• “I didn’t know that you wanted me to do that.”
• “I thought you were just making a suggestion and didn’t realize it was a requirement.”
• “You never told me that what I was doing wasn’t correct.”
• “I thought you assigned that to someone else.”
• “I couldn’t finish this task because I didn’t’ get the information I needed from someone else.”
• “I had no idea that you were going to evaluate me based on that criteria.”

All of these are reasons why someone did not do what someone else thought was going to be done. In a nutshell, these are excuses for not being accountable.

At a time when budgets are shrinking, resources are limited and many organizations are threatened to justify their existence, organizations must produce meaningful results in a transparent manner. In order to do this, individuals and managers each have an important part to play. Employees must be accountable for doing what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it. Managers must be accountable for clarifying what employees are supposed to do, by when and according to what standards. Sounds easy as 1,2, 3, right? It can be, if you follow these tips on how to put the COUNT in accountability.

C – Clear expectations and desired outcomes are key. Employees need to know what is expected before they can be held accountable. This means that managers and employees need to have deliberate conversations during which expectations are clearly spelled out and discussed. Be sure to clarify specific outcomes and deliverables (e.g., a PowerPoint presentation vs. a report-style format), timeframes (e.g., first draft due in three weeks, with a final draft to follow no more than two weeks later) and other important details (e.g., a specific process to follow, resources available, dependencies, etc.) as relevant to ensure all parties are on the same page.

O – Ownership is essential. An employee is more likely to be accountable if he/she knows “what’s in it for me”. By showing the employee how his/her goals will help benefit him/her personally, as well as move the organization forward, you are inviting a sense of commitment from the employee. If an employee sees assignments and expectations as opportunities for personal or organizational growth and development or potentially linked to some sort of reward or recognition, they are usually self-motivated to achieve results.

U – Unambiguous measures must be in place. You can hold someone accountable only if you have the right information to know whether the desired progress has been made. This means that on the front end, you need to define clear, unambiguous criteria by which the desired results will be measured. Once defined, you need to evaluate an employee’s progress against the defined measures so you can identify where improvement or a different course of action will be necessary to achieve success.

N – Necessary, ongoing feedback must be provided along the way. Constructive feedback, both positive and negative, is critical to ensuring that the employee stays on track and motivated to achieve results. Constructive feedback that is information-specific, issue-focused and grounded in observations keeps an employee focused on the behaviors that he/she should stop, start or continue. Ongoing two-way discussions keep both the employee and manager up-to-date on progress, issues or challenges and promote early intervention or course correction if necessary.

T – True Consequences – If nothing happens when an employee falls short of expectations, accountability has no meaning. This means that there need to be consequences for failing to meet defined, agreed upon goals. Consequences should be developmental rather than punitive in nature (e.g., hold off on giving the employee a new/interesting assignment until he/she takes a relevant training course or shows improvement in a certain skill area). If two-way ongoing feedback discussions are taking place, the employee should be fully aware of whether he/she is on track to meet expectations and hence, the imposition of consequences should not be a surprise.

In summary, accountability is one of the most important factors in both individual and organizational success. For this reason, managers and employees should put the COUNT in accountability by setting clear expectations and outcomes, instilling employee ownership in the process, defining unambiguous performance measures, providing necessary constructive feedback and imposing true consequences for achievement of results.

- Wendy Myers, Senior Executive Consultant

What is resilience?

From science, resilience is described as the characteristic of a substance or object that allows it to bounce back to its original shape after being stretched or pulled or somehow impacted by external forces.

From psychology and sociology it is described as the human capacity to remain both flexible and strong in the midst of ambiguity, stress, and change. Resilient people are able to remain calm in unpredictable environments, maintain their balance while being adaptive, and spring back quickly after being subjected to the stresses of change.

Resilient people are:

Enhancing resilience is an imperative because planned and unexpected changes will continue to define our work and personal lives, and our ability to remain adaptive is closely linked to our ability to thrive and survive.

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.” 

 –Dean Becker, President and CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems  

What is organizational resilience?

Resilience isn’t simply an individual characteristic. It is helped or hindered by the surrounding system and just as individuals can learn to develop personal traits of resilience, so too, can organizations develop a culture of resilience.

According to Jim Collins in his book Good to Great “The good to great companies faced as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on and as result emerged from adversity even stronger.”

Resilient organizations sustain their long term competitive advantage, by doing two things simultaneously:

1. Managing performance and growth which requires delivering excellent results against current goals
2. Managing adaptation which requires experimentation, improvisation and innovation to adapt to rapid, turbulent changes

Most organizations pay more attention to the first capability focusing on short term results over long term benefits. Navigating successfully between performance and adaptation is a balancing act and requires deliberate and conscious attention to building the different skill sets and organizational design they require in order to fully optimize the organization.

The characteristics of resilient organizations include:

What is a leader’s role in building resilience?

Leaders can act as catalysts to “tip” the organization in the direction of resilience. Resilient leaders perceive challenges constructively and they are able to size up situations and move quickly from analysis to a plan of action (and reaction). 

They lead with questions not answers, engage in dialogue and debate, encourage alternative ideas and approaches, and review lessons without blame or denial.

Resilient leaders are opportunity oriented thinkers, seeing change as a natural part of life versus danger oriented thinkers who are uncomfortable and avoid change. Below are some examples of the differences in thinking.

How can I assess and develop my resiliency?

Resiliency can be developed; it is like a muscle within individuals, organizations and even within nations. Like any muscle, it must be developed and consistently exercised to be ready in times of need. The first step is to reflect on how you typically respond to adversity and determine if there are changes you would like to make.

Here are some questions to consider:

• Do you approach new situations with an open-mind?
• Do you have the ability to improvise and make the best use of resources around you?
• Do you remain optimistic, not giving up, even if things seem hopeless?
• Do you have the capacity to laugh at myself?
• Do you bounce back in a short time after adversity and disappointment?

For more information about this topic, check out Suntiva’s upcoming presentation entitled “Building Organizational Capacity for Change: The Competitive Advantage of Resiliency” at the Association for Change Management Professionals Global Conference.

- Dr. Ely Harwood, Senior Consultant

To better understand some of the key drivers for each generation, you can start with examining “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”  Maslow’s theory suggests that human beings go through a process of physiological change in a hierarchal manner.  This theory suggests that humans begin by understanding their basic human needs, such as food, sleep, etc. and move step by step through this hierarchy to a point of self-actualization.  This theory is commonly depicted in pyramid form:

*Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg#file

This theory is relevant to our conversation for managing the generational divide in that some experts have suggested that as Generation Y has entered the workforce there has been a shift in the dynamic of the workforce’s needs.  It has been proposed by some organizational psychologists that previous generations have been driven and motivated by their need for “Esteem” in the workplace.  Employees prior to Generation Y put a higher value on factors such as salary, title, and respect from their peers while Generation Y seems to put a higher premium on work-life balance, mentorship, and challenging the norm.  Some psychologists say that this process began with Generation X’s climb up the proverbial corporate ladder and is now manifesting itself in the retention practices being put in place at organizations to attract, and even more importantly keep, Generation Yers on staff.

Many organizational psychologists present the idea that Traditionalists and Baby Boomers have a similar work style and put more credence on the social aspects of work and conflict resolution.  The claim is that in these earlier generations they are driven by a high work ethic and are less open to changes in the accepted best practices, they treat work as a privilege more than a right and are often more hesitant to challenge authority.  Generation Xers and Yers arguably have a more difficult time participating in more traditional means of social interaction at the workplace, i.e. a preference for instant messages and emails versus meetings and one on one communications.   With that being said, they are not afraid to challenge accepted norms and corporate best practices.  Also unlike earlier generations, Generation Xers and Yers view work as a means to enrich their lives outside of the office and put a higher premium on work-life balance.

Traditionalists and Baby Boomers share many similarities as do Generation Xers and Generation Yers, for the sake of making broad comparisons it is easier to lump them each into two generations.  There is however some key differences between all four generations, highlighted in Table 1 below.  It’s important that while a manager recognizes where there are synergies in these generational groupings there still lays some important differences.

*Source: http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=honorprog

Outside of the social and psychological aspects that have driven these changes in behavior, technology has played a major role in impacting employees’ expectations of their organization and themselves.  The technology changes have also lead to an increased gap in the lexicon used between the different generations; in particular this has become a significant challenge for Traditionalists and Baby Boomers communicating with Generation Yers.  Couple the issues of shared lexicon with understanding of how to use modern communication technologies and you can begin to see where the gap continues to grow.

To summarize these potential issues the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) published an article in April of 2011 breaking generational issues down to three key areas to watch out for.  The Firm Practice Management group of the AICPA published that time, technology, and relationships with others are the three main drivers in generational conflict.  The article piggy backs on the research of Maslow and other organizational psychologists and provides suggestions on how an organization can go about preparing for and tackling these potential conflicts. 

Looking at the diversity of the workforce and their disparate value systems it’s clear to see why managers have a difficult time aligning teams that span four generations and roughly eight decades.  Through these difficulties and differences however are clear opportunities for growth.  While Generation Yers seek mentors and positive reinforcement, Traditionalists want their experience and authority respected, seeing respect as something earned over time not immediately given to a new hire walking in the door from college.  Instead of looking at this as a challenge, organizations should see this as valuable opportunity.  Generation Yers, a group of people that understand the latest trends in technology and leverage social tools to engage with their peers, can assist Traditionalists and Baby Boomers in becoming more engaged with their workforce through technology.  Traditionalists and Baby Boomers can take advantage of mentorship opportunities for Generation Yers and Xers, building a mutual respect through collaboration, breaking down some of the old walls of authority that no longer seem practical in a society where information is at your fingertips 24 hours a day and collaboration is king.

With each generation comes a different set of opportunities, how an organization manages these generational differences will lead them down a path of either conflict and turnover or retention and sustained enrichment of their employees.  If you’re a senior leader of an organization don’t be surprised if the next e-mail you get is from a 24 year old junior consultant looking to share with you his or her idea.  With new technologies comes greater access; with that access comes a greater sense of collaboration and unity around your organization.  No matter what generation you fall into, the path forward for any organization is the sharing and organization of information.  Why not leverage each other’s diverse skill sets to get the most out of it!

- Matthew Richard, Senior Consultant

Today’s business environment is defined by change, whether it is a shift in leadership, modified customer requirements, new legislation or stiffer competition, organizations are continuously adapting and reinventing themselves to stay viable.

Flexibility and agility are no longer nice to have, they are strategic imperatives. The ability to maintain continuity with fewer resources and greater demands while integrating change, literally defines which organizations succeed, thrive and survive. 

What is change management and why is it important?
Change management is a systematic approach to planning and integrating change aligned with business strategy that focuses on both the business and its people.

From a business standpoint, change management focuses on planning and implementing transactional change (quick, short term change activities) and transformational change (deep, long term fundamental change) in order to facilitate delivery of sustainable benefits at minimum cost and risk.

From the people standpoint, change management focuses on the human side of change. It is the people that make the change happen (or not) and their ability to adapt, absorb and assimilate new ways of operating ultimately defines success.

The chart below highlights the importance of change management. This research, conducted by Prosci, an independent research company, illustrates the correlation between effective change management and realization of project objectives.   

What is a change management strategy?
A change management strategy utilizes a standardized framework to plan and implement change to ensure the following:

• Business needs, priorities and goals are linked to specific change(s)
• Risks are identified, managed and minimized
• Processes to capture ROI and value added are standardized
• The human side of change and transition are woven into projects
• Skills such a change leadership, resilience and adaptability are  built and reinforce
• The severity of any impact and disruption is minimized
• Changes  met desired goals within time and budget constraints
• Application of consistent and rigorous tracking and reporting methodologies

Given the scope, impact and frequency of change it stands to reason that organizations invest in using a structured and repeatable process to plan and guide change and build capacity for change and learning along the way.

As is illustrated below, an effective change management strategy can reduce the “dip” or the disruption and expedite achieving business benefits.

What are the components of change management strategy?
A change strategy outlines the scope of the change effort, guiding principles, risk and rewards, business drivers, responsibilities, metrics and outcomes. A strategy may contain several components:

• Stakeholder Management Plan – identifies and engages those who affect and are affected by the change and targets approaches to support their transition to new ways of operating.
• Communication Plan – details approaches to building clarity, unity and commitment among internal and external stakeholders.
• Organizational Alignment Plan – outlines methodologies to accomplish required shifts in design and/or redesign of structures, processes and roles and responsibilities.
• Training Plan – identifies the skill building needs to perform new tasks as well as skill and capability building for change, transition, and resilience.

What is Suntiva’s approach to change management?
Both research and Suntiva’s extensive experience have shown that organizational initiatives conducted without deliberate change management simply do not work. They fail to engage and prepare stakeholders, secure advocacy and sponsorship, manage resistance and risks, and integrate new ways of doing business. In the end, they fail to meet the intended results and waste time, energy and resources.

At Suntiva we integrate our multidisciplinary understanding of how to both prepare, launch, implement and integrate the process side of change (processes, systems, technologies, tactics) and the human side (behavioral, attitudinal dynamics of change on human behavior influencing and motivating).

Our change management methodology applies to a range of small and large scale business changes strategically engaging sponsors and leaders throughout the change process and maximizing stakeholder involvement, preparation, support, while rigorously measuring change integration and results. 

