I’m now doing the Major Projects Leadership Academy and the more I engage with the material the more I think it’s flawed conceptually and that what we need are departments with permanent change capability rather than a series of ‘temporary organisations’.
Why we need Permanent Change Capability
I need to write an assignment shortly, but thought I’d unpack some of my thinking here first. We live and work in a world where change is constant. Since the mid 90s I’ve worked on over 50 projects, and five change portfolios. I came to the conclusion some time ago that effective change needs highly skilled people to make it work. This is no different from other skilled work. Skilled specialists will consistently deliver better results than generalists in most circumstances. NB there’s a place for generalists working alongside the specialists.
Temporary Organisations
If you have done any sort of training in projects, programmes or portfolio management then you’ll have come across the definition of projects as ‘temporary organisations’. This is one of the core ideas, and academically goes back decades. It makes sense in small to medium organisations that only change infrequently. They’ll have a spike in activity and will need people with skills they don’t usually have or need to deliver change. So setting up a ‘temporary organisation’ makes a lot of sense. People are hired for the time needed to complete the change, and there’s a side team responsible for making it happen alongside the business as usual people.
Portfolios as Permanent Change Capability
Portfolios, unlike programmes or projects, are usually a permanent change capability. They exist to manage multiple organisations that deliver change. Done well they’ll have a budget and staff complement to turn the organisation’s strategy into reality.
The portfolio will prioritise activities to maximise benefits for the enterprise, to sequence changes, and ensure that all the projects and programmes do exactly what’s needed and have the information to ensure coherent design.
The Portfolio will make sure all the skills needed exist in the organisation, and will develop and deploy people to deliver effective change. This helps in two ways. One is that people feel they have a long term career path in the organisation (rather than just the duration of the current project). So as well as saving money and time on recruitment there’s also a commitment to making change successful as relationships are built over a longer time period with the business as usual people. The other factor is that there’s an ability to share scarce skillsets between change initiatives, making better use of them, and should the correct prioritisation decision to be to stop or pause a change then the team aren’t worried because they know they still have a job. This helps create a culture of openness (provided you do all the other things needed too).
Lastly they’re going to have all the data, and the ability to use it to better shape how the change happens.
Temporary or Permanent Change Capabilities?
I think there’s a pivot point where organisations realise that not only do they have multiple changes happening simultaneously, but also that new ones will replace those that finish. All UK central departments, and most ALBs with more than 400 FTE are probably in this space.