is an important business concept that helps organizations to realize value and benefits in their businesses. But how exactly do they work with it? How does an organization get this important concept integrated in its company culture? One of the great challenges that most executive management face in their organizations in managing initiatives, is the application of yesteryears measurable outputs regardless of whther they are able to monitor their ability to satisfy organizational strategic goals or not. The most commonly used parameters include time, scope and budget but there are also others which use company specific parameters to do so. The outcome is a clear gap that emerges between strategy and project management. At times the management is unable to see this and even when they realize, it may be too late and may not know how to solve the issue. But can this be timely resolved and ensure that the company does not derail? Yes, as we will see shortly.

The bridge between the strategy and project management can be built with proper practices and mindset. Welcome to BRM. This is a powerful approach that can bridge this gap by aligning projects, programs, and portfolios of the company to its overarching strategy. Its the correct oath for a company that is keen on delivering measurable benefits. As stated in PMI’s website, organizations that are BRM mature are more than one and a half times able to to realize project objectives and three times likely to meet or exceed their target ROI on individual projects in comparison to their counterparts.

A while ago I was talking to my new bank contact who had recently started and was enthusiatis about her new job. She had some me an invitation to review some of the figures on my mortgage. So I walked in to the bank and we had a good lengthy conversation and seeing that it was on a Friday afternon, she had time to accomodate free talk.

So I engaged her in a “interview” to understand how they work with BRM. You don’t get lucky twice in life. She had been a consultant in a real estate company before switching jobs and was well aversed with what I was talking about. As her face lit up, she removed her glasses and reached out to her cup of coffee. Then she responded…. BRM is a continuous journey through which a company can learn by doing and improving their performance over time. The problem with most companies is that they give up too soon or don’t want to find the mantra, she continued. Accordingly, rather than attempting a quick and sudden change in how most management approach strategy and project management, they should instead focus on generating significant benefits by growing in BRM baby-steps before they can make great strides and build up experience. Then it occurred to me, that it is exactly the same thing a parent does by taking their children from being and infant to adulthood, with one focus of being self-reliant in life. Organizations should keep on ploughing their plans, revising their concepts and work forward towards delivering their strategies. BRM does this by helping to maximize initiative values by incorporating and articulating accountabilities across stakeholders to identify, execute, and sustain strategic outcomes.

Indeed, organizations that have embraced BRM do not necessarily ooze perfection. Far from it, they accept that there is always room to learn and improve. Rather than being comfortable, they are willing to jump in, live with imperfect processes, yet begin to make pragmatic steps towards being better. Since the business is always developing, they are keen to use every opportunity available to move forward. They begin closing the gap between strategy and project management and give themselves a source of competitive advantage that pays larger dividends over time. But we may wonder, how do they close this gap and still remain competitive? That is the subject I will cover tommorrow. Stay tight as I cover this in my next post tommorrow.