Our change management methodology includes:

• Defining the case and goals for change
• Gauging environmental readiness conditions
• Creating a change strategy and methods
• Building leadership advocacy, resolve and skills
• Engaging, involving and preparing people
• Designing processes, structures and roles
• Monitoring implementation, progress and integration

As a preview for part two of this series click on the link below to Suntiva’s upcoming presentation entitled “Building Organizational Capacity for Change: The Competitive Advantage of Resiliency” at the Association for Change Management Professionals Global Conference.

- Ely Harwood, Senior Executive Consultant

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an official document that is considered an addendum to the contract, and includes detail description of services required, level of performance and credits and incentives.

To prepare an effective SLA, you need to understand what the necessary service level specifications are that will adequately support your business processes. It is critical to take the time to really understand what the needs are, while at the same time not over engineering the service relative to the business requirement.  Rather than over engineering for future needs, it is more appropriate to include an agreement in the contract to review SLAs after a certain period of time to make adjustments based on current technology and business needs.

SLRs and SLAs Working Together
Now we understand the difference between service level requirements and service level agreement, we can look at how they work together.  As stated earlier, service level requirements are the prelude to the service level agreement and as such they are the basis for describing the business requirements for an IT service.  Once the contract is awarded, the customer and vendor will use the service level requirements to negotiate the service level agreements that will be documented and added as an addendum to the contract.  The service level agreements will ultimately be the basis for periodic performance reviews and may result in performance credits being applied, if there are any SLAs that fail during a given period of review.  We discuss credits and incentives a little later in this discussion.

Scoring service level requirements:  Determining your “key service levels”
Key service levels are those service levels that are defined as service level agreements and officially documented in the contract.  The customer should review all the service level requirements and score them, a simple high, medium and low designation will work.  The goal is to identify a reasonable number of key service levels that can be managed as part of a monthly performance review, and do not become such a burden to the customer that ultimately overwhelms them to the point where they default to approving all vendor invoices without truly reviewing performance.  The key service levels should provide an overarching view into performance of all the IT services being provided by the vendor.  So, as an example you may have several SLRs associated with the service desk service such as: call Answer Time, First Call/Contact Resolution Time, Call Abandonment Rate, Average Call Hold Time, Call Resolution Time, Call Backs (reopened tickets), Routing of Incidents, Help Desk Availability – Live Agent, Customer Satisfaction and as part of your scoring you may call out Call Resolution Time as your key service level for the service desk service. 

The thing to understand when we are scoring the SLRs and reducing them down to the key service levels for SLAs, is just because certain service level requirements are not included in the “key service levels” does not mean they have no significance.  First, they provide an objective measurement for tracking performance in areas that are important to the customer’s business and can spotlight the problem areas.  Second, these non-key service levels are in fact contractual obligations which if not met, could form the basis of a claim of breach of contract by the customer.

Service Level Requirement Template
Here is a sample service level requirement template that can be used to capture service levels that are important to the customer’s business.  Using this template when capturing service requirements will provide key data points to be used when negotiating the service levels, such as performance target, SLR performance and how the service level will be monitored.  It is important to include the monitoring method here to ensure the data required is readily accessible for the periodic performance review cycle.

Credit and Incentives
So after defining key service levels, and putting in place a process to review performance against the key service levels, the question is what happens if a service level is missed, or what happens if the vendor exceeds performance targets.

In the case of customer credits, the situation is pretty clear, at least from the customer’s point of view.  If a key service level target is missed the customer should be entitled to compensation for unsatisfactory performance, in this case we are calling this a credit to the customer. 

While the customer is entitled to credits for unsatisfactory performance, the question then becomes, should the vendor be entitled to incentives for performance that exceeds the service levels.  And although there are no absolutes in life and everything is negotiable, in typical IT outsourcing customers expect the vendor to exceed the service levels without special compensation.

Service Performance Cycle Review Results:
In this example two key service levels were missed in the current month, this resulted in 50% of the total possible credit being awarded to the customer. This table can be modified to capture year-to-date and contract life credits.

What about Force majeure clauses  
Force Majeure literally means "greater force".  These clauses excuse a party from liability if some unpredictable event beyond the control of a party prevents it from performing its obligations under a contract.  Typically, force majeure clauses cover natural disasters or other "Acts of God", war, or the failure of third parties to perform their obligations to the contracting party. It is important to remember that force majeure clauses are intended to excuse a party only if the failure to perform could not be avoided by the exercise of due care by that party. When negotiating such a clause it is always a good practice to include specific examples of what will be covered under such a clause.

Some final thoughts

• Only ask for what you really need – It is easy to get carried away and try to account for every possible capability in your IT services.  So it is important to stay focused on what you “Need” versus what you “Want”.  You may want the system to be available 24/7, but in reality you only need it available Monday thru Friday from 6AM – 6PM.  Take the time to really scrutinize your business requirements and base them on needs versus wants.
• Include the best and worst case situation - In general, 98% availability sounds like a good figure to aim for, however if the reporting period is based on months, it would mean it is acceptable to have 14 consecutive hours down time and the provider has no obligation resolve the problem sooner as long as that 98% measurement is still fulfilled.  Again it comes back to understanding your business processes and how the key service levels will support them in all scenarios.
• Clearly define terms and monitoring processes - Building off the previous point, if we agree to 98% system availability, we need to understand and agree to what this is measured against.  Does it include scheduled maintenance, acts of God, or natural disasters, how do we measure this and most importantly, how do we monitor it.
• Ask for continuous adjustment to meet current business needs and evolving technology standards - As business needs and technology are constantly evolving it is important to incorporate periodic reviews of your service levels with the vendor and make adjustments as necessary.  This should be documented in your service level agreements to ensure all parties have the same expectations.

- Les Milner, Senior Consultant

So, what does that mean?
Well, the PMO is the department that establishes, monitors, and maintains project management policies, standards, processes and procedures within the organization.  

OK, but what does that really do for the organization?
Through standardization, the PMO introduces economies of repetition, produces a source of guidance to implement best practices, and establishes metrics to measure execution. 

It sounds like ‘motherhood and apple pie’ ... everything seems to be running smoothly ...

Why do we need a PMO anyway? 
According to a KPMG survey of 252 organizations, inadequate project management implementation constitutes 32% of project failures, lack of communication constitutes 20%, and unfamiliarity with scope and complexity constitutes 17%; accordingly, 69% of project failures are due to the lack or improper implementation of project management methodologies. [Wikipedia, 2008]  Furthermore, in an article by Megan Santosus for CIO Magazine, ‘Why You Need a Project Management Office (PMO),’ her research found that more than 50% of those organizations with a PMO claimed improved project success rates. 

So, what are the benefits of a PMO? 
There surely are many reasons; however, here are some of the most prevalent ones:

• As the empirical data suggests, PMOs boost efficiency, optimize cost, and deliver projects on time with acceptable performance. 
• PMO tools and techniques also allow us to track progress and results.
• PMO increases control, collaboration, and communication throughout the organization in the execution of projects.  
• A PMO is an important stepping-stone in organizational maturity. 

When projects are the life-blood of an organization, they are obviously of significant strategic importance to the organization’s future; they ordinarily cross multiple internal business units; and, in many cases, are executed over multiple years.  As such, the PMO does more than provide standards oversight.  A strategic PMO includes monitoring and reporting on active projects to top management for strategic decision making.  Ultimately, the PMO is a component of a long-term strategy and, when utilized correctly, becomes a strategic driver for organizational excellence and enhances the practices of program management, project portfolio governance, and strategic thought leadership.  

OK, OK, OK ... if we were to establish a PMO, how would we do it?

Stay tuned, in the next blog in this series, we will look at how to match the right PMO structure with your organization’s culture and goals.

- Jon Katz, Vice President

• You look at your workforce statistics and realize that 2/3 of your technical experts are at or soon to be at retirement age and you have no idea what their plans are for a continued career at your organization.
• Your three top performers in the organization decide it is time to move on to “do their own thing” and you are left with a big vacancy in your leadership pipeline. 
• You just found out that a long-time employee who is the exclusive source of key subject matter expertise in a mission critical function is sick and taking an indefinite leave of absence.
• Due to recent regulatory changes, your organization’s mission is going to change over the next three years and a whole new set of skills will be needed to accomplish the organization’s objectives.

While these scenarios may sound drastic, they are real challenges that both federal government and private industry organization’s can face at any point in time.  If any one or more of these events should come true, an organization could be at risk for any or all of the following:

• Inability to meet short and/or long-term business objectives
• Lack of internal talent capable of stepping into key leadership roles
• A workforce without the necessary skills to meet future requirements
• Loss of key institutional and technical knowledge about the organization
• Lack of continuity in customer/client service

Many organization leaders ask themselves how they can proactively seek to minimize the risks noted above.

The answer is - SUCCESSION PLANNING.  Succession Planning is risk management for your human resources.

Business Directory.com defines risk management as the identification, analysis, assessment, control, and avoidance, minimization, or elimination of unacceptable risks. 

This is exactly what succession planning is – identifying, analyzing, and assessing current and future human resource requirements. Proper succession planning ensures that an organization manages, avoids, minimizes or eliminates the risks of not having the right people, with the right skills, at the right time, to accomplish the organization’s mission and ensure continuity of operations. 

Let’s explore the concept of succession planning as risk management in a bit more detail.  Below is a typical approach to succession planning:

Applying the definition of risk management to this approach, it is easy to understand the concept of Succession Planning as risk management:

- Steps 1 – 3 are all about identifying the risks and answering these key questions:

• What is the current and future mission of the organization?
• What mission-critical roles, knowledge, skills and competencies are required to fulfill current and future organization goals and objectives?

- Step 4 is about assessing and analyzing the risks and answers these key questions:

• What is the longevity of the current workforce?  
• What does the current workforce look like in terms of knowledge, skills and competencies they possess?  
• What is the potential and interest of the current workforce to assume mission-critical roles in the future?

- Step 5 and 6 are about controlling, avoiding, minimizing or eliminating the risks and answer these key questions:

• What development strategies can be put in place to close the gap between the knowledge, skills and experience of the current workforce and the leadership and technical competency requirements for the future?
• How can we retain mission-critical knowledge within the organization?
• What are the most effective strategies to identify and bring on board new employees with the mission-critical skills we need to accomplish our future business objectives?   

Open and transparent communication throughout the succession planning cycle, as well as continuous evaluation of the succession planning outcomes are also essential to manage the risks associated with internal acceptance of and support for the succession planning activities.

In summary, while some risks in life may seem unavoidable, the human resource risks associated with changing organization goals and objectives, vacancies left by retiring or departing employees, loss of key institutional or technical knowledge or lack of leadership continuity can be managed through strategic and deliberate succession planning.  

- Wendy Myers, Senior Consultant

There are 5 pillars that a project manager has to engage in order to maximize their potential for success. The utilization of these tools outlines a roadmap from project kick off to implementation. The primary tools used are as follows:  project planning, project baseline, reporting, change control, and project closure.  By equipping my team with these valuable tools, they had an opportunity to explore the realm of possibilities when it comes to the utilization of Project Management best practices and services.  Project Management can be a guilty pleasure when basic tools and techniques are embraced. Even the biggest of giants can be slain with a basic slingshot!

By adding these 5 pillars to a service and/or a project my team was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to not only stay on track with project execution but through project implementation as well. It is merely the tools that are used to kick off the project so that it can be implemented with success.  Taking a look at the 5 pillars more closely outlined the uniqueness of the role each team member played while laying the foundation for a project that would be viewed by many. 

The five pillars used are as follows:

Project Planning
The development of action items and scheduling that will aid the project in moving forward with a timeline that targets a start and completion date. 

The execution of a project plan allows the PM to achieve their objectives by staying on schedule, within budget and delivering the product and service on time.  Project planning is fundamental in order to avoid failure and disappointment.

Project Baseline
Establishing a clear and concise project baseline is the most effective way of managing a project from kick off to implementation.  The baseline will capture the project’s scope, time and costs during various stages of the project.  Project Baselines are critical elements to all projects with details focusing on the execution of the schedule, project risk and project issues just to name a few.

Reporting
The mechanism for reporting project status and outcomes in a metric format ensures the project information is being collected and monitored on a regular basis.  Capturing project metrics will keep the reality of how well the project is nearing completion in a more realistic view.  The utilization of this pillar provides a snapshot of where project managers and their projects really are at any given time.  When providing a project management status reports there are several key factors that must be considered.

• Time (Are we meeting the scheduled deadline)
• Cost (Are we going to stay within the allocated budget)
• Resources (How much time are we spending on the project)
• Scope ( Is the scope creep in line with expectation)
• Quality (How are we managing risk within the project)
• Actions (Are there outstanding action items)

Change Control
Change is inevitable.  During a project there will be many good reasons why things need to change.  Incidentally there will also be cases where change is unavoidable.  There are incidents when a request is considered to change agreed scope and objective of the project to accommodate a need not originally defined to be part of the project.

Change control (often referred to as Change Management) is the management process for requesting, reviewing, approving, carrying out and controlling changes to the project's deliverables. Change Control is usually applied once the first version of a deliverable has been completed and agreed upon.

