MSP® PRINCE2® P3O® P3M3™

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking big money  - - - Everett M. Dirksen

This bulletin focuses on the increasingly topical Benefits Management.  For many organisations this has always been one of those “important” but not “urgent” issues which they never quite get around to.

Despite much talk and rhetoric about it’s importance, our work in undertaking P3M3 maturity reviews of organisations has shown that only a small minority manage to even make it above Level 1. There are many reasons for this, but lack of any structured guidance or frameworks is the number one reason which means all benefits management activity is likely to be ad-hoc at best. KPMG in 2005 concluded that less than 20% of projects deliver their benefits, shocking but probably a reality still.

Contrast that with Finance Management which normally scores close to a Level 3 in maturity which is reflecting it’s importance, most organisations have a Finance Director, none (as far as we know) have a Benefits Delivery Director

As the reality of the new economic policies are hitting our customers, one of the few courses that is selling really well is Benefits Management, because it is now becoming essential that organisations understand how their benefits will be realised and what they are worth – this is the only way they will be able to justify the continuation of their initiatives. We are also working on two Benefits Management Framework assignments.

William Cowper was once quoted as saying – “Absence of proof is not proof of absence”, which is quite a sobering thought in this context, you are probably delivering benefits, but not the ones that were described or even wanted, whilst the one’s we promised have slipped into obscurity.

One of the big challenges is how to categorise benefits and then measure them. To help with this we have captured our current ideas and those of the other thought leaders into this article that we hope will prove really useful , MSP Sound Bites – Benefits Categorisation

We can also offer you one of our podcasts, this bulletin we have Rod Sowde, the MSP lead author talking about benefits management in a MSP environment

We can also offer an in-house Benefits Management course for organisations that want to start the journey to improvement and enjoy facilitation from some of the thought leaders in this area.

PPM Bulletin – Change Management

Benjamin Disraeli is reputed to have said “What we anticipate seldom occurs and what we least expect generally happens”.  In these unpredictable times those words may resonate with many of you.

In this bulletin we are focusing on Change Management.  The one thing that is certain is that things are about to change for all of us, but how well prepared are you as an individual, as a team or as an organisation?

It is amazing how many organisations freeze in the face of change, many of our public sectors clients have just stopped functioning, not knowing how the cuts will affect them.  This in turn is already putting private sector suppliers out of business as they have stopped spending money, Parity Training being a high profile recent example.  The banks and lending institutions are arguably still frozen in the state they were 2 years ago.

There is an interesting change management theory that defines the stages individuals go through when faced with severe change, namely  Shock, Anger, Depression, Acceptance, Hope. It’s often called the Valley of Despair or the Psychodynamic Curve and was defined by Kubler Ross.

Even worse, a guy called Maslow outlined a set of hierarchy of needs that all human beings work for. When peoples jobs are at risk they quickly move from ambitious and self attainment (one of the highest levels) to the most basic level, the need for security, the lack of which is very scary.

So what we can see at the moment, is many organisations frozen in shock and fear, teams do not have clear direction on how to react to the challenge, managers do not have the skills to handle the new circumstances and individuals go through an emotional turmoil as they try to come to terms to the new reality, or lack of it.  Organisations are therefore now performing at far less efficiency than they were doing 6 months ago. Becoming competent at change takes practice, have a look at this article on change management maturity for an insight.

The one message that comes across consistently is that organisations always underestimate the cost and impact of change, whether it is by choice or not.  Programmes and Projects often leave the true costs out of the business case as the numbers are too scary, which means that change isn’t really being planned for, which is why chaos ensues.

If we look at the evidence from P3M3 maturity assessments, every organisation we have looked at so far has been weak in the area of Benefits Management and many are weak in Resource Management.  KPMG research a couple of years ago estimated that less that 20% of organisations deliver their benefits, which based on our statistics, may actually be a bit on the generous side.

The APM Group recently released an article on Change Management which we think may be of interest to you and introduces their contribution to the challenge with their qualification course which is currently proving very popular.

There is no silver bullet to solve this problem, but having well trained teams that are prepared and knowledgeable about the effects of change is a good starting point.

We offer the APM Group Change Management courses as well as a one day introductory event which may be of interest.  Here are the details and if we can be of help please drop us a line at enquiries@aspireeurope.com