ep 30 Implementation Issues | A Community’s Role in Strategic Change w Lisa Carlin

And all of those things need to happen in an environment that you're driving through. Are you driving through rain? Are you driving through desert? Are you— what is the culture of the organization that you are navigating this strategy through? So those are the ingredients that are needed to implement strategy. And I use that term broadly because you could, you know, implementing change, implementing strategy, implementing Transformation in any and all of those.

It's the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast, Episode 30. You are the champion of a long-term strategic planning project. However, you understand some of the disciplines required to make strategic plans implementable: program management, and change management. But as you try to educate others on the importance of these two disciplines, you find yourself alone. Why? Well, they just don't get it. And if they continue to not understand it, the strategic plan could be a failure because— just because of the way it's defined and because it's missing these two perspectives, particularly if it's a long-term strategy. Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest Lisa Carlin from the Turbochargers as we tackle and try to solve this wicked problem together. I'm Francis Wade, and welcome to the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast. And welcome back. As you can see, I'm joined on the stage by my special guest Lisa Carlin. And let me tell you a little bit about Lisa before we get into the rest of the show. She's a strategy execution specialist and works with business leaders to plan and execute their strategies in tough environments. Her clients love having her on board because she's an independent sounding board, and she offers expert advice so that they can navigate their workplace culture and deliver their plans confidently. AI is now a major part of her focus, developing effective strategies, AI strategies, to fast-track success. Her career includes roles at McKinsey and Accenture, and she's been running her own business since 1999. When she's not at work, she's gardening with the dogs, who you may hear in the background. Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Francis, thanks for having me here.

Oh, it's great to have you here all the way from Australia, um, very far from where I am in Jamaica. But folks, if this is the first time you're tuning into this particular podcast, you may wonder what the heck is going on because we're about to do some, some things that most podcasts don't do. First thing is that I have not quite invited Lisa Hunt for an interview. This is not one of those instances where we ask her about all the solutions that she's already figured out. Instead, as you could tell from the introduction, we've chosen a problem. And my podcasts are all about problems that are difficult to solve. They're kind of wicked in nature. And neither of us is coming to this particular conversation with the answer all figured out. And the reason why we're doing this is because we want to diagnose it in a way that hopefully will share with you our underlying thinking so that you can use it for yourself. It's much better than just telling you some answers. So we want to open up the hood of the car and kind of get into what's underneath it and why it's not running the way it should and why people have problems implementing strategy in two areas that I mentioned before. So you'll get to decide for yourself whether you gain some insights from what we're talking about. But by the way, I will highlight some insights that are new to either of us using an insight bell. You'll hear a bell in the background, and, um, hopefully we'll come up with a few things that are also serendipitous that we've not thought of, either of us have thought of before. And that's how we roll. Lisa, are you ready?

I'm ready.

Excellent. Great. So let me tell you a story, folks, to get us rolling. Story is about Sheila, and Sheila is a corporate strategy officer who is about to launch 10 to 20-year strategic planning project. So if the project isn't, isn't going to take 20 years, it's going to span a 10 to 20-year horizon. She's unusually qualified because she's run program management and change management efforts successfully in her company, prior projects. She should feel confident about the planning process which needs to be followed. However, she has some niggling doubts. At first they were tiny, but after a few conversations, she's wondering if she should escape the assignment altogether. She started off chatting with her boss, the CEO. He— and that conversation led her to think that he vastly underestimates his role in the strategy. The fact is he's likely to leave at the end of his contract in 2 years' time, but he needs to take the activity seriously right away, like now. To satisfy some concerns around long-term project management, she visited her former colleagues in the program company's program management office. Sometimes it's called a PMO. She asked them to run an analysis of about all of her prior long-term projects. They reported back to her in no uncertain terms that they have all been failures. In fact, they have a running joke that anything lasting more than 2 years was doomed and should be avoided by all project managers who were in the know. Unfortunately, the lead consultant in the change management unit was surprised to get her call, kind of like, who are you again? You know, you people have never called me before. So no one from the strategy office ever seemed to care about change management and the disciplines involved. It took a long hour of discussion to overcome his suspicions. So she's had 3 conversations, and as she sat back to collect her thoughts, she began to feel alarmed. Should she bring these folks together in a meeting to understand the challenge? Should she write a memo to all of them? Should she scale back the company's ambitions? After all, a 5-year plan would be easier. Because it would be mostly a continuation of business as usual. Forget about this long-term stuff. Let's just go for short-term. And are these her only choices or should she even quit? Lisa, poor Sheila is in a terrible position. And is it one that you've seen before and can relate to from the work that you've done over the years?