Project Closure
Project closure is a means of applying the finishing touch to a project?  Not necessarily correct!  It is the responsibility of the project manager to ensure that the customer and team members use measures to close the project formally, with practical measures as well.

As previously stated all projects have a beginning and end date.  Without the implementation of a formal closure process, the project can drag on longer than necessary which will result in budget overruns and unsatisfied customers.  Implementing a project closures plan will ensure that the outcome of the project is in line with the scope, satisfy customers and stakeholders, yield overall team sense of accomplishment, capture metrics, and relinquish resources for oncoming projects.  It is imperative that all projects are closed out when completed. 

The project closure process will aid in providing lessons learned from start up to implementation.  The finalization of the project closures will result in all administrative aspect of the project being contained for future reference that relates to the historical information where the documents and procedures were established during the life of the project.    During the closeout there are a few essential things that must be done in a timely and effective manner in order to ensure the project has been properly closed out.  They are as follows:

• All team members must complete their final time sheet
• Submit all expense reports
• Capture and submit metrics from the inception to implementation of the project
• Final cost must be submitted
• Provide team project status report
• Update the issue log
• Highlight risk, and decide how to close and or mitigate
• Identify a plan to handle ongoing project support
• Prepare and submit a final project status report

Having these key components in place aided my team members in not only meeting but exceeding the customer’s expectation.  Project Management is a guilty pleasure if all the tools are properly implemented and utilized.  The infectious desire to perform a job and reflect upon the finished product is surmountable when trying to retain and attract new business opportunities.  Project Management has evolved into tools and techniques that set organizations in higher standards by having highly skilled individuals within the market place who can provide coaching, mentoring and advisement to project managers on the day to day use of the project management tools and techniques. 

- Cinda Feagan, Senior Consultant

But, first, let me issue a HUGE DISCLAIMER!

Do NOT try to do these strategies without first making sure your team has the fundamentals in place (goals, roles, processes, and operating agreements).

In short, they will backfire. Employees who face real structural problems in their day-to-day-work will view the following interventions with cynicism at best and possibly even outright hostility.

On the other hand, teams that have a solid base and generally operate well can kick it into high-gear with the following strategies.

(Link: If you want to review the team fundamentals, click here)

Know Thy Strengths
When a team has a high degree of trust, they can talk about individual and team strengths in a genuine and productive way. Specifically, when individuals trust each other enough to share candidly their strengths and weaknesses, the team can begin to organize work around these strengths and weaknesses.  Just as companies specialize to harness comparative advantages, team members can specialize to elevate team performance to a whole new level. In addition, when new work arises, the question of delegation can be decided, in part, by asking, “Whose strengths does this align with?” For more on Strengths, check out Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham. 

(Follow up Disclaimer: Don’t try this if your team doesn’t trust each other. Talking about strengths in teams with low trust and unclear goals, roles, and processes leads to accusations of narcissism (“he’s not really good at that”) and accusations of laziness (“she only wants to work on what she’s good at, and won’t help us out”) To improve trust on a team, skip the typical “trust building” exercises. Go back to fundamentals and focus on making clear commitments and keeping them. More than anything, keeping commitments builds trust.)

Use Advanced Personality Assessments
You can find a plethora of insight-provoking personality assessments on the market. In fact, there are over 2000 of them available.  Most people have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, although other prominent ones include the Hogan, the Workplace Big 5 Profile, the Conflict Dynamics Profile, the Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQi), and many more. When delivered by a trained facilitator, these assessments can help an average team get better by applying insights about personality to work results.

(Huge Follow-Up Disclaimer:  Attempting to use a personality assessment to fix poor team performance is the classic team “band aid.” Understanding each other better can improve team performance, but it will not help the team long term if there are fundamental team structures that aren’t working. Fix those first.)

Action Learning
Action Learning involves having your team tackle a real work problem AND deliberately build leadership skills in the process. Here’s how this might work: Your team meets every week to work a problem. With the help of a facilitator, at the beginning of the session each team member clarifies the leadership skill they want to work on during the session (listening, asking good questions, problem solving, etc). During the session, the facilitator stops the meeting to ask participants, “How are you doing individually? How are you doing as a group?” The facilitator then coaches the participants in real-time. The benefit of this is that by debriefing during the process, teams can generate amazing amounts of out-of-the-box thinking. And, by learning in real-time, leaders build leadership skills and get feedback much more quickly than in traditional classroom settings.

Empowerment
The word empowerment gets thrown around in fad management books all the time, but what does it actually mean? In short, it means helping employees take ownership for results. The first step is having the team fundamentals in place – goals, roles, processes, and operating agreements. Once you have those clearly defined, articulate your philosophy of empowerment to employees. When doing so, it’s helpful to also clarify the boundaries. This might seem counter-intuitive and may seem to prevent “out-of-the-box thinking.” But, when you clarify general parameters but make it clear employees can get creative within them, employees feel like they have room to be creative – without the anxiety that comes with total uncertainty of what you’re looking for (i.e.  “I might waste my time doing something the boss isn’t going to like or doesn’t care about.”)  

Give them the parameters of what you’re looking for, and give them room to run within that.
As you seek to empower your employees it’s also helpful to push all decision making authority down to the lowest possible levels.  And, train your employees to make decisions. If you can learn to coach your employees when they come to you asking for a decision, instead of simply making a decision yourself, you can help them grow their sphere of accountability. A great resource for learning to coach employees is Quiet Leadership by David Rock.

Other Team Activities and Adventures
Outdoor adventures, ropes courses, and other team building initiatives get a bad reputation. People frequently complain they “don’t work” or are a “waste of time.” And, they are – if your team does not have the fundamentals in place. If the goals, roles, processes, or interpersonal operating agreements aren’t clear, your team will quickly return to its old problems after an outdoor or out-of-the-box adventure

But, with a solid foundation, getting out of the office for a little fun and adventure is worth the time and money. It helps team members achieve an even greater level of coordination, celebrate together, and, if you’re working with a skilled facilitator, generate insights about team performance that can help take you to the next level.

In sum, taking a team from “good to great” is where it really gets fun. Performance can improve dramatically, and the interventions used to do that are the more “sexy” type of interventions. However, be careful, attempting these in the absence of solid fundamentals will waste time, money, and good will from your team members.

So, be deliberate. First get your team to good. Then, and only then, work to take them from good to great.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

So, how do you manage risk anyway?  In this segment, we will examine how to plan, identify, assess, quantify, respond, monitor and control risks.  

Plan & ID:

How do you identify a risk?  Here are seven common sources of project risk to evaluate:

• Stakeholder Relationship/Reference-ability: “How is your relationship?” 
• Delivery: “Are there performance challenges?” 
• Staffing: “Are you properly manned to meet the client’s needs?”
• Contractual:  “Are you operating within the scope of the contract and in accordance with all the terms and conditions?” 
• Partners: “Are your partners providing complimentary capabilities to fill gaps in deliver?”
• Financial:  “Is there sufficient funding for the effort?”
• Environmental:  “What is the ‘climate’ of the workplace?”

Assess:

Be sure to analyze the cause and effects of risks and examine the sources discussed above – client relationship, delivery, staffing, etc.  For example, causes of risk would be things like period of performance ending/no renewal executed yet – “fiscal year deadlines”.  Therefore, the effect might be a high concentration of turnover.

Quantify:

Once we have identified these risks and have conducted an initial cause/effect analysis, we must further analyze them using Qualitative and Quantitative techniques. 

Qualitative methods are used to initially assess risks in order to help us determine further action: “What are the chances it will happen?” and “If it does happen, what is the potential effect?”  One possible technique to use is the Probability & Impact (P&I) Matrix.  This technique will help you determine if an opportunity is high/medium/low impact or high/medium/low probability.  Using the P&I Matrix will help you decide which risks will demand more attention and make you aware of all the potential issues that could arise.

After performing the Qualitative analyses, the next step is to perform the Quantitative analysis to determine the magnitude of the effects.  Here are a few tools that can be used:

• Interviewing/collection, data distributions          
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Decision Trees
• Monte Carlo, modeling/simulation
• Bar Charts, Histograms, Scatter Diagrams, etc.

In performing the analyses, determine the priority of attending to each risk.  In doing so, you will also determine whether each risk is acceptable or unacceptable.  Remember, it is not a matter of more or less important; rather different risks just command different attention at the various levels.

Respond, Monitor, and Control

Now, you are faced with mitigating the risks using risk management best practices, tools and techniques to achieve project success.  There are a wide variety of tools and techniques that we use to plan for, respond to, monitor, and control risks:

• ‘The Box’ – pursue/no pursue & bid/no bid process
• Organizational Conflict of Interest determination process and mitigation plan
• Proposal Plan, compliance matrix, ‘black hat’
• Project Plan – Kickoff template, compliance matrix
• Strategic Planning – Critical Success Factors
• Project Reviews – Quads (Quantitative – Cost/Schedule), SWOT, Quarterly Client Meetings, formal Risk Review
• Expected Value/Revenue Projections, Earned Value/Backlog, Revenue Analysis (Salesforce)
• Defense Tracker
• Brainstorming
• EVMS
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Monte Carlo Simulation/Modeling
• Three-point estimates
• Probability distributions
• Delphi Technique

There are several strategies to responding to risks and opportunities; yes, opportunities … remember, the purpose of risk management is to increase the probability and impact of positive events while decreasing the probability and impact of events that would have adverse effects on the project. 

Here are a few strategies for adverse effects that can be used:

• Accept the risk, do nothing, and move on
• Avoid the risk
• Transfer the risk
• Mitigate the risk

Now, let’s look at three strategies for opportunities.  Be mindful of that fact that what might appear at first sight as a risk, might in fact be an opportunity.  For example, the client may want additional work to be performed, but the original staffing level for full-time equivalents (FTE) is not sufficient to accomplish the task at the current level of effort in the time allotted.  Scope risk, right?  However, it’s also an opportunity to exploit the risk by getting the client to execute a modification to the contract to allow for the additional work and apply funding against it.  We can share the risk; we often do this by subcontracting work out to a trusted teaming partner.  Finally, we can enhance an opportunity; I think the most common example is to exceed expectations.

Once you have a strategy, you must develop a plan.  Contingency Planning is a very thorough, detailed, and iterative process.  We could devote an entire series to this facet alone.  In a nutshell though, here are some of the primary things we accomplish in contingency planning.  The process includes:

• Problem solving
• Examining inputs (enterprise environmental factors, organizational processes/resources, scope, PWS/contract)
• Making decisions under uncertainty using decision theory (decision trees)
• Determining the ‘worst-cast’ scenario
• Implementing project risk controls
• Identifying risk triggers and anticipating risk events
• Recommending corrective action and communicating risks both internally and externally (clients, stakeholders)
• Recalculating confidence levels and continuously monitoring the risk.

The last element of risk management is to make sure that lessons learned are not lost.  We must be sure to leverage our project experience by creating an end-of-project risk report and compiling lessons learned in a risk database.  By recognizing the value of mistakes we can help to ensure they represent contributions to ensuring continual process improvement.

- Jon Katz, Vice President

In March 2009, the administration issued a memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies directing OMB/OFPP to issue guidance to clarify when governmental outsourcing of services is, and is not, appropriate. This new guidance from OFPP was recently issued September 12, 2011 and will be effective October 12, 2011 as OFPP Policy letter 11-01, Subject: Performance of Inherently Governmental and Critical Functions.

The issue of inherently government functions is not a new issue and in fact has been a concern of outsourcing for decades.  The President’s March 9, 2009 memorandum noted:

“…the line between inherently governmental activities that should not be outsourced and commercial activities that may be subject to private sector competition has been blurred and inadequately defined.”

Although adding clarity to the definition can be helpful, it’s equally important to understand that the new policy is not intended in any way to “… discourage the appropriate use of contractors. Contractors can provide expertise, innovation, and cost-effective support to Federal agencies for a wide range of services.”

The new policy letter provides the following:

1. A single definition of ``inherently governmental function'' built around the well-established statutory definition in the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR Act), Public Law 105-270.
2. Clarifies what functions are inherently governmental and must always be performed by Federal employees.
3. Examples and tests to help agencies identify inherently governmental functions.

Some of the key components of the definition are:

• “… a function that is so intimately related to the public interest as to require performance by Federal Government employees.”
• “…require either the exercise of discretion in applying Federal Government authority or the making of value judgments in making decisions for the Federal Government, including judgments relating to monetary transactions and entitlements.”
• “… the interpretation and execution of the laws of the United States so as —
  • “… to bind the United States to take or not to take some action by contract, policy, regulation, authorization, order…”
  • “…determine, protect, and advance United States economic, political, territorial, property, or other interests by military or diplomatic action, civil or criminal judicial proceedings, contract management…”
  • “…significantly affect the life, liberty, or property of private persons…”
  • “…to commission, appoint, direct, or control officers or employees of the United States“
  • “…to exert ultimate control over the acquisition, use, or disposition of the property, real or personal, tangible or intangible, of the United States, including the collection, control, or disbursement of appropriations and other Federal funds.”

However, the new policy definition also states:

“The term does not normally include… gathering information for or providing advice, opinions, recommendations, or ideas to Federal Government officials...."

