Chapter News

 

 

One architectural work that has continued attracting tourists is the Pisa Tower in Italy. Its magnificent size, distinct architectural design, and construction have faced various stability or integrity questions due to its leaning nature. The tower's foundation is only about 3 meters deep, which is shallow compared to other bell towers of the time, while located on a soft soil foundation made up of clay, sand, and shells. This combination created an unstable base for the tower, causing it to lean. Great for creating a tourist attraction, but definitely not as intended initially… and, of course, a nightmare from a construction perspective!

 

Unless you're like Disneyland, your strategy is not to create a tourist attraction but to realize your own unique strategic plan. This strategy delivery process can be seen as highly comparable to constructing a magnificent tower, with a distinct design and delivery of many complex components that neatly need to fit together. But if you want to ensure that your strategy doesn't fall over, just like building a tower, you better base it on a strong foundation! 

Based on over 20 years of practice experience in international organizational projects and strategy delivery, threon recognized typical components that are simply a foundation, a 'must have,' to enable your strategy delivery for creating value for your stakeholders. 

These Foundational components can be grouped under two basic principles, namely:

1. doing the right projects that strongly relate to your strategy design;
2. and doing these projects the right way, which relates to their execution and delivery.

And, of course, in that specific order because it's still wrong when doing the wrong things the right way!

Then, under these two principles, we recognized the following:

Seven Foundational components for successful Strategy delivery

Using these Foundational components as a key reference, threon executed a benchmark research, which received input from over 500 respondents and more than 350 organizations in the Benelux, including PMI Netherlands Chapter members (Thank you!). This feedback on how organizations score on these seven Foundational components created interesting insights!

Overall benchmark results per Foundational component

First of all, for organizations, we can recognize the two best-scoring Foundational components: `Link between Strategy and Execution' and `Mature Project Delivery'. This can be seen as a confirmation that project management's organizational maturity (individual PM skills and capabilities, structured PM processes, …) has grown, and projects are rightly being recognized as key enablers for strategy realization.

This is, of course, not really surprising, given the growing number of professionally trained project managers, who are supported by their organizations, who have learned to understand and now more and more explicitly recognize the value of the PM profession and successful project delivery as pivotal for the realization of their organization's strategy.

There's no doubt that PMI, the worldwide leading organization in the professionalization of project management, has contributed to that growth. To reinforce 'Mature Project Delivery,' PMI facilitates the PMP certification, recognized as the profession's global 'Gold standard'. More and more organizations put into practice what is stated in PMI's Portfolio Standard, that strategy is realized by a consistent flow of successfully delivered projects, thus realizing the link between 'Strategy and Execution.' 

However, the most intriguing insight is linked to the lowest-scoring Foundational component, 'Ability to absorb change.' This component looks more at an individual level, the people's level of engagement with that strategy; thus, these people are actually becoming the change.

In general, this foundational component scores lowest in all organizations. When we dug deeper into the data related to this Foundational component, we even noticed a critical gap between the perceptions of people across different roles in the organization of how they are actually implementing change.

Score per Role on Foundational component - Individual change

It's striking that C-level executives structurally score this capability lower than Project Management Office (PMO) and Project and Program Managers. These different perceptions could stem from the varying degrees of interaction of these roles with other employee groups, as project-related roles often engage more closely with change precursors, like key users and team members, whereas CxOs usually focus on the bigger picture and maintain more distance from specific projects and the personal impacts and sentiments related to these projects. Therefore, far more attention must be paid to individual change to fully support the transition from the current to the future state. By assessing the organization's readiness for change, leaders can make more informed decisions, reduce threats, and increase the likelihood of successful transformation. 

From the research, we can conclude that in the complex landscape of organizational dynamics, the concept of 'Individual Change' emerges as a persistent challenge and is consistently evaluated as the weakest of all Foundational components across all sectors and industries regardless of an organization's size. This could stem from various factors. Perhaps organizations struggle to mobilize individuals effectively, lack a concerted focus on this aspect amidst broader objectives, or lack the necessary tools and methodologies to facilitate individual-level transformations. But in reality, if people don't change how they work, the organization will not make the change. While the implementation and transition of the project deliverables into the organization, and therefore brings about the change, this is, of course, a crucial and final element for realizing the business case of any project. Only by doing this will it actually deliver on the organization's strategy.

Of course, this article can only lift the tip of the veil. So, for a complete overview of threon's benchmark study, please visit https://www.threon.com/download/foundations-benchmarking-results-ebook.

If you're curious to learn more about the strength of your PM Foundations for strategy delivery, feel free to contact info@threon.com for a no-obligation introduction.

About threon

Threon, a consultancy firm with over 20 years of experience, operates in BeNeLux & Beyond. Specializing in Project, Program, and Portfolio Management, their primary goal is to enhance your

ability to adapt and thrive in today's dynamic environment. Threon and its Mindshift® team provide the expertise and assist you in dealing with the individual change of people and getting them engaged in executing your strategy effectively.

Have a look at what threon's customers say: https://www.threon.com/who-we-work-for.