Well, Francis, absolutely. One of the biggest issues I see is that change management does not get a seat at the table regularly. In one case in particular, I just saw this. I walked into the situation where the project was just not, you know, it was not getting traction and the change manager was superb, but she just wasn't invited to the key meetings. People didn't understand change management and it made it very difficult to get true value out of this amazing person who was just so skilled. And She could have seen all the writing on the wall and, you know, how to navigate the stakeholders, but she wasn't consulted properly.

Yeah, you know, folks, as you listen to us talk, we're going to spend some time diagnosing this particular kind of situation. We'll talk a little bit about the Sheila story, but also from our own experience before we go into answers and solutions. So in the beginning, we won't give any advice. We'll just talk about the what it's like to be caught in it, then we'll talk about what the solutions are. But if you can relate to this any at all, you may know that sinking feeling that you have when you're in a project and someone who knows 10 times more than anyone else, as Lisa said, sees the writing on the wall and then starts to predict what's going to happen because it's what's always happened and the company doesn't know how to escape that trap.. And as you listen, you know, all that enthusiasm that you had, oh, great project, can't wait to start, just feel it kind of sink. It's not that they're being a Debbie Downer. I mean, there are those cases where there are cynics and, you know, people who are trying to bring the thing down. But let's take the case that the person who is that she, that Lisa shared about, is just accurately diagnosing an ongoing change management issue that pertains to strategic planning in particular, and that this particular effort has just started off on the wrong foot, and she's seeing some of the markers of problems that are about to happen and about to occur.

If I may, also, there also seems to be another issue in that the program office and the strategist— there's a bit of a disconnect between Sheila and what the program management officers are thinking as well. And I think there's a third issue in that the CEO has given her a task for this long-term strategy and she— there's a disconnect between what he thinks is the right thing to do and what she is sort of deep down thinking, well, that's a very long-term solution. So we've got a few disconnects, haven't we, between the different players?

Yeah, right. Let's assume that in the Sheila case there's, there's maybe 3 of them, and between them, if you take 3 and you say, well, not only the 3 of them are disconnected, but the fact that they should be talking to each other means that it's what, 3 squared, 9? But they should be a coordinated bunch if a long-term strategic planning activity is going to be effective. Otherwise, it started off on the wrong foot, and unfortunately— Hope you're enjoying this free excerpt from the Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast. Interested in finding out more about getting a subscription to full episodes? Visit www.longtermstrategy.info. In this case, Sheila is the only one who can see the problem, yes?

I think people are seeing pieces of the problem, aren't they?

Tell us what you've seen.

Yes. I think that if you've got a really good change management professional in there, a good change manager, then they would see deeply and understand the different stakeholder dynamics and what will work in the culture of the organization. And so, so, you know, so that's one part of it. And then the other part of it is that the program office, you know, they're, if they're You know, some program officers are really there to provide methodology and ensure the reporting happens, but some of the program officers are more strategic and they really understand what works and coach the project managers, like Sheila, through the project. So, it sounds like this is the type of PMO, program management office, that they've got where they can really see and advise that, you know, this long-term 5 to 10-year strategy is going to cause a lot of scepticism. So, in that case, I think, you know, there's that disconnect and, uh, between, you know, her and, and the PMO, and they, they need to, um, really talk that through.

Yeah. What, what about the CEO though? The, the third, the third leg of the wheel? Because I, I skipped over that because it's the worst of them all.

That's right. So we haven't, you, we haven't really been given a lot of information about the CEO and where he stands on all of this. And really, we need to try and, uh, you you know, really uncover where he is coming from and why he wants that longer-term view and how, yeah, there is a whole lot of strategic problems that potentially Sheila is not understanding or that the PMO are not understanding. That means that really, you know, the industry potentially is going to be disrupted and we really do need to think ahead in that long term, you know, but that all needs to be diagnosed. And at the moment you've got, you know, the CEO sitting on one island, if you like, Sheila sitting on another island, the PMO, and then the change managers. And they all— the communication's not strong.

