Consulting Customers! Get Your Act Together
I had a great conversation today with one of my mentors in the consulting business. He just got back from a trip to Europe assessing systems and processes of his multi-divisional client. They were impressed with the findings and suggestions because they fit well into the strategies of the firm. One of these strategies is to operate as “one”, as much as makes sense, in order to take advantage of synergies among the divisions- up to now the divisions have been operating as separate companies.
They love the consulting being provided; they see the value of having my mentor involved in their strategies. The problem is that they can’t seem to pull the trigger on the next phase of the project because they can’t get the multi-divisional executive team scheduled to sit down and make the “consensus” decision to go ahead.
My question, when these situations arise, is why isn’t there a standard business process to allow these types of decisions to be made more quickly? This sounds like a perfect business case for a PMO and governance board to be the key interaction point for outside consultants. The problem is that there has not been a reason, up to now, to have a standardized process affecting multi-divisional consideration of projects, tactics and strategy alignment.
Are you using consultants in projects that are high value? Do you have a way to quickly consider their suggestions and move ahead with projects? Do you use a PMO and governance board or something like it?
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Tags: consulting, multi-divisional, PMO, projects, strategy, strategy alignment, tactics, use of consultantsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Best of the Best Practices, Solutions and Trends Requiring Projects
9 opinions for Consulting Customers! Get Your Act Together
Miki
Feb 14, 2008 at 12:28 am
Bob, IMO, to a great extent, speed is a function of the culture and there is no business process or PMO in creation that can abrogate the egos involved if the right culture isn’t there.
Bob
Feb 14, 2008 at 2:37 am
Miki- I agree that tendency toward action is cultural. I still think that a standardized process to deal with projects and suggested projects would make a big difference. Thanks for commenting!
Miki
Feb 14, 2008 at 2:50 am
Bob, I’m not disagreeing with you. Good process, as long as it doesn’t ossify into bureaucracy, makes any project or action move faster. I just believe that processes are the structural underpinnings of culture, so without the right culture processes will be flawed and actions subject to the chaos of disparate egos.
Bob
Feb 14, 2008 at 10:45 am
Miki- yes. The “disparate egos” are a big problem. One of the things that Eli Goldratt (Viable Vision, Theory of Constraints) does in his consulting model for strategy is to spend a few days having execs present/discuss their operations with each other, challenges to their operations, and key projects/plans. Through the process the execs begin to understand each others challenges and try to help each other solve them, especially the overlapping ones or duplicate projects. Only then does the consulting team take them into a strategy development session.
MAPping Company Success
Feb 15, 2008 at 4:19 am
[…] buddy Bob Turek writes Project Management 411 and we got into a discussion regarding Bob’s post on the difficulty “in they can’t get the multi-divisional […]
ActiveEngine Sensei
Feb 15, 2008 at 7:31 am
From a different perspective, I’d say I’ve seen more effective execution of plans than decisions being made rapidly. In this particular case there was a PMO which acted as a mentor to a sales department charged with re-vamping their prospecting and acquisition processes and system. The PMO, with the department head, reported to a subset of the executive committee. In fact, the PMO chose the consultants to augment for the analysis portion of the project. It was one of the best executions I’ve seen in years as resources were aligned and the teams had to answer directly to the CFO.
Bob
Feb 15, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Sensei- excellent example. I note reporting to “subset” of exec committee and simply having a PMO executive representative for the department head as being both streamlined and standard processes. PMO choice of consultants is also very nice. Can you share what the level of the person is in the PMO? I’m interested in leverage/authority of not only the PMO but the roles within the PMO. Thanks, as always, for your excellent contributions.
ActiveEngine Sensei
Feb 16, 2008 at 11:56 am
As would luck have it, the VP of the PMO went on to be promoted to CAO so there it was a natural extension of the senior management team.
Interestingly enough, one the consultants for the project assumed the role that CAO left open after his promotion, so most of the synergy that stemmed from the analysis and project management style remained on staff.
Bob
Feb 16, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Sensei- very interesting! We used to say that the best project manager for a manufacturing ERP implementation was a key manager (Materials Manager, Production Control Manager). Such a setup usually resulted in a well deserved promotion that was very valuable to the company.
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