The following are illustrative examples of work that is inherently governmental and examples of work closely associated – but perfectly legal to outsource with the appropriate government oversight and controls.  In these examples, there is a clear distinction between tasks that are decision making – an inherently governmental function - and providing support or advisory services - services that though may closely be associated with inherently government functions, may be performed by contractor support.   

For the complete OFPP policy letter with a more extensive list of examples of both a) inherently governmental functions and b) functions closely associated with the performance of inherently governmental functions; along with responsibilities of government agencies to comply with the updated policy see:  http://www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2011-23165_PI.pdf .

- Randy Gaylor, Director

Increase Your Personal Productivity
Let’s all be honest with ourselves: none of us is as efficient as we think we are. We “work hard,” but we don’t always “work smart.” By implementing a few practices to “work smarter” you can dramatically increase your productivity (and well-being). You can find many wonderful time management systems out there (I like Getting Things Done by David Allen, Stephen Covey’s work, and the Power of Full Engagement), but here are my five top tips to work smarter and improve your personal productivity:

• Do the Most Important Thing First:  Each night before you leave, identify the most important thing you have to do the next day. When you get to the office, do that first. Don’t open your email, don’t make calls, don’t chat. Sit down and do it first. If you accomplish nothing else all day, at least you will have accomplished what’s most important.

• Do NOT Open Your Email First Thing in the Morning:  Similar to above, but it bears repeating. Opening email before you accomplish anything is a guaranteed recipe for sucking you into whatever work crisis is going on that day.  Delay opening your email until you accomplish your most important priority for the day.

• Plan a Week at a Time: If you try to manage your calendar a day at a time you’re toast. It’s like driving while looking at your hood ornament. Instead, plan out a week at a time. Put your highest priority items on the calendar and protect them (even if it’s just you alone at your desk). Then, take a scalpel to your week and eliminate unimportant activities. Each day, take 5 minutes to refresh your plan and adjust accordingly. Keep your calendar at weekly view so you can always have a sense of what’s coming up.

• Batch Your Email: Leaving your email on all day and even (gasp!) with a “ping!” sound each time you receive email is a recipe for distraction and burn-out. Employees who do this frequently report feeling like “I worked hard all day but I accomplished nothing.” Studies show that each time you’re interrupted it takes 15-30 minutes to return to what you’re doing. So, instead, turn your email off at times and focus. You can check it every 2 hours and still respond extremely promptly.

• Plan for the Crisis du Jour: As coaches, we frequently hear: “Every day there’s some new crisis that throws a wrench in my plans!” So, if that’s the case, what’s the one thing you can expect…?  The crisis du jour! So plan for it. Consider setting aside (and protecting) an hour or two each day to deal with urgent matters. That way, when “urgent” things interrupt you, you can triage them and plan to do them during your “Crisis du Jour” time and confidently return to focusing on the important task at hand.

Look at Your Business Processes
Just as you look at your personal productivity processes, take a look at your team and organization processes for ways you could “work smarter.” (If your team or organization processes aren’t clear, clarifying them is a great first step on the way to doing more with less.) As you do that, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my process clear? (Unclear processes add time, money, and resources to every endeavor. First seek to clarify.)
• Which steps in the process add the most value to the customer/client/result?
• Which steps in the process add the least value?
• Which steps can be combined?
• Which steps can be eliminated?
• And finally, how will we deal with things that fall in no-man’s land between our processes? (These often cause resource draining fire-drills and inefficiency.)

By first clarifying and then tightening your processes, you can work smarter and can effectively “do more with less.”

Pareto’s Law
Vilfredo Pareto was a 19^th century Italian economist and from his work economists have extrapolated Pareto’s Law, which states that, in general, 20% of inputs generally cause 80% of outputs. Translated to the world of work, 20% of customers bring 80% of revenue, 20% of employees produce 80% of the results, 20% of employees cause 80% of the problems, etc, etc.

As you seek to “work smarter” by improving your personal processes as well as your team or organization processes, use the Pareto principle to guide yourself. Ask yourself these two main questions:

• What 20% of my priorities cause 80% of my results?

• What 20% of my issues cause 80% of my problems?

Focus and invest in the 20% of your priorities that bring the most results.

Stop or mitigate the 20% of issues that cause 80% of your problems.

In sum, if you’re already working hard, step back and look at ways to “work smarter.” Stepping back requires constant vigilance since the world of emails, blackberries, and seemingly urgent demands can suck you in, steal your focus, and zap your productivity quickly. If you can do it deliberately, however, the pain of having to “do more with less” can be minimized and, counter-intuitively, you and your organization might be better for it.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

So just to be clear, let me re-iterate this point: my review is geared towards business executive needs – understanding that we as a group probably use a small portion of the capabilities of these tablets.  I’m not concerned with gaming capability, or movie quality, or the robustness and stability of the underlying OS and software development platform.  You’ll have to go elsewhere to evaluate those aspects.  With that said, on to the reviews!

General Observations
First, a disclaimer:  I’m still a blackberry phone user, and I’m not particularly a fan of Apple or various aspects of their business model.  So, you might infer some bias to my opinions (although you may want to read through and find out which one I kept before assuming too much bias).  Having said this, all of the tablets were easy to use, and clearly had an impact on my productivity – especially while traveling.  They fill the gap between phone and full-fledged notebook PC, and I’ll admit to pulling out the tablet many times to do email or get work done, or just for doing tasks where I would not have bothered to use my notebook PC.  For instance, while driving an RV through Grand Canyon National Park, the iPad 2 (which I was trying at the time) was invaluable as a double-check versus Garmin GPS directions – and helped keep us off roads that really weren’t suited for the RV.  I never would have pulled out the notebook to do that.  

So, what follows are some general comments for each device, and then my conclusions – which one did I keep??

The Blackberry Playbook
Overall, I loved the user interface for the Playbook – very intuitive and in my mind the best UI of the three.  But again, I’m a blackberry user and don’t really like the Apple ‘always go home’ approach to the UI.  The Playbook is smaller, which I also like better for travelling, and for some reason, the virtual keyboard was much easier for me to type with, despite the smaller size of the device.  And by far the best of the apps for Microsoft document editing was Word to Go on the Playbook.  The primary negatives for the Playbook was that email service is through a ‘Blackberry Bridge’ from your cell phone – so your cell phone has to be available with Bluetooth on (draining the battery…), and obviously, without a Blackberry phone device the Playbook is a non-starter.  Also, there are very few apps so far in Blackberry app world – in fact, many of the apps on my phone still say ‘not available for the Playbook.’  This will undoubtedly evolve over time.  Finally, and most significantly, at the time I tried the Playbook there was no 3G/4G phone service available, so internet access was only available if you could get on a wireless network, or through the phone Bridge and a ‘special’ browser within it.  For me, this was a non-starter as a traveler, but for those in the same office every day it may be less of an issue.  And, just recently the Playbook has been released with service plans through Sprint, so I’m assuming more options are on the way.

The Motorola Xoom
Xoom uses the Android operating system, which I found the least intuitive of the three.  I’m sure hardcore Android fans (probably the anti-Apple and Microsoft crowd…) will disagree, and I think eventually it would be very usable and powerful.  In fact, some of my more tech-savvy friends have told me that, once you take the time to implement the “dashboard” concept for mail, social media, etc., the UI can be friendly and powerful indeed.  And, it also includes a Google-based video chat app that has great potential.  But, as the largest (and heaviest) of the three, it wasn’t the best travel option.  And of course, the biggest issue by far is the lack of apps and accessories for this device – only a few hundred when I last checked.  In general, there seems to be some consensus that better Android-based tablets may be on the way – including perhaps an upgrade to the Xoom from Motorola.

The Apple iPad 2
Not a big fan of the larger size, nor the interface.  And the lack of support for Flash is incredibly annoying.  But having said that, I was surprised at how quickly I learned to use the iPad (having never used an iPhone before).  And in my informal testing, the iPad seemed to be the fastest device of the three – which probably shocks the Android crowd.  It also gets excellent wireless service through Verizon (and others), which made a big difference for me.  And of course, no one touches the 500,000+ apps that are available through Apple.  I have quickly become a huge fan of Facetime (almost instantaneous video calls with my family, versus walking around the airport like an idiot with Skype and my notebook PC in my face…), as well as several other great apps including Dropbox (all of your documents available in the ‘cloud’ from any device) and Penultimate (a virtual notebook, with the ability to email/PDF notes instantly from within the app).  With the iPad, you’ll also need a third-party MS Office document editing tool, as the included product is less than ideal.

Summary
Here is a quick summary of my findings:

Bottom Line
In the end, believe it or not, I decided to keep the iPad.  The great apps and always-available internet access (with a wireless plan, of course) made the difference for me.  Where I expected the tablet to immediately replace my Kindle, instead it immediately replaced my paper notebook.  Now the iPad is with me in meetings, and my notes are instantly available to others (the tradeoff is building up my discipline to not check email during the meetings…).  Eventually, I also stopped carrying my Kindle, but be warned that although the iPad has a Kindle app, it does not allow you to download your Kindle subscriptions – only your books.  So things like the Washington Post, WSJ, blog subscriptions, etc. are not available on the iPad Kindle app.  Some you can get separately (the Post and WSJ have their own iPad apps, for instance), but many are not available.  And you lose the simplicity and push-technology of the Kindle, especially for blogs.  Maybe someday Apple and Amazon will form a strategic partnership and decide how to share all of the content – and content revenues… (yeah, right).  Finally, I have started to test business trips with only the iPad – leaving my notebook PC at home.  This is possible with three important caveats: 1) a short trip, mostly meetings and no need for heavy document writing/editing; 2) purchase of a document-editing app for light editing (or, use the Google app on-line); and, 3) purchase of a Bluetooth keyboard/case for the iPad (I chose the Kensington Keyfolio Pro – a combination keyboard and case).

So there you have it.  I’m sure I’ll be keeping an eye on the tablet market; especially if/when the Playbook gets better service options and more apps.  Hope this helped and happy tech gadget hunting!

- Michael Dow, Chief Executive Officer

Tags: Leadership Development  

A good approach is first to develop a balanced IT scorecard that maps clearly to the overall business objectives and strategy.  This scorecard should then be used to drive performance and is measured through the gathering and analysis of metrics that matter.  Metrics development therefore, should relate directly to the IT scorecard, which in turn should map directly to the overall organizational strategy.  Metrics should also identify trends and drive continuous improvement.  An example of balanced scorecard categories could include:

• Business Value
• User Experience
• Operational Excellence
• Continuous Improvement

Measurements, associated targets and trends should then be created to support visibility into performance of these scorecard items.  A lot of thought should be put into the development of these metrics, however, as they can quickly become burdensome to capture, create heavy reporting requirements and become irrelevant by failing to answer the “so what” question.

For example, reporting how many calls a helpdesk receives in a month is worthless to business by itself, however, translated into how many calls were resolved within an agreed upon SLA shows clear alignment to customer satisfaction and maps directly to the scorecard.

Developing metrics that matter is therefore critical and should be meaningful.  Metrics should capture relevant performance targets, indicators and trends, should have clear management ownership and accountabilities, and drive improvement investments.

The following metrics are just a few examples of measures that align to business objectives, demonstrate performance, and provide opportunities to improve.

Business Value

• Number of projects aligned to strategic objectives
• Number of projects in the pipeline, with scope, schedule, cost and quality measures
• Strategic vs. maintenance investment budget

User/Customer Experience

• End user response times – target, actual performance, and trending
• Number of hits and time on strategic web site per user
• Performance against agreed upon Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Operational excellence

• Critical application availability (from a user and performance perspective)
• Critical incidents – number, status, Mean Time To Repair, business impact, and trending
• Problem investigation – Number open, current state, aging, and trends
• Security Compliance indicators
• Number, type and impact of outages related to change

Continuous Improvement

• Employee training statistics
• Number and type of enhancements and defect repairs delivered to critical applications
• Number of process improvement indicators and impacts – SDLC improvements, manual to automated control improvements, change management process improvements, etc…

These are just a few metric ideas, but there are hundreds of possibilities.  The key is to create a well rounded critical set of metrics that represent strategic business value.  They should measure the “right” things as well.  For example, measuring a critical server outage on July 4^th may have huge statistical impact, but have no business value due to the holiday.  On the other hand, 100% availability of a server is a worthless measure, if it’s performance is terrible.

Finally, metrics should not just be used for just measurement reporting, they should also help drive improved performance.  Used properly, metrics can demonstrate IT value to the business and aid in investment decisions.  They should be used to initiate valuable discussions with business to relay perceived IT performance.  If business does not agree with the results, then it is time to revisit your metrics.  This also goes a long way in building strong business and IT partnerships.  The conversation can shift from continually looking at the cost of IT to the IT value proposition.

- Chris Turpin, Senior Consultant

Unfortunately, when faced with poor team performance many well-meaning leaders do not target the fundamentals.  Instead, they try using band-aid activities such as pep talks, “morale building” activities, and various management fads.

Even though these band-aid activities can temporarily boost morale, in the long run, they rarely work in the absence of solid team fundamentals.  And sometimes, despite good intentions, they actually backfire.

Why?