So yeah, we have a hint from the case that the CEO is leaving in 2 years' time, so he's, he's already dreaming of, you know, um, vacations in the Caribbean and whatnot. And yeah. You know, he's kind of like shrugged his shoulders and, you know, he's in the whatever stage. And, you know, if they could give him his exit now, he would take it. It's just that he has— I'm making this all up, okay? He has some options that are going to vest and he's just waiting for them to— but maybe he's never been the kind of leader. And this is what I see more often, is that I'm trying to work with a team and the the leader doesn't know what it is to lead strategically. They usually are good firefighters, the kind of guy I want next to me in a foxhole in the middle of an armed conflict because they know how to rally the troops and generate lots of energy. But when it comes to understanding how to plan for a 10 to 20 year horizon, kind of, they just never, some have never done it. Some don't want to do it. Some are forced to do it because their chairman told them to do it. Some are doing it because they think it's a good idea and they're ready to have a business review, therefore they should do it, but they don't really have an affinity for it and definitely don't have any practice. So they might even catch wind of what's happening with the change management office and the PMO, and they're like, okay, because to them there's not a problem to solve. But have you seen that kind of, um, it's not naivety, but it's inexperience, highest level?

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, in fact, I, I more often see it on the other end where the CEO actually just wants the action, right? And then but can't understand why it's just not happening the way that— so they've said, like in this example, you know, I want a 5 to 10-year strategy, and then off they go. And, uh, you know, and and then they just expect the leaders of the organization to go ahead and implement it. And they can't understand. In fact, I had one person very recently, one CEO, come to me and say, you know, I can't understand. We've got the high-level strategy. I've given it to my executives and I've said, go ahead and implement this. And he can't understand why they haven't gone forward. Can't understand it.

I've heard of boards trying to do that where they meet as a board and they come up with these high-level and then they pass it down for the next level of detail to the next level because they think their job is done. But they really hand it down, it's a bunch of spaghetti. Good luck lining up all the lines, boys and girls, but we're off to back to the Caribbean for a vacation because we earned it.

That's exactly right. Exactly right. So it's maybe spaghetti. I love that term. It's often too abstract and just not, you know, and very fluffy. Sometimes there's no real choice in it. So it's more of a strategic intent than an actual strategy where you've made a choice between elements. So, so there could be a whole number of things wrong, or it might just be analysis and there's no real recommendation in there. So there's a whole bunch of hurdles around the value of the strategy. First, that you've got to, you know, that that CEO has to, you know, stay involved in and make sure that the answers of what we got, what you're actually trying to do is correct. But then even if you've got all of those things ticked off, and Francis, as a strategist and the kind of work that you do, you know, you'll know this well, even if you've got that right and you've got the right strategy, then there's a whole lot of things around the implementation and bringing the people on the journey with you and getting that alignment between the different stakeholders, which includes, of course, Sheila, who's, who's, who's driving the program, the PMO, the change managers that all need to come together and the stakeholders in the business and even potentially outside the business. But let's say it's in the business, all those stakeholders who are are going to be impacted by, by the change or by the strategy. They need to understand what it means for them so that all that alignment piece that needs to happen. And that's where I see the biggest disconnect with the CEO and the executive team is ensuring that the executive team or the SLT senior leadership team really understand what, you know, understand what needs to happen and then how to make it happen.

More importantly. Yeah, no, that's where I was just thinking about that because it's— I hate being the guy who— I hate being in Sheila's role where I walk into a team and I pick up, unfortunately, usually it's intuitively and usually it's too late by the time I pick it up. Usually I'm in the middle of a retreat. I'm like, oh snap, we have a big problem here. I don't have the luxury of Sheila's time to sit back and think about it. But usually it's just some kind of intuition that I pick up, that it's not a systematic kind of understanding of what's happening. It's more of a gut feel on my part. Are you able to diagnose it beyond a gut feel and then sort of translate that into conversations that you would have with maybe each of the protagonists? Have you done anything? I know we're getting into solutions a little bit, but let's go there anyway because maybe you, maybe you have, maybe you figured out some way of thinking about that problem.

Is now a good time to describe the framework that I use, or is that too soon?

Let's go for it.

Okay. So I have a framework which is about transformation. So this is the Turbochargers approach, and I've developed it based on the, you know, 50+ transformation projects that I've been involved in because when I see these these sorts of challenges, whatever the organization, whatever the industry, you know, the size of the organization, you need 3 different perspectives of skills.

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