Initiatives

Initiative management will never be simple, but you can streamline the implementation scenario with a good alignment of people, process, and technology, and apply the best fit methodologies smoothly.

In today's business dynamic or unstable circumstances, the evidence points to business change emerging rather than being prescribed. It's important to keep eyes on what matters, identify what generates the most value for the company and express that in strategic objectives, set the right priority, and analyze potential pitfalls. 

Logically, “WHY” (strategic planning) is potentially satisfied by a set of “WHATs" (business initiatives) that are executed by a set of “HOWs" (initiative implementation efforts). Organizational leadership lenses need to be broader and circular to see beyond current or surface, not only look through the future but co-create the future. It's important to analyze total value, total cost, and total impact in order to improve the success rate of business initiative management.

Part of the business initiative implementation process is the continual attention to current changes in the organization and its external environment: Only way you make the strategy understandable for the whole organization is to start with “WHY” because implementation and change management often go hand-in-hand. Engaging employees in participating in feedback giving, would create synergy for strategy implementation. The business executive collaboration focuses on providing, analyzing and interpreting complex data patterns and working seamlessly to manage information, break down silos and ensure business as a whole is superior to the sum of the pieces.

Be cognizant of the unknown, provide insight into the mind sets of those making decisions. It will be good to learn in specific cases what happened, why, and how things would have been different if a different strategy was followed. Business executives have to be humble to realize there are many things they don’t know, so they squash arrogance, really make them desire insight, pay more attention to changing dynamics, and improve business agility.

Recognize some variables used to prioritize initiatives: The ecosystem is complex and volatile, being digital is the state of interconnectivity. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Each variable could have a scale and weight. If an initiative does not have the "priority" you expected may be due to an error in processing or failing to consider a new variable or because of different selection criteria. Sometimes it could be the initiative that seeks to "evaluate" a potential product or a technology solution to a problem (prototype). These are usually initiatives that seek to place the business into a new vantage point (looking for the “jump”).

Identify critical variables used to prioritize initiatives such as: the time required by users to implement the initiative alignment with the vision and strategies; “time to reach equilibrium” (cost = benefit) A precise identification of objectives that initiatives will support. Staff needed to implement the initiatives (numbers, skills, timeframe) The risk involved; identify risks, the issue related if the initiatives cannot be easily accepted by staff. Size of the cost ($). Size of profit ($): Return of investment. Approved budget ($). The time to complete implementation (post-training and post-adjustment period). Evaluate each of the variables from the perspective of the value that was assumed when the business initiative was prioritized, current value that considers the current scenario with the current costs, projected value, the value considering a conservative scenario according to what you expect in the future, etc. The comparisons help to review progress, deviations, and keep update

Initiatives/changes/steps bring the portfolio from here to there: Assuming you have done the current state assessment of business pain points, alignments on different dimensions, etc. also completed the gap analysis against To-Be and with prioritized/desired capabilities, you are good to define a roadmap for a strategic (long term) /tactical (quick wins) timeline. The artifact becomes one that covers the following: what the business initiatives portfolio looks like today; what it needs to look like to achieve the business goals; stepwise process from here to there should include a rough timeline and provide the business benefit each interim state provides; what do you have? What can you achieve in the time frame (3-5) years? What elements do you add in which fiscal years, what benefit does it provide us and why were these selected over others.

From a portfolio management perspective, the more complex the application is, perhaps there are more interdependent pieces that need to be integrated with for building differentiated competencies. Nobody can guarantee the achievement of the expected goals of a business portfolio, but their achievement's probability can be increased if the management system is built and optimized accordingly. To improve the overall quality of a business initiative portfolio, the management needs to monitor the quality at every stage of management practice and take corrective actions wherever necessary.

Business initiative management will never be simple, but you can streamline the implementation scenario with a good alignment of people, process, and technology, and apply the best fit methodologies smoothly. Organizations that achieve seamless alignment, integration, collaboration, and synchronization will outperform their competitors and tend to be highly responsive to the dynamic ecosystem and achieve high-level organizational maturity.

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