In our experience, about 80% percent of team work problems are caused by an issue with one of the four team fundamentals – goals, roles, processes, and interpersonal operating agreements.            
                                   

Problems in these core areas often have clear surface symptoms (that then often receive band-aid solutions). For example, teams without clear goals often appear unengaged and unaligned. Lack of clear roles may appear as a “personality problem,” as employees inevitably step on each other’s turf (which was never clearly designated in the first place). Process problems can manifest as burnout as employees each follow their own process, work against each other, or bog the group down in over-collaboration. Unclear interpersonal operating agreements can lead to a host of problems – poor morale, inefficiency, personality conflicts, and many others. In the short, teams face a variety of manifesting symptoms, yet many are actually caused by a fundamental structural issue on the team.

Unfortunately, band-aids can't fix a broken bone and only working on the symptoms will not repair the underlying issues on a team.  In fact, when employees know the team fundamentals do not work and are faced with real work challenges each day, they often meet band-aid motivation/empowerment/morale building initiatives with skepticism, annoyance, and resignation.

So, to get back to fundamentals and to check out your team’s structural foundation, ask yourself the following questions. Then ask yourself if your team members know the answer. (Hint: Subtract about 40% from your confidence level that your team knows the answers.)

• GOALS:  What’s your team’s target? How will you know you’re successful? What’s the reward? Without a clear target, even the best teams can flounder. Clear goals are the single most important factor driving team high performance.

• ROLES:  Who will do what? Where does one person’s role end and the next begin? How will you deal with natural conflicts and checks and balances between roles? Are roles aligned with each employee's strengths?

• PROCESSES:  Are your major business processes clear? Are they efficient? How do you handle items outside of your normal processes?

• INTERPERSONAL OPERATING AGREEMENTS:  This sounds fancy, but all it really means is the team has agreed upon certain behaviors. How will you make decisions? Deal with conflict? Give each other feedback? Run meetings? Manage email, voice mail, and other communications? How will you deal with others outside of your team - i.e. can you disagree in front of customers or authority figures?

If your team doesn’t have clear agreements in each of these areas, then get together and create them.  Go through each of these areas, establish clear agreements, and capture these agreements in a Team Charter. Revisit these agreements frequently to make sure team members live them.

With the four foundational pillars in place teams can quickly reach new levels of performance.  Without the guidelines and fundamentals in place, team members will bump heads and trip over themselves over and over again in a downward spiral. (In our New Team Development sessions, one of the first things we do is actually walk new teams through these four fundamentals to prevent pain down the road.)

So, to conclude, first get the team fundamentals clearly established. It’s just like a house – you need a solid foundation.

Then, with a solid foundation in place, you can access higher levels of team performance and employ more advanced approaches to take your team from good to great.  We’ll take a look at some of these approaches in a future post....stay tuned!

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

How might this apply to our customers? Are we apprehensive what they would say if we asked? What are the indicators of their satisfaction? In the private sector, it is fairly cut and dry. Bottom lines are a good gauge of how well you are meeting the market and customer needs. In the public sector this is a bit tricky as the signs are not often as clear. As we have worked with numerous government agencies we wanted to share some tips of those that are more successful at providing positive customer experiences with their internal and intra-agency partners. Oh, by the way, these ideas work great in the private sector as well.

Successful organizations remember to ask themselves simplest of questions – “why do we exist, and how best can we serve?” Noted author and speaker Alan Weiss offers the advice “Ask your customers to be part of the solution, and don't view them as part of the problem.” So let’s use that as a starting point in the Customer Experience Model:

Talk to your customers. What are their needs and how are you measuring up to their expectations? What is the process you have in place for dialogue or feedback? How do the other partners, whether it is HR, acquisition, or IT, support (or inhibit) meeting the needs of the customer?

Clarify and communicate your strategy. How are your organizational vision, mission, goals, objectives, and measures established to meet those client needs? Ensure that you:

• Define the overall customer experience strategy and align it with the organization’s larger vision, mission, and goals
• Establish performance metrics linked to customer expectations
• Design the organization structure to support customer needs and staff career and professional development

Align your people to fulfill the vision. What is your end goal and how do you organize your resources to best meet those needs? How are your employees engaged and inspired to keep the customers happy?

• Establish a customer-oriented organization culture
• Build strong working relationships with customers and partners
• Define and communicate clear roles and responsibilities
• Hold employees accountable and reward them for meeting/exceeding customer expectations

Evaluate your processes. Are they effective? Are your staff so busy following bloated processes that they don’t ask or really listen because they are defending “what is, instead of what should be?” Instead, think how to:

• Implement and communicate clear processes that define customer-related responsibilities
• Design processes first and build systems to support them
• Focus on all touchpoints with the customer to ensure a consistent experience

Ensure your systems support the needs of your people and processes, not the other way around. Often times, we are hamstrung by an outdated cornucopia of systems, particularly the patchwork of spreadsheets and files that have developed on individual computers because they don’t have the tools they need to get their jobs done efficiently and effectively. So, try to:

• Design based on customer needs from the outset
• Share information between systems to reduce the burden on customers
• Mine data to determine where improvements can be made

Customer Experience Model

With the right building blocks, you can end up with customers where there are trusted relationships, not because you always scored 100 percent right out of the gate, but because you built the organization with the end in mind, adopted the right strategies and aligned your people, process, and systems, built feedback loops, and demonstrated a sincere desire and accountable actions to make proactive changes.

For those agencies that are perhaps not where they want to be, Bill Gates (who you can decide to love or hate) does have this wise tidbit to offer “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” So set the fears aside, schedule a meeting, pick up the phone, send an email or survey, but do what it takes to engage your customer. Make your customer’s experience memorable…in a good way. It may not be as bad as you thought, and just asking the sincere question “what are we doing well and what can we do better?” is guaranteed to be a step in the right direction.

As we move from the information age to the relationship age and as customers become more precious the customer experience will gain in importance. In the case of engaging with customers, it is often the case that the only bad question is the one not asked.

- Alison Miller, Director

So, as a thought experiment, let’s take a minute to stretch your powers of vision far beyond the 5 year “long term” horizon.

Let’s think about the really, really, long term. . .

In certain Native American traditions, elders ask this question before making decisions:

"How will our decisions today affect our children seven generations from now?"

Wow. Imagine seven generations from now. Assuming a generation is about 30 years, that’s 210 years from now - 2220 AD.  The boomers' grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren are 50.

Now, although it’s difficult to even imagine what the world will be like, try walking through the following questions. They’ll help you build your ability to visualize and they will also help you tap into your core values, principles, and noblest aspirations.

Ask yourself: “As a human being and as a leader in my organization, how do I want my decisions and actions to affect people 200 years from now?”

“What about 50 years from now?”

“What about 25 years from now?”

“What about 10 years from now?”

Whether you’re in government, business, or the non-profit sector, taking time away from the busy demands of work to reflect on upon the future and connect with your core values can pave the way for truly visionary leadership and a meaningful legacy.

As the beautiful Native American proverb says,

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors.

We borrow it from our children."

As a leader, what’s the legacy you want to leave to future generations?

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

• Eliminating Redundancies
• Gaining Cost Efficiencies
• Improving Process Effectiveness
• Leveraging Buying Power and Resources
• Clarifying Roles & Responsibilities
• Instilling Consistency in Execution

Going forward, these stakeholders should be able to combine forces in the areas of:

1. Unified Support
2. Integrity of the Enterprise Architecture
3. Evaluation of the Need for Upgrades to Technologies
4. Managing the Introduction of Systems/Technologies
5. Developing and Maintaining Policy and Process
6. Comprehensive Solution Sets
7. The Roadmap for the Evolution from the Current State to the “To Be” State

Today’s as-is models may reflect decentralized architectures of potentially redundant, certainly not cohesive IT services and capabilities.  To effectively provide consistent, cost effective IT your business demands that you transition from decentralized Enterprise Architecture management to a unified model based upon sound principles and guided collaboration.

FIGURE 1: Evolution from As-is to desired state

The goal of a unified strategy is to eliminate redundancies within the stakeholders, better leverage buying power and resources, provide a consistent technology support model and user experience across the enterprise, and eliminate the need to “reinvent the wheel” multiple times when technologies are introduced.  The collaborative framework envisions a centralized program management function with representation for each of the stakeholders chaired by one of the stakeholders.

The workflow for the introduction of new systems and services should be a proactive approach similar to the model adapted from ITIL v3 best practices for IT Service Management - depicted in Figure 2.  It progresses through five stages:

1. Scope Assessment
2. Impact Analysis
3. Design the Capability
4. Transition the Service/Capability into Operations
5. Sustain the Service/Capability

FIGURE 2: IT Governance WORKFLOW

The Scope Assessment includes defining the functionality to be provided by the initiative, any existing capabilities that will be replaced, whether it will be internally hosted or externally hosted, and the concept of where it will fit into the workflow and infrastructure.  The output of the assessment is a high level approach document that is used as the fundamental basis for agreement and communications.

The Impact Analysis takes the scope assessment to the next level across several dimensions.  For services hosted internally or externally, a clear decision on each potentially impacted area must be documented, and roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined.  Impacts to be assessed are shown in Figure 3.

FIGURE 3: Potentially impacted areas to be assessed 

The analysis of resources required is particularly detailed at this stage and includes completing a roles and responsibilities (RACI) diagram for sustainment activities with estimated resourcing.  For new capabilities to be run within the support environment, estimates of similar capabilities can be used as a basis for the resource estimation.  For capabilities to be hosted/ provided externally, the experience of other earlier adopters can be tapped to create estimates.

The detailed analysis of impacts to People, Process, and Technology (depicted in Figure 4) of transition and support activities to do with Sustainment, Architecture, Agreements, and Project Management needs to be undertaken.  Regardless of whether the capability is hosted internally or externally, a clear decision on each potentially-impacted area should be documented, even if it is decided that there will be no impact to ensure that no need goes unaddressed later in the process.

FIGURE 4: ASSESSING IMPACT

Designing the Capability is the phase in which the resource estimates are compared to existing capacity and gaps are translated into resource requests, the SLAs for agreements are drawn up, responsibility and ownership are assigned to real people, stakeholders are identified and communicated with.

Transitioning the Service into production involves building out the design.  This includes each of the People, Process, and Technology items identified as needing action.  During transition, high level actions include:

• Implementing Any Organization Changes
• Formalizing SLAs
• Securing Resources
• Communicating Changes
• Training
• The Technical Task of Integration into the Environment with a Back-out Plan.

Sustainment involves executing all of the ongoing operational and service tasks originally defined in the design phase and shown in the RACI diagram.

While decentralized IT services may seem to be better suited to meeting the reactive needs of the individual units within an organization, optimal business results can only be achieved when the enterprise endeavors to consolidate and leverage its resources while applying the necessary rigor and discipline of sound IT governance.  This focused approach to doing the right things at the right time in the right way will ensure the efficient, effective provisioning of IT services that consistently benefit the entire organization.

- Troy Fitchett, Senior Consultant, and Bill Hough, Vice President

Are you comfortable with long-term sales cycles?
Unfortunately, the government sales cycle can be slow and you may be competing against some very entrenched companies.  The government’s buying process could be different from engagement to engagement and you need patience and most importantly the cash flow to stick with it. 

Are you legally qualified as a small business?
Whether a business is considered to be large or small is based on standards that are based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code under which each requirement is classified.  The NAICS is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy.   For information on NAICS, go to http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/.

Each company that wants to do business with the Federal Government must register their company with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) site located at www.ccr.gov.  The CCR is the primary registrant database for the U.S. Federal Government.   The CCR collects, validates, stores and disseminates data in support of agency acquisition missions.  Companies register in order to receive federal contract awards and provide EFT payment information. 

To register your business in this database, you will need the following important information:

• North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code.  In the CCR, you will be required to input the NAICS codes that are supported by your company.
• Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number.  DUNS is a system developed and regulated by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) that assigns a unique numeric identifier, referred to as a DUNS number, to a single business entity.  If you do not have a DUNS number you will have to get it from D&B by registering at www.dnb.com.
• Federal Tax Identification Number (TIN) or Employer Identification Number (EIN).  A TIN (also known as an employer identification number or EIN), is a number assigned solely to your business by the IRS.  Your tax ID number is used to identify your business to several federal agencies responsible for the regulation of business.  You may apply for an EIN in various ways, and now you may apply online.

Online Representations and Certifications (ORCA).  Prior to the submission of any offers to the government each company must enter their Representations and Certifications in ORCA located at http://orca.bpn.gov.  ORCA was designed to replace the paper based Representations and Certifications process that is required for submission along with each company’s offer in response to a Request for Proposal.  A number of the certifications have to do with your company’s size and type of business.

Are you willing to be a subcontractor to companies that are prime contractors?
After assessing the capabilities and capacity of your business, you may decide that you are not ready to bid competitively for prime contracts.  At this point, it may serve you well to find a large business prime contractor who can help by putting your company on their team.  When prime contractors lack the expertise or capacity to implement certain project components, they will typically establish teaming agreements with subcontractors for this work.   In this manner, subcontracting with a large prime contractor can help you enhance your qualifications, so you can become more competitive to perform as a prime contractor yourself in the future.  Remember that subcontracting gives you advantages as long as your teaming agreement with the prime contractor is negotiated well, leads to a good subcontract and you can continue to nurture your relationship with the end-user.

