Inspiration for board members on the strategy work
As a board member, have you related to Alice?
Most people know Alice in Wonderland. But why, as a board member, do you have to deal with Alice? Bringing in this metaphor into the boardroom is this just even more hot air to the already hot air that surrounds strategy and business development?
All boards know about their tasks, roles and responsibilities. One of the responsibilities is the strategic angle, including setting out the direction of the company. Many have experience of the strategy process and know that a plan is very important and essential for success. But many also find the task of drawing up the strategic plan too difficult and sometimes unmanageable. There are many elements to deal with, various people to be involved and all the sub-elements must be summarized. It is both time consuming and resource-intensive – especially when things changing at the speed that they do, and the strategy must therefore always be up to date.
From chaos to overview
Over the past several years I have worked with strategy in the good “old fashioned” way, where various preliminary work is carried out, various analyses are prepared, qualitative interviews are conducted with customers, suppliers, employees and so on. Next, the management team, management, board of directors, the strategy group, etc. gather for various workshops. Time is spent on preparation, planning, analysis, facilitation, interviews, documentation, notes, presentations and reporting. Various employees are taken out of service – often several days with conference rooms, meals, driving, etc. to be booked and paid.
“From that experience, I decided that something had to be done about it, and that’s how MakeMyStrategy
became a reality”.
What does Alice in Wonderland have to do with strategy?
Many companies often make the strategy work very difficult, analytical and time consuming, which means that the strategy work is downgraded both because of time and money. It’s a shame because all experience shows that a targeted plan leads to higher success rates. And this is where Alice in Wonderland comes in. In the fairy tale, Alice gets lost in the fairytale forest. In the woods, she meets the Cheshire Cat, and Alice asks “Which way should I go?”. To this, the Cheshire Cat replies “It depends on where you are going”. Alice replies “I don’t really know” and the Cheshire Cat replies back “Then it doesn’t matter which way you choose”. Transferred to the boardroom and the company in general, it is essential that the board and management are aligned and are completely clear on the strategy and the goal. Otherwise, there are a lot of “Alices” running around the company working in different directions.
Time is money
It means a strategic plan is not nice-to-have – it is need-to-have and for many companies the saying goes: “Time is money”.
With MakeMyStrategy you get a digital supporting tool that guides you through the strategy work. You get focused, get prioritized the most important future challenges, and you are “forced” to relate, both to the current strategic situation and to the direction of the company. The tool creates structure, overview and summarizes the work into concrete activity plans, an Executive Summary and a detailed strategic plan, so you can safely concentrate on qualifying the content.
An important “detail” is that you can leave the tool and return at a different time, just as you can involve the internal and external people you want. And finally, it is possible to incorporate all the material the company already has and that is relevant to the strategy.
“MakeMyStrategy is a Danish cloud-based strategy tool that guides the company through the strategy work and creates structure, overview and summarizes the work so that the company can concentrate on qualifying the content.”
The tool is based on the principles from the book “Strategy in winning companies” written by the authors Jørgen Lægaard and Mikael Vest. The book is used in educational contexts, among other things, at universities and is based on experience from about 600 strategy processes. The principles in the book are complemented in MakeMyStrategy by real-life experiences with both strategy and e-learning and provide the opportunity to:
- incorporating own material
- involve relevant people to ensure optimal development and execution
- work dynamically without tying too many resources
Book and demo
If you would like to know more about the strategy tool and how it works in practice, then feel free to visit www.makemystrategy.com. Here you can book a demo or contact us.
This article was also published on www.betterboard.dk.
Portfolio management inspiration
Good principles in portfolio management
There is no single way to approach portfolio management. It is about having a fixed and common way in your company or organization to select and implement your projects. The probability of a good result increases significantly when the good principles are followed:
Portfolio management must reflect the organisation’s challenges in relation to project implementation
- Evaluate yourselves: What are some projects being worked on? Are there many small projects or few large ones? How many of them are cross-organizational? How often do you embark on big changes, or are these typically small, gradual changes building on something existing? How often do you get the desired benefits from the projects? Do project budgets hold? Do employees like to participate in projects – are they queuing up to participate, or should they almost be forced to join?
- When there is a sense of the project landscape and know what it is that typically goes well or bad, then you are much better equipped to know where and when to pay special attention to the project.
Portfolio management must be pragmatic
Portfolio management must be set up to match the maturity, strengths and weaknesses of the company/organization. There are undoubtedly areas where the organization works really well and areas where mistakes are often made. Whether it is a lack of IT systems, structure/goverance setup, management follow-up with more, the main challenges are identified.
The key elements need to be in control
Whether it is simple or more advanced portfolio management, then the key elements of any portfolio management are:
- Clear management support. When management is on target for the strategy, they are also on target for the portfolio.
- Governance structure. Make concrete minimum requirements for the project managers, which they must be able to control and be able to report on their projects. Make sure clear decision-making paths in relation to who can decide what about each project and about the portfolio.
- Reporting and tools. It doesn’t have to be a big fancy solution. A good simple success parameter for a new tool/workflow is whether the employees use it in practice.
The critical areas of Portfolio Management
There are 3 critical areas in portfolio management that need to be in control:
- the selection of the right projects
- the ongoing overview
- the implementation of the projects
You may lose the strategic overview if this is not under control.
Tips for avoiding the critical areas:
How to choose the right projects
You must have a clear and unique process to select your projects. It can be annual, quarterly or monthly, where management selects the most relevant projects in relation to the organization’s challenges, funds and resources.
Important management issues for clarification are:
- Can the project meet one or more strategic objectives and current development needs ?
- What are the project’s expected costs, resource usage, and results?
- Does the project create synergy in the existing portfolio ?
- What are the consequences if the project is not carried out?
How to create an ongoing overview
There must be a permanent follow-up of all projects at relevant intervals. The focus is to follow up on critical parameters such as progress, quality, risks, budget and resource consumption. In this way, you get an overview of all projects and the main risks across all projects. You must also regularly assess the continued relevance of the projects in the portfolio, as things may have changed so that the original idea is no longer relevant to the organization.
How to implement projects effectively
Set clear requirements for the implementation of a project. This requires, among other things, a sharing of responsibilities between the project and management, clear goals for a project’s results, which requires creating methods for measuring profit realization and how to support it in practice.
You are well on your way with portfolio management when you as management can answer these 5 questions without hesitation:
- Is the portfolio in line with the strategy decided?
- Which projects should be started, stopped or not implemented at all?
- What are the consequences of one or more reprioritizations?
- How to optimize the use of limited resources ?
- How and when are resources released for new projects ?
Inspiration til projektledere:
Hvis du ønsker at arbejde agilt med dine projekter, er det altafgørende at du kender til de 12 agile principper. Agil projektledelse er et af nutidens buzzwords og betyder i al sin enkelthed at man arbejder i iterationer og tilpasser sig undervejs – med et grundparadigme om, at verden ikke er statisk og man løbende bliver klogere.
I E-bogen gennemgås de 12 agile principper, så du er klædt på til at arbejde i den agile verden.
Kilde: Dansk Projekt Ledelse
