What factors determine the success of a project?

Our experience has enabled us to confidently identify two critical issues that maximise the degree of success of any programme we undertake. They are:

• Management Ownership & Support – The programme objectives must be “owned” by senior management and they must be deeply involved with the programme and its aims and activities. Programmes where management, inadvertently or otherwise, take a back seat and abdicate responsibility once the objectives have being agreed consistently fail to achieve the kind of impact that programmes where management are actively involved in do.
  
  Who constitutes “senior management” depends on the organisation – for an owner-managed enterprise the owner-manager must be involved as project sponsor and a member of the project team. In larger organisations the divisional managers or those with P&L responsibility need to be involved.

• Clear Objectives – The clearer and more measurable the objectives of the programme - the higher the probability of success. Being able to express the objectives of a programme in measurable terms makes it “real” and removes any conflicting interpretations from the programme. Often the objectives can become more defined and measurable as a programme progresses. For example a programme might have the initial objectives of “reducing stock outs” and “improving stock turns”. Once the required analysis is undertaken and the appropriate systems implemented, the goals might be re-stated as “achieving an order fill rate of 97%” and “annualised stock turns of 6 or more”.
  
  Objectives need to be achievable, however, while also “stretching” performance. Unrealistic and over-ambitious goals can be self-defeating and frustrate the momentum of a programme.

Do you make people work harder than they are already working?

Not surprisingly, we often encounter the “we’re already busy” or “we’re too busy” concerns in the early stages of a programme. Our skills and methodologies are in objectively analysing processes and challenging the way tasks are currently undertaken. We then work with project teams to minimise the non-value added activities and lost time causes we have identified.

The end result is often that people end up working smarter – not harder – and that productivity and service levels improve without any increase in costs or resources.

Are you just another team of managers pushing employees for better results?

Experience has shown us that many of the issues hampering performance in organisations are obstacles created by, or at least perpetuated by, management rather than a reluctance of frontline staff to strive for higher levels of service, efficiency or quality. Much of our time is spent identifying these obstacles and getting them removed or resolved so front line staff can get on with their jobs more effectively.

What return on the programme cost can I expect?

Where required and appropriate, we track the return on investment achieved for any programme we run, both over the life of the programme and on an annualised basis, by comparing our costs with the improved financial performance of the organisation or department.

We also implement systems in most programmes to track all critical performance indicators. We establish a base measure at the outset and can factually measure the improvements as the programme progresses.