Are you positive that your business can financially support the performance of a government contract?
The government typically will not finance your contract upfront.  Therefore, you must be able to handle accounts receivables that could take an average of 60 days or more before payment is received.  Many agencies though have implemented payment systems that allow you to electronically follow your invoices from acceptance through payment.  Unfortunately, if you are in financial trouble, a government contract is more likely to put you out of business than to save your business.  Small business owners primarily look to their own personal resources or arrange a loan or line of credit for initial start-up capital.

Are you serious about Quality Assurance?
A government contract generally requires you to assure the quality of the product or service that your business provides. This requires that your company show that you have an adequate formal, documented quality control plan in place.  Your plan could consist of anything from a general quality assurance manual to a full quality assurance program that complies with a recognized commercial quality standard, a government standard, or the international ISO standard for your industry.  You need to be organized, maintain accurate files and records, document important transactions and meetings, and know where your records are located for auditing purposes.

Are you technologically capable?
The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) of 1995, GPEA requires Federal agencies to allow individuals or entities that deal with the agencies the option to submit information or transact with the agency electronically and to maintain records electronically, when practicable.  Federal government buyers are using new options in making purchases, such as multiple-award schedules, purchase cards, reverse auctions, etc., and almost all of these are technology-based. 

Summary
A company that is new to doing business with the Federal Government may need two years or more to develop the expertise and networks that will lead to the award of its first federal government contract.  You need to honestly assess if doing business with the Federal Government is right for you.  Ultimately, your small business stands the best chance of doing business with the federal government if you are:

• Responsible in the eyes of the government contracting officer.  This means that you (1) have adequate financial resources, (2) are able to comply with the requirements of the contract, (3) have a satisfactory performance record, (4) have a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics, (5) have the necessary organization, experience, accounting and operational controls, and technical skills, (6) have the necessary production, construction, and technical equipment and facilities, and (7) are otherwise qualified and eligible to receive an award under applicable laws and regulations
• Competitive in your pricing, have the right skills in your workforces and deliver quality products and services.
• Patient in dealing with the Federal procurement process.  It may take time to understand the process but once you are successful, the Federal Government is a very stable customer.
• Committed to invest and apply the resources that are needed to market to the Federal Government.
• Technologically proficient and adaptable to new business models.

- Rodney Matsushuma, Executive Vice President

Read part I of, Do you want to do business with the U.S. Federal Government?

Preparing and transforming your organization before you take on continuity planning for the network, applications and databases will lay the foundation for success, and map out an approach and plan that puts the non-functional requirements on par with the more obvious functional components.  The key aspects that need to be incorporated into this approach include:

• Assess effectiveness of the organization through a structured analysis leading to a targeted transformation of service delivery
• Define the services provided as well as significantly enhancing Disaster Recovery capabilities
• Analysis of the current workforce staffing levels and skills to identify efficiencies that will be leveraged and gaps that need to be filled
• Facilitate necessary changes through the transition process, communicate with stakeholders, and identify and mitigate human capital issues
• Create a holistic map of the inter-related work streams to ensure a successful and sustainable organization transformation in a way that minimizes risk

Begin your effort with an Organization Assessment to identify current strengths and weaknesses of the organizational system (e.g., what is working well and not working so well), in order to identify the necessary future changes and measures of success.   It is critical to understand the existing IT capabilities, including those specific to the data center, at the organization, group, and individual level (where appropriate).  In this phase, identify:

• What will be required for the organization to have the depth of IT skills/capabilities in critical areas such as system administration, network security, etc. to be able to staff redundant sites?
• How are these skills/capabilities established at the appropriate location(s)?  
• What services should/could be delivered in a more “Enterprise” way?
• What are the characteristics of a prudent Disaster Recovery plan?

To capture the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, apply a comprehensive organization assessment model that enables analysis of the technical, process, and human factors that may be impacted.  The goal of using such a model is to ensure that the assessment thoroughly addresses areas such as organizational strategy, structure, processes, and human capital.  The intent is to understand the root causes of existing issues, as well as the inter-dependence of organizational elements.
 

With your organizational assessment in hand, set out to effect an Organization Design that supports your organization’s goals.  First, identify drivers or reasons for needing to execute the transformation.  Second, these drivers will be used for the identification and prioritization of design criteria.  The design criteria describe what should be considered when identifying design alternatives. For example, if the organization wants to maintain a local presence geographically for customer service purposes or because it is more cost effective given local tax rates, then a design criteria can be Maintain Geographic Presence.   A certain design criterion will be Create an Effective Disaster Recovery Capability.  The details behind that design criterion will include what capabilities would need to be recovered in what timeframes, which will greatly influence design elements and the testing of the DR plan. Once design criteria have been determined, design alternatives will be identified.  Next, a single design alternative will be selected by the leadership team.  Finally, describe in detail all of the design elements of the new organization e.g., key functions, reporting relationships, number of staff, skill sets required, span of control of supervisors, etc. 

This effort requires skilled IT, Human Capital, Change Management and Communications experts.  This multi-disciplinary approach is intended to ensure that all technical, process, and people aspects of the change have been properly accounted for – in the context of the business and strategic business objectives.   

In preparation for Transition Planning & Execution, you will need to address the following areas before, during, and after the formal transition:

• Transition Performance Measures/Metrics that identify what a successful organization transition looks like e.g., all new supervisors are identified within 30 days of standing-up organization.
• Organizational Performance Measures/Metrics that reflect new ways of working in the new environment
• Individual Performance Measures/Metrics that enable individuals to understand how new skills or work will be evaluated and ultimately link to the organizational performance measures/metrics
• Communications Strategy that describes the key messages, stakeholders, and mechanisms for communication.
• Human Resources (HR) guidance concerning changing grade structures, currency and accuracy of Position Descriptions, establishing new positions (if appropriate), and changing job classifications.
• Union notifications and negotiations (if appropriate)
• Staffing strategies for recruiting, transferring, or developing staff to fill new positions
• Career Development strategies for new organization
• Training/Development needs of impacted staff
• Technology/Equipment is available and operational for all impacted staff

It is critical that the individuals supporting this change effort have experience addressing these issues, and that these resources are dedicated to resolving these issues throughout the entire transition phase.  The transition phase will continue beyond the new organization “stand up” date as there may be residual challenges to work through.  In addition, the process changes required of the new structure may take some time to solidify and a great deal of attention must be placed on interpersonal and leadership alignment challenges that arise as a result of the change.  Leaders will be challenged by a natural desire for the organization to maintain the “status quo” and resist the change.  Your organization may require services such as leadership coaching and team effectiveness work during this phase.  It is possible that you may wish to offer coaching and training “behind the scenes” on managing effective transitions and reinforcing the behavioral changes required to sustain the change.  Key skills in managing a large scale change effort would include:

• Identification of performance metrics, including metrics for DR
• Development and implementation of a communications strategy
• Addressing HR guidance
• Developing staffing strategies, and
• Identifying options for training/development of impacted staff.

The successful implementation of an organization’s technical DR capabilities is highly dependent upon a comprehensive approach to fulfilling the non-functional capabilities that design, establish and sustain essential services and support.  One without the other serves only as a plan, not a holistic capability your organization can rely on.

- Troy Fitchett, Senior Consultant

What is risk? The Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines risk as:

“ … an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on at least one project objective, such as time, scope, cost, or quality. A risk may have one or more causes and, if it occurs, one or more impacts.”

Simply put, risk represents uncertainty; how that uncertainty is dealt with is critical to the success of every project. Essentially, anything that can affect the outcome of a project is a risk. Risks can be known or unknown and may or may not occur.

What is Risk Management? Risk Management consists of risk management planning, identification, analysis, response, and monitoring & control. Typically, the purpose of Risk Management is to increase the probability and impact of positive events while decreasing the probability and impact of events that would have adverse effects on the project.

When does Risk Management start? Projects are typically divided into five phases: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Close-Out.

Risk Management planning starts from the very beginning. An integral part of project management is developing a sound Risk Management Plan at the onset of the project. Risk Management Planning consists of identifying risks and capturing them in some format such as a risk register or template. Once risks are identified they are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Then, the response is formulated.

From a holistic, corporate strategic view, good leaders, managers and effective organizations integrate Risk Management into their decision making process. For example, while still in pursuit of an opportunity and well before submitting a proposal, Suntiva’s Leadership often makes the decision to start the recruiting process for a particular project based on Risk Management tools and techniques such as cost/benefit analysis; this key decision to ramp up is critical in mitigating the risk of insufficient staffing at contract award and, in most cases, far outweighs the costs of the recruiting effort.

Risk Management is a continuous process with iterative assessments occurring throughout the life-cycle of any project.

What are the different kinds of risk? In a business context, Suntiva monitors risks in eight general areas:

• Client Relationship
• Delivery (product/service, scope, schedule, productivity & quality)
• Staffing
• Contractual/Programmatic (includes price, processes)
• Partners
• Financial (project control, finance & accounting, etc.)
• Environmental (place of performance, surroundings, legislation)
• Other (growth potential, business development, etc.)

Organizations generally examine risks at three different levels: strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic risks are normally of a magnitude that draws corporate-level attention, such as examining risks that could lead to a contract not being renewed. Operational risks are ordinarily handled at the account or program manager level; for instance, managing the risks around replacing key personnel on an effort. Whereas tactical risks commonly remain at the project or line level, like instituting daily standard operating procedures or quality control measures to ensure deliverables are submitted in accordance with the standards of the Performance Work Statement. However, don’t misconstrue the ‘level’ of risk with the ‘degree’ of risk. Strategic risks aren’t necessarily more important than tactical risks; they are just viewed through different lenses in a distinct context; and, more importantly, if not handled correctly at the lower levels, they can escalate to the higher levels very quickly.

On the other hand, risks are measured in their varying degrees: high, medium, or low. One common technique of measuring risk is to examine each event in terms of its probability of occurring versus the impact it might have on the project.

So, how do you manage risk anyway? In the next blog in this series, I will examine how to plan, identify, assess, quantify, respond, monitor and control risks. Stay tuned!

- Jon Katz, Vice President

Understanding the difficult task ahead of them, the PMO team, comprised of project management professionals, assessed the state of the organization to understand where it was in terms of PM maturity – were there already PM tools and practices in place?  How were projects being managed?  Were there standard business processes in place?  Did the project leads have any formal PM training?  How were the projects performing?   What was the staff’s perception of formalized project management? 

Armed with this data, the PMO team got to work on developing and implementing strategies and communications to impact change in each of the three areas:

• People – Ensuring Senior leadership supported (and communicated their support of) the PMO and the PM culture; aligning staff around roles and responsibilities; sharing what changes would be made, why, and their role in that change
• Process – Defining and communicating new processes that all project managers would use in managing their projects;  create consistency in how projects are being managed
• Technology – Developing the tools and technology needed to support the processes and provide transparency in terms of project progress and performance reporting

As was the plan, the PMO established processes for the organization to use in managing projects and paired the processes with tools to ensure consistency and transparency in reporting. As is the case with most large organization changes, while there was success around processes and tools, creating staff buy in and commitment to the PMO and the PM culture proved difficult and success was spotty, not nearly the all encompassing culture change that the PMO was shooting for…but why?  The team knew that change management, particularly focused on the staff, was going to be critical.  There were dedicated strategies for communicating the value and the “what’s in it for me” factor of what the PMO and Sr. Leadership were trying to do.  People, Process, and Technology, the three key areas we stated needed to be addressed in all organizational change projects were addressed with well thought out strategies. So what happened?  What was missing in the approach to influence the cultivation of a PM culture across the organization?

The answer to the issue, is in the question above…”our approach to influence” was not as deliberate or extensive as it needed to be. In Joseph Greeny, David Maxfield, and Andrew Shimberg’s article How to 10x Your Influence they write about the power of influence and only when we can influence human behavior, will we really effect change. But why didn’t our People, Process, and Technology strategies influence behavior?  According to the article, there are six forms of influence and in order to truly impact behavior, or in our case culture change, at least 4-5 different influencing strategies must be utilized. The Authors write of personal, social, and structural influences…I think we can equate those areas to people, process, and technology. However, they take it step further and explain that in each of the three areas, an individual or group must also understand their motivation and ability to adhere to the change. This is where our “people” approach fell short. We put together great strategies in the key areas, but they fell short of influencing and motivating the organization to go along with the changes.   

Figure 1:  Joseph Greeney, David Maxfield, and Andrew Shimberg.
How to 10X Your Influence. Six Sources of Influence.  

The good news… we have a second chance! The very same organization is about to undergo another major transition and will be bringing in almost a completely new staff.   That’s right - we get another shot to leverage our lessons learned and ensure this time around we explore the different motivations at play and understand how, utilizing several approaches, we can multiply our ability to influence the organization towards the desired outcome.  

So, what sources of influence have you successfully leveraged?  Have you seen a difference in outcomes when you’ve been able to combine several influence strategies?

- Lindsay Henson, Principal Consultant, and Debbie Kee, Project Manager

To help understand the desired leadership behaviors at different levels in the organization, let’s draw inspiration from a leadership development classic: The Leadership Pipeline, by Ram Charan (Professor at Harvard Business School), Stephen Drotter (former head of HR at General Electric), and James Noel (former GE Leadership Development Executive).  The Leadership Pipeline presents a clear articulation of the many distinct leadership passages rising leaders must pass through. Each passage requires both a mindset shift and a skill shift. That is to say, at each transition leaders must fundamentally rethink the value they bring to the organization (i.e. what they’re paid for) as well as the way they execute. In the realm of leadership, (ethical violations aside) one of the worst ways leaders can harm their people – and their overall leadership pipeline – arises from operating at the wrong level.

