Practical Strategy

The key to wrangling a project, to making it tractable, is to ensure you can get your head around the length and breadth of it. Here are three aids to doing that:

1. Ensure there is a place to park new or unresolved issues – such as a Parking Bay or Issues Log – to ensure these don’t get lost before they find a home. And then make sure you have a mechanism, such as a regular project or working group meeting, to review and allocate them, and track their resolution
2. Ensure there is a specific means of identifying, capturing and managing risks. This should sit across the project plan so that factors which might hinder the accomplishment of project milestones are flagged, with sufficient time for them to be addressed
3. Communicate … even when there is no change. An absence of communication is not the same as a communication of ‘no change’ or ‘no progress’. It’s still important for people to hear ‘Nothing to report’ if that is the accurate project status update. Ensure a constant flow of communication up, down and across all participants and stakeholders … and don’t confuse a message of ‘No change’ … with no message.

1. The ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑦 – a valuable means – in the age of digital communication – of letting people know you’ve received their email or voice message … but don’t have the time to properly respond just yet
2. The 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑎 – an agenda sent out to participants in advance of a meeting is (along with the work that happens between meetings) likely the key success factor of any meeting
3. The 𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑔 – for capturing and holding important issues that require resolution … without having to detour from immediate priorities
4. The 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑘 𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 – not just for review at Board Risk Committees, but also a vital input to regular management deliberation … and strategy development efforts (in particular the Threats section of a SWOT analysis)

• ‘The best predictor of the success of a meeting may be a written agenda distributed in advance’ (Romano & Nunamaker) … even a regular weekly stand-up meeting should have an agenda.
• In a meeting, follow the thread of the conversation, and if it gets off track, bring it back on course.
• If there are important issues which need attention, but risk derailing other items, put them on a parking bay and assign them to someone to progress and report back at a future meeting.
• Debussy said ‘Music is the space between the notes’; the value of a meeting depends on what happens between meetings (follow-up, implementation). Meetings are to share information, coordinate players, make decisions and track results: they are to progress action, not avoid it.

1. The title or subject should encapsulate the issue being addressed. Be on point, not oblique
2. Crystallise the key points so the issues are succinctly spelt out on the cover sheet, and the reader/approver can ‘get’ the issue within a minute or two
3. Use the logic of the briefing note structure (Issue, Background, Current Position, Recommendation, or similar) to take the approver on a ‘journey’ that guides them where you need them to be
4. Don’t ramble. Apply Occam’s Razor
5. Include an action which lets the approver know what they need to do. If the purpose is to inform them, then the recommendation is ‘For information’
6. Relegate large sources or technical material to an appendix. The cover sheet should stand on its own and reference any appendices.

Many organisations have to comply with requirements imposed on them by a central office. There may be mandatory strategy sessions, or plans that have to be submitted.

These are typically seen as burdens to be completed as painlessly as possible to get ‘corporate off our back’. But there are more strategic ways of viewing them. Fulsomely meeting the requirements of a parent organisation is an opportunity to demonstrate competence, and gain favour with a stakeholder who can make funding available or open doors.

Your contribution may also shape central office’s agenda: if you have to prepare risk management plans you can use your plan to shape the conglomerate’s approach to risk.

Rather than complaining about the inevitable, why not leverage it?