Have you noticed how we have so many more projects, change programs, new initiatives and strategies in our organisations today?  Have you noticed that so many more people are Project Managers...all demanding some attention and resource?
The 2000's was the decade of Project Management I beleive.  We now have so many PMs, and almost as many projects to go with them.  That means we probably have more focus on objectives that we did in business in the 90's.  But the dowside can be that in the face of limited resource, where do we put our attention, where do we direct our energy?
We may have more focus on objectives but less clarity on which ones are important.  This blunts the edge of gaining effective change, when we are spread so thin doing a lot of things in mediocre ways.
I sometime write for a Singapore based magazine called Walk Your Talk.  I wrote an article on this very subject and some ways of dealing with it.  The article is available from our website. 
You can access the full article here.  I hope you enjoy.

Queensland Health and the consultants being called in to assist highlights one small professional family tree of what is bound to be many.  See this blog for more info.

The world of big business can be a little scary I suppose.  In the case of Queensland Health's payroll debacle, you have two of the biggest IT companies in the world in SAP and IBM.

Not even they could stop what happened from happening.  But what was surprising for me was the Stage 2 KPMG report into Queensland Health.

It seemed to be written by someone who is a little scared about offending anyone, perhaps concerned about any legal ramifications or impact on relationships or perhaps concerned about stating a view.

It starts with two pages of Scope, then 3 pages of Approach, then 3 and a half pages of Observations, half of which was dedicated to areas for future investigation.  It then capped it all off with 2 pages of Disclaimers.  The Disclaimers are of the same volume as the Observations.

KPMG can do great work, but don't count this piece of public record as one of them, this is far from saying anything other than "let's be cautious".

I have held back from commenting for a little while now, but it has been over three months and the story continues with recriminations and reports.  Of course, I am referring to the Queensland Health payroll situation.  I will focus on just one aspect of it, the number one and often repeated error of our top five oversights associated with major failures of this type.

This error is the biggest threat to successfully adopting process and technology system change, such as Payoll implementations.  That error is in not recognising the organisational risk at stake.  Let's face it, for a payroll implementation the major risks should be clear, i.e. not paying your hard working staff.

So given the troubles that have been encountered let's start with the management of risk.  Apparently, as reported in The Courier Mail on the 14th April, there was some debate over whether a memo made its way to the Minister in charge of the Health portfolio.  There have been many questions about what advice was provided to whom as you would expect.  But this kind of misses the point.

Whether the memo got there or not shouldn't matter.  For all large organisations, changing payroll is a high risk activity.  It should be so high that those in charge should be obtaining the necessary assurances to ensure it is under control, not waiting to be told if it is not.  This is where too many process and technology change programs go awry...poor recognition of the organisational risk at stake by those at the more senior levels.  No this is not "an IT thing" this is, as in most "IT" these days, a business thing.

We must assume that the Minister and significant others knew of the project.  After all, it would have likely required Cabinet approval.  And with a change to a payroll system that pays approximately 1/3 of the Queensland public service it should rank high on the risk profile.

As such it should have resulted in pro-active verification from the executives and stakeholders, with specific questions being asked and specific standards being defined, not a call me if you need me approach.  The QAO report defines some of these standards such as governance, testing etc.  The lack of them, while being tangible, is a symptom of not understanding the risk, rather than the root cause of these situations.

Maybe I am going out on a limb here but I really don't think so.  This remains an industry wide issue.  There are way too many "failures" still happening with regularity, and too many senior business (and government)players who still think of these situations as an "IT thing" instead of a major risk to the success of their business, for anyone in this latest situation to feel singled out.  They have too many friends from those who have preceded their path to feel that way.

Seth Godin is one of my favourite marketing and business writers.  I love this recent blog which some may feel has nothing to do with marketing, but really has everything to do with it and with business.  Seth writes:

The difference between running and managing a project

If you choose to manage a project, it's pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what's happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman.
If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you're on the hook. It's an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship.
Running a project requires a level of commitment that's absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?

In my experience, organisations rarely deliver a result by managing a project, it takes people running them to deliver results.  And if you can't deliver a result you can't create a good reputation, a good brand or a good business...that is marketing 101.

It was pleasing to see the recent announcement at CeBIT by Harvey Norman's Chief Operating Officer, Mr John Slack-Smith, that Harvey Norman would be pushing ahead with a new enterprise solution.  It was also somewhat predictable that they would receive some questions for not pursuing an on-line strategy as reported in MIS Australia.  In my view they have got their priorities spot on.

It reminded me of the press criticism that SAP received for not following everyone else into the dot com bubble.  Of course history now shows that SAP came out of the dot com bubble stronger and more dominant then ever, because they stuck to their strengths and avoided the hype. 

Harvey Norman has grown solidly, has grown internationally and with acquisitions in recent years.  The core of their business is in delivering great service, great range, cost effectively.  To do this they need to manage their supply chain well.  A new integrated system will help with that.  Once they get their internal systems better able to perform, then they can leverage that into improved customer experiences, and that may ultimately mean providing online options.  So they have definitely got their priorities right.

What I really like about this set of priorities by Harvey Norman is the recognition of risks in doing this scale of change.  Some may feel that its easy to put up a web site and take online orders.  Well perhaps if you are doing a few orders a week and operating from your spare room.  But with 10,000s of transactions at stake, multiple suppliers and a well founded reputation at stake, then it takes a bit more than a web site.  There is a lot of process and technology complexity to manage here.

So it is this risk that is clearly appreciated by the Harvey Norman executive in their decision.  This is step one in any program of work of this nature; understanding the risk at all levels of the organisation.  Then plan accordingly.  Congratulations Harvey Norman and team, you are leading Australia in retailing expertise, and perhaps about to lead in managing process and technology change. Go Harvey Go!