Here are quick overviews of the several main transitions and the most important function of a leader at that level, according to Charan, Drotter, and Noel.

• Individual Contributor: Get stuff done. Contribute by doing assigned work involving technical/professional skills.

• Manager: Get stuff done through others. Reallocate time to planning, filling jobs, assigning work, motivating, coaching, and measuring work of others.

• Manager of Managers: Help others get stuff done through others. Pure management. Selecting people to become managers, assigning managerial work, coaching and managing managers on managerial skills.

• Functional Manager: Develop functional strategy, learn to manage areas outside your area of expertise, take into account other functional needs (i.e. look across), and continue to develop the managers below. High emphasis placed on blending the functional strategy with the overall business/organizational strategy. Requires working across the organization and down two levels, and as such requires the development of new communication skills.

• Business Manager/Office Director: Integrate multiple functions into your business strategy, focus on balancing short and long-term initiatives, learn to work across with a wide variety of people, continue to communicate/develop managers below you.   While always important, taking time to stop, analyze, and reflect becomes crucial.

• Group Manager: Manage and value multiple businesses (not just the one you came from), evaluate strategy and resource deployment, identify rising business managers, analyze your collection of business and activities, assess your core capabilities.  Leadership becomes holistic (internal/external) perspective and develop the broadest possible perspective on issues becomes crucial.

• Enterprise/Organization Manager (CEO):  Clarify and embody core values, master long-term, visionary thinking that balances with quarterly objectives, manage multiple constituencies, set three to four mission critical priorities, focus on the whole, and inspire entire employee population. Requires a readjustment of self-concept as leader and a shift to viewing the organization as one entity, instead of a portfolio of organizations.

At each transition, rising leaders must let go of specific mindsets and skills. They must also pick up new mindsets and skills appropriate for their new level in the organization.

Not surprisingly, while all these leadership transitions are difficult, the most difficult transition comes during your first transition to leadership – from an individual contributor to the manager. This transition requires a fundamental mindset shift about your value to the organization. As an individual contributor you’re paid to “get stuff done.” As a manager, you’re paid to “get stuff done through others.” Most managers know this intellectually, yet in our experience many still operate as individual contributors. They simply cannot let go of the focus on technical skills that got them promoted. The sSymptoms of being in a management role but operating as an individual contributor include overwhelm, burn-out, and complaints from staff of being a “micro-manager.”

This problem becomes exacerbated when  managers-operating-as-individual contributors advance in the leadership ladder. At the manager of manager level (i.e. second level managers), you’re paid to “help other people get results through others.” If you have not transitioned fully, these people hold the first line managers responsible for technical results, instead of their management ability.

Unfortunately, we frequently see very senior leaders (3^rd or 4^th level managers) still primarily operating as individual contributors. Not only is this extremely stressful for the leader, it clogs the leadership pipeline, confuses the roles of everyone below, and causes organizational bottlenecks, lack of accountability, and poor morale.

In addition, leaders further up the leadership chain not operating at their appropriate level miss opportunities and create problems for people under them.  For example, a Group Manager who still thinks and acts like a Business Manager will favor particular businesses in their Group and, in the worse case, still try to run one of them (usually the one they came from).  By doing so they neglect their core responsibilities, clog the leadership pipeline, and harm the efforts of the people below them.

In your own leadership journey, know that learning to operate at the right level requires a deliberate mindset shift as well as time and practice to mature in your new role. However, to begin to determine if you’re in the right role, consider the following question:

• How many levels are there between me and the first line employees?
• Depending on my answer to above question, what’s the leadership level/transition I’m in? (Think of the categories above).
• What’s the most important thing I can do in my role? What am I paid for?
• What mindsets and behaviors from my last role do I need to let go of?
• What mindsets and behaviors shifts do I need to make? What skill shifts do I need to make?

Stopping, reflecting, and taking a few minutes to think through the question, “Am I contributing at the right level?” can provoke powerful insights. Use these insights to develop your own leadership development plan and identify the resources to assist you.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

As in many cases, problems on both sides likely contributed to the frustrations this agency was experiencing.  Taking the time upfront to really understand needs as opposed to wants and understanding the features and functions available in the market place can go a long way to mitigate the frustrations activities face in fielding these complex solutions.

Many factors can go into assessing the “best solution” from the technical architecture, maturity of offerings, complexity of procurement processes, organizational structures, stakeholders and the acquisition environment  – global, national, regional, local, centralized or distributed – the list can be exhausting.  Five critical areas to consider are as follows:  

Complexity and standardization of procurement processes -The most suitable situations for automated procurement solutions are those where there are structured and well defined procurement processes – defined data structures, numbering schemes, consistent use of procurement types, somewhat static or at least manageable regulatory content. Wide variations with individual user defined procurement practices lead to significant challenges to fielding systems that were purposely designed to bring structure, control, oversight and simplicity to procurement processing.  

Ongoing maintenance and update requirements – An activity’s regulatory content and the degree to which it changes can be a significant factor in assessing which solution is best suited for a particular procurement environment.  An activity needs to clearly understand the impact of changes to procurement regulations and a system’s adaptability and flexibility to accommodate these changes.   This is especially critical for activities that may have to rely on external support to manage and update the regulatory content that populates the procurement instruments.

Dependency on internal and external systems for interfaces – The U.S. federal market is dependent on a variety of mandated external procurement related systems. The GSA Integration Acquisition Environment has been working for years to provide standardized interface methods with service-enablement of a variety of procurement related systems.  In many cases, the US Government is taking on a variety of acquisition related functions such as vendor management (e.g. CCR, EPLS), congressionally mandated reporting (FPDS-NG), procurement advertisement and announcement of awards (FEDBIZOPS) software vendors in the past had to provide.  Understanding what IAE is currently doing, and maybe more importantly, what they plan to do in the future is critical in assessing the suitability and sustainability of a new procurement offering.

The organization’s culture and adaptability to change – The very best procurement system seems to be the one an organization is now trying to replace – often a common impression from frustrated end-users having new solutions forced on them.   The early involvement of end-users to define requirements, assess and understand system functions, and actively participate in the evaluation of options is essential for a successful implementation.  Some organizations have found including the end users in the early evaluation stages coupled with incorporating performance goals associated with the successful roll-out of new software systems as an effective means for enhancing the success of new implementations.

Tradeoff of “best of breed’ versus benefits of an integrated environment – The major ERP providers have recently introduced automated procurement solutions now focused to the Public Sector market. These offerings can provide functionality supporting a wide span of complex pricing and data structures, regulatory content management and document generation capability never before supported by ERP systems. The ERP offerings can include delivered integration across multiple disciplines - Finance, Funds Management, Human Resources, Inventory Management, Property Management, Materials Management, Vendor Management, Business Intelligence  - to which “best of breeds” must separately interface. The ERP systems also offer common features such as Document Management, File Management, work flow, reporting and other business process that are not unique to the automated procurement software but instead common to all users of the ERP offering.  This benefit of integration and commonality of business processing may come at a cost of procurement functionality when compared to the maturity of the best of breed offerings.   

The above is a short list of critical factors to consider.  What other factors have you seen or experienced that need to be considered in determining the appropriate automated procurement solution?  

- Randy Gaylor, Director

The federal government is the world's largest buyer of products and services. It buys just about every category of commodity and service available throughout the world.  Positioning your business to supply a fraction of those products or services can be very rewarding and can help your company diversify and grow.  However, pursuing federal contracts is not the right decision for every business and every management team.

Why Do Business With The Federal Government?
The Federal Government is one of the largest organizations in the world.  The value of requirements that need to be satisfied through the contracting process are valued at over $503 Billion annually.   The many government agencies buy almost any product or service and are required to competitively advertise its needs well in advance to get the best value for the government.  To be fair and honest in the contracting process, the Federal government tries to be transparent by clearly articulating its purchasing and contracting ground rules.  These regulations are articulated in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and its agency supplements.  An online copy of the FAR and the many agency supplements to the FAR can be obtained at http://farsite.hill.af.mil/.  I like the Hill Air Force Base site because they have most of the agency supplements in addition to the FAR.

It is comforting to know that there are many government agencies and programs available to help a firm understand just how to start doing business with the government.  At a minimum, new businesses can call the particular office’s Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization Specialist (SADBUS).  The SADBUS is the advocate for small businesses and is always available to explain to new businesses exactly what their offices buy and to retain information on the capabilities of each small business that submits information to them.

Finally, the Federal Government tries to implement socio-economic initiatives through its procurement processes.  The Small Business Act allows agencies to use non-competitive as well as limited competition advantages to selected small businesses (e.g. Service Disabled Veteran Businesses, Woman Owned Businesses, Socially Disadvantaged Businesses, etc.) and rewards large businesses for working with small business subcontractors.

Do you have what it takes to be successful in the Federal Government arena?
The Federal Government arena can be very rewarding for your business because Government contracting work can be steady and reliable if you follow the appropriate guidelines and make a clear case why your business is the best choice.  However, there are downsides to selling to the government that you must thoroughly understand.  Ask yourself the following questions to determine if your company is prepared to successfully compete for government contracts.

Are you willing to learn how the government buying process works?
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is a very readable document but it tries to provide policies and procedures that govern a very complex procurement process.  It is quite voluminous to read and understand but once you understand it, you will see that it documents a standard process to be used by all the Federal Agencies.  This makes it easier for a new company to deal with many government agencies because they should be operating consistently under the FAR. 

Government work often requires a separate set of internal business procedures, even if you have an established business that has been working successfully in the commercial sector.  Your commercial policies and procedures may not be adequate for government work.  Be prepared to seek out expertise from consultants, peers, mentors, and others to learn how government contracting works.

In my next blog post, I will share a few additional questions to help you determine if your company is prepared to successfully compete for Government contracts.

- Rodney Matsushima, Executive Vice President

This was because even though the IT management team and the end-users of their systems were well aware of the issues at hand, they felt paralyzed to move forward to improve the situation.  The uncertainty that prevented action was caused by the complexity of the project or processes, competing agenda’s from the various stakeholders, fear of failure and/or lack of funds – especially after a large amount of money was already spent with lackluster results.

It is a lot like buying a “fixer-upper” home.  The overall task is daunting, but if broken down into bite size efforts with incremental improvements, the improvements can be enjoyed along the way and the budget can be managed.  The key is to tackle these big bad problems one small step at a time and pull in the specialists (e.g. electricians and plumbers) when you need them.

If you realize you need help, but aren’t sure where to start or even how to pay for the effort, the first thing to do is to figure out the finances.   One budget strategy is to use a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) in which an estimated amount of overall funding is made available, but can only be released through specific task orders. This allows the team to start small in order to assess the situation and build towards a comprehensive plan to turn things around.

Once the financial approach is resolved, that opens the door to figuring out what is happening by starting with an assessment task; interviewing key stakeholders about their perspective and motivations, while in parallel having a subject matter expert take a look under the hood of the system, processes, etc.   

After the assessment has produced a clearer picture of the problem, the team can work together to identify a quick hit solution, while preparing a prioritized approach towards a complete and satisfactory resolution.  The quick hit path is the critical path because an initial success with apparent results will build the confidence necessary to ensure the necessary stakeholder support for the approval and backing of the larger tasks to come.

So don’t be afraid to pull down a little sheetrock or shine a light into the crawlspace to begin the incremental steps to improvement.  With the right partner and a step by step plan, your “lot” in life can look a lot brighter.

- Eric Spiegel, Senior Consultant, and Bill Hough, Vice President

A few common areas of concern that we have uncovered through our work with a CIO client are listed below.  In the busy and often confusing world of providing information technology services to an agency or a large organization, managers can quickly become overwhelmed with the myriad of details that they need to address on a daily basis.  It is fairly simple to see how this occurs, especially when the option to slow down or delay the provision of services to your organization in order to catch up with paperwork does not exist.  Managers find themselves being faced with the following problems:

• They don’t understand the invoices from their suppliers.
• They can’t explain what they’re paying for.
• They feel that they have no recourse in dealing with unexplained. issues or questions that they feel are not being answered.
• They just pay the bills to get them off of their desks.
• They are under pressure to rein in costs.
• They want to get more for their money.
• They feel like victims or they feel that they are at the mercy of their suppliers.

Do these things sound familiar?  In working with our clients, we have found that there is a way out of the woods.  Download this PDF to learn detailed processes to follow that can help.  They are not difficult to establish, and immediate results are possible.  You can familiarize yourself with the useful practices that can make your life as an IT manager much easier.   They will also help you to set proper expectations, have more frequent communications, and overall improve the quality of your relationship with your suppliers.

Please let us know if you have questions or leave a comment below! 

- Troy Fitchett, Senior Consultant

Leadership involves inspiring, motivating, crafting a vision, setting direction, strategic thinking, and bringing out the best in your people.

Management involves planning, tracking, and measuring – in short, handling all the nuts-and-bolts of day-to-day business operations.

