I’m just back from a few days in England, place of my birth as well as the recent vote as to whether or not Britain should exit from the European Union.
In the final days before the vote, things were fun and exciting. It was going down to the wire, too close to call. I spoke with my father and he told me he was going to vote Leave, based on our historical relationships with Europe. I spoke with my friends in the affluent South, and they were horrified at the thought of what Brexit would do to them and the financial services industry.
I arrived in England just after the vote, and people were walking around visibly shocked. It seems that even the die-hard Leave campaigners didn’t think that the vote would actually be in favor of Brexit. So when it did go that way, everyone was left asking – what next? What’s the plan? Where is the Roadmap? Questions asked not just in Britain, but across Europe and the rest of the world. The answer was the resignation of the British Prime Minister, and the escape into hiding by Boris Johnson, one of the main architects of the Leave campaign. There was no Roadmap. Nothing remotely close.
There are very strong parallels here to project and program management in our investment management industry. How many times have you experienced someone coming up with a really great idea, and then rushing to try and execute it – but without thinking through an even rudimentary Roadmap? Or even if the instigators have a basic plan, not sharing that with anyone else, so that no one knows what is going on and it ends in disaster?
It really is the basics that catch us out. Come up with the idea. Think it through. Produce a Roadmap. Share that Roadmap with the relevant stakeholders. Get agreement. Refine it. Produce detailed plans, a Future State Model. Consider where you are today - your Current State Model - and plan out how you will get to your planned Future State. Create one or more Transition State Models, depending upon the length and complexity of your journey. Share. Undertake your journey. Keep reiterating your Roadmap.
Take a look at your current project or program. Can you point to the Roadmap? Do you have accurate Current and Future State Models? Do you have Transition State Models that will get you from where you are now, to where you want to be in the future? Are your stakeholders, vendors, service providers and team members aware of the Roadmap? Do they share the same vision as you and are they working in unison with you and your organization to achieve that?
Make sure your project doesn’t end up like Brexit…
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