Clearly, people in positions of responsibility need to do both well to be successful. This need dramatically intensifies during times of economic uncertainty, a shifting political landscape, and the constant need to do more with less.

But, let’s avoid the pedantic debate that many leadership consultants, business book authors, and self-improvement gurus love get into about which is more important. Endless tomes have been written on the merits of leadership vs. management.

Instead, let’s focus on what’s most important: building solid skills in both leadership and management AND the ability to switch gracefully between the two.

For example, throughout the day, as a leader you may need to inspire in one meeting (lead), tackle financial metrics in the next (manage), reflect on the strategic plan (lead), and then tackle budget problems (manage). 

And, even in the same meeting and with the same people you must exercise both skills. For example, what started as a financial metric meeting (managing) shifts to a meeting where you must step up and inspire your people (leading.)

Too often, people in positions of authority get stuck in one dimension and cannot shift between the two. This results in a disconnect between you and your people. For example, people wanting to be inspired (i.e. led) get nuts-and-bolts details (managed), and people wanting clear plans (management) get vague vision or speeches on empowerment (leadership.)

While most people are stronger in one area than another, the best can shift between the two and provide what the situation requires. As you prepare to do that, here are a few tips: 

• Build The Fundamentals of Both Leadership and Management: Build your leadership skills (inspiring, motivating, visioning, strategic thinking) and your manager skills (planning, budgeting, day-to-day operations). This makes up your foundation.
• Lead and Manage Strategically: Before entering each meeting throughout the day ask yourself, “What does this meeting require - management or leadership?” Be flexible, although first think about how you want to show up.
• Learn to Read the Situation: Practice reading situations to determine if you need to lead or manage. For example, when an employee asks a question about the budget, are they merely asking an intellectual question about the numbers? Or are they really looking for inspiration? Or perhaps subtly offering a suggestion and requesting to be empowered? Herein lies the art of leadership and management, but as a quick guideline, ask yourself, “What’s motivating this person’s question or statement?” Address their question/statement and then address the underlying motivation. (Coaches often call this “the question behind the question.”)
• Use Your Daily Life as Your Training Ground: Practice deliberately shifting between leading and managing in your daily interactions at work. Use the situations in front of you – budget meetings, tough discussions, cross-divisional meetings, etc. to read the situation, strategically practice each skill, and shift nimbly between the two.

In sum, both leadership and management are important, clearly. What’s more important, however, is using the right skill at the right time. Doing that requires building your ability to read a situation and nimbly shift between the two.

As you go forward, seek to move beyond an intellectual understanding of leadership and management. Practice, practice, practice because the stakes are high and getting higher.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

So, here you are in the planning phase, ready to put together your project metrics that will serve as your project health indicators along the way.  Where do you begin?  Again, you can start off with the obvious ones – deliver the determined project scope on time and within budget.  Done?  Not yet.  It’s always a good idea to review the project objectives when determing the project metrics.  These objectives often give you a sense of the quality metrics that are expected of this project that may not otherwise be collected in the scope, schedule, and cost categories.  The classic example here is building a bridge that is built to the requested size dimensions, and was constructed on time and within budget, but what about the quality of the bridge? Is it safe? These factors are often outlined in the project objectives and should be incorporated into the set of project metrics. 

Another gold mind of project metrics comes from your stakeholders – what’s important to them?  If you asked them what would success look like on this project or what would indicate failure, how would they answer?  Again, without considering this input you might think that the project is on track whereas your stakeholders may feel differently.  Often, engaging your stakeholders will highlight what some of the process oriented metrics for your project might be. You project is cruising along but if it is painful for your stakeholders, are you really being successful? Maybe, maybe not.

To deliver projects on time, on budget, and at the required level of quality, you need to be regularly monitoring progress and controlling resources. Reporting and reviewing progress ensures that tasks proceed according to plan.  When information is gathered on project status and reviewed frequently, any deviations become apparent quickly.

Highlighting problems and issues early in the process and taking appropriate action is a key activity of project management. The earlier you take action on project deviations and missed metrics, the less likely the project is to suffer. To do this, you need to gather, analyze, and track data. What is that? The data provided via the metrics needs to be analyzed? Yes! Collecting the data is only part of the task to performance measurement. You must also be able to analyze the data. What is the data telling you? What’s the story behind the data? Are there areas where the project is falling behind? If so, what do you plan to do about it?  In short, how do you plan to take action based on what your metrics are telling you? The benefit of having project metrics is to provide you with the data you need to determine where a project is headed and how well it is progressing. The data gathered and tracked also helps keep stakeholders informed of the progress of the project – good or bad. It can alert managers to possible trouble before it derails the project or it can be used to communicate the project team’s success.

If data analysis sounds like a daunting task, it shouldn’t be if the metrics are chosen wisely. Below are six important success factors to metrics:

1. Link to the overall objective(s) of the project.
2. Capture stakeholder expectations – engage your stakeholders to understand what is important to them.
3. Use a set of well rounded metrics to assess project health.  Avoid using one type of metric to judge progress for the entire effort (ex: financial, schedule, etc).
4. Involve the project team to develop and prioritize the metrics as well as build team relationships and buy in (the team, after all, will be reporting these metrics).
5. Use quantifiable metrics.
6. Develop a baseline and select realistic targets.

The bottom line on performance measurement is that it is more than numbers and is not as simple as just tracking scope, schedule, quality and cost. The key to success is having the correct metrics identified based on project goals and understanding the data collected will go a long way in keeping a project on track. Performance measurement helps project managers evaluate their projects from different perspectives - stakeholder satisfaction, risks, schedule, workload, team effectiveness, etc. And, using metrics as a communication vehicle among your stakeholders will help keep them engaged and informed throughout the process. 

- Debbie Kee, Project Manager, and Lindsay Henson, Principal Consultant

Does coaching actually work? That depends on a couple of factors:

1. The level of commitment of the client – how willing is he or she to engage in the coaching process?
2. How much pain is he/she currently experiencing? This directly affects the client’s openness to change.
3. The effectiveness of the coach – you want to make sure you are working with a skilled, certified coach that you feel comfortable with. At Suntiva we put our coaches through a rigorous screening process, and ensure all our coaches are certified by a professional coaching certification body such as the International Coach Federation.  We also engage in an in-depth coach/client matching process to ensure best fit.  

When these three factors – client commitment, client openness to change, and coach effectiveness – are high, then the outcomes from coaching can be extraordinary, literally transformational.  But don’t just take my word for it, here’s some concrete proof.  We surveyed 72 of our coaching clients (Directors, Managers, Team Leaders) in a federal healthcare organization and 41 responded:

• 95% rated their coaching as “highly or very effective.”
• 98% rated their coaching as highly beneficial with 49% rating it as “one of the most valuable professional development experiences I’ve had.”
• 80% achieved all of their coaching goals with 45% exceeding their original goals.
• 100% of participants recommend our client implement an ongoing coaching program.

Download this brief document to read what our coaching clients said about the benefits of coaching, what being coached is like, and the leadership skills they developed through coaching. It is a good news story for an organization that is fast paced and full of hardworking individuals dedicated to a critical mission protecting human health. And it is data-based proof that coaching works.    

Have you been in coaching? We’d love to hear from you, please share with us what worked, what didn’t…

- Sara Rohling, Director

But, in our thousands of hours of in-the-seat executive coaching, we see time and time again that the most powerful leaders – those who achieve dramatic results AND accomplish them in the right way (building people and creating lasting value) – are guided by a clear and authentic philosophy of leadership.

By leadership philosophy, I don’t mean repeating a litany of leadership theories from recent business book bestsellers. Rather, I mean developing your own personal, authentic, philosophy that derives from your core beliefs.

Such a philosophy helps you focus your efforts and fine tune your personal interactions. Most importantly, such a philosophy and articulation of your leadership principles can act as a clear north star that guides you through tough times.

Developing your philosophy of leadership isn’t hard, but it does require carving out a few minutes to think and reflect on simple but high-leverage questions.

A coach or other thinking partner can help you think through these questions, clarify your values, and begin putting them into action. But, if you’re on your own, grab a pen and paper and think through the following questions – whether it describes you today or a future version of your “ideal self” you can work towards:

1. As a leader, what are your highest values?
2. What’s the contribution you want to make as a leader
3. What makes you distinct as a leader?
4. What are five words or phrases people would use to describe your leadership style?
5. How would people of different levels describe their relationship with you?
6. How are you building your influencing capital?
7. How do you want to treat people?
8. How do you approach (and delegate) tasks?
9. What are you doing to continually build your leadership capacity?
10. What do you want your legacy to be?

Whatever leadership role you play in your organization, spending a few minutes answering these questions and crafting your personal philosophy of leadership will yield exponential rewards.

The clear focus and clear articulation of values will help you achieve the right results in the right way. And, you’ll be able to more skillfully navigate the pressures, temptations, and frustrations of day-to-day business operations and leave a leadership legacy you can be proud of.

- Adam Chalker, Senior Consultant

You’d think by now, over 50 years after information technology has become a mainstay in every organization, that managers would understand the importance of the so-called “people factors” in the success of IT projects.  And yet the technical managers are usually confounded as to why a project is failing or a system is not being received well. 

This is especially the case for IT Service Management (ITSM) projects.  The majority of these projects involve some sort of change to the way people work and we all know that most folks react badly to change (Read “Who Moved My Cheese”).  The challenge is that these projects are typically run by techies and unfortunately most IT professionals lack the training or expertise to address the behavioral issues and unpredictable dynamics that can result from people experiencing change.

The technical managers figure they’ll just add more features, fix some bugs or throw more processing power into a problem.  Meanwhile, the business managers simply want the requirements that they thought were agreed to.  And the poor end-users are throwing their hands up in frustration with nothing good to say about either set of managers.  All the while, if organizational change management factors were woven into the project plan, much hand wringing would have been avoided.

It isn’t that there aren’t good methodologies out there for managing IT operations.  For example, ITIL is a standardized best practice approach to managing all facets of IT service management (help desk, operations, etc.) and if you read the service books you will find guidance on organizational change management.   However, just because there is a chapter on something doesn’t mean it is adhered to.  This is especially the case for human-factors that involve how people work and interact when it comes to IT projects.

Well, it’s time to smell the coffee and wake up to the realization that human behavior is the core success factor of any IT Service Management project.  A special emphasis needs to be put on human factors. 

I’m here to say you can actually use OCM techniques to increase the buy-in and success rate of your ITSM projects.

And for those of you rolling your eyes because you know for a fact management will never approve spending time and money on human-factors, this is the time to draw a line in the sand and make your case.  Look at it as a crucial part of prudent risk management - the “chicken soup” to keep your ITSM projects healthy and productive.  

Along these lines, Suntiva has published a white paper that will provide you some ammunition to help with making a case.  Here are a few areas where a little time will go a long way.

• Build trust and lower fear with a communications plan that explains the forthcoming changes and the reasons for them.
• Minimize resistance and create buy-in and alignment of all stakeholders with group and one-on-one discussions.
• Understand and anticipate the impact at the individual, team and organizational levels.
• Create an environment where people can work together effectively.

If you imbed OCM into your next ITSM project there will be more of a chance that future problems will be technical in nature.  And that is something most techies can live with.

— Eric Spiegel, Senior Consultant

I’m Hany Malik, Founder of Suntiva, writing to you from our offices in Falls Church, Va., to share the most up-to-date and useful information about making your best decisions as a leader.

In this blog, you will learn from me and my Suntiva colleagues, who are experts with backgrounds in federal acquisition, organizational performance, IT strategy and governance, and program management. We pride ourselves on creating practical management solutions for businesses in each of those areas. We’ve been at it for nearly 10 years, and we are always looking for the best ways to help leaders be successful. Suntiva’s “great minds and great hearts” are committed to bringing lasting results to the organizations we partner with and doing so with integrity, relevance, openness, and collaboration.

Connection: That’s the real heart of why we are moving our Executive Insights newsletter to a blog format. It is very important to us to communicate with our clients, partners, colleagues and others interested in realistic solutions to the complex business and government leadership challenges. We want to share with you behind the scene glimpses into what we see and do everyday in working with our clients, and to present that in a format that can be quickly and easily understood and applied. So, we will present our latest thinking in hot topics that many of you are faced with – areas you can expect to see covered in this blog include:

• Doing more with less – how to operate efficiently and effectively with reduced resources
• Measuring performance – creating meaningful metrics and using data to make informed decisions
• Managing your workforce – working with a multigenerational and virtual staff, workforce planning, and other timely human capital topics
• Enhancing leadership skills – building leadership capacity at all levels of your organization
• Lessons learned and viewpoints from our domain experts – insights we have gained from working with our clients in the areas of acquisition, IT strategy and governance, program management and organizational performance.

And we hope to hear from you, too, about what we have to say in our blog. What has and hasn’t worked for you? What important questions about management can we help you with? Please get in touch. Your input helps us create and share the most meaningful solutions for you.

If you would like to hear more about Suntiva, here is a short video where I and our CEO Michael Dow talk briefly about our solutions, typical clients, and how we work.

We pride ourselves on being a trusted advisor to hundreds of customers we have worked with, and we look forward to connecting with you about our innovative ideas and solutions.

— Hany Malik, MBA, PsyD, Chairman and Founder, Suntiva