April 4, 2001
Recently I’ve been consulting with a large financial services company that is changing direction. A major aspect of the change is a reorientation away from a product focus toward a customer one. This is the kind of change that requires the management team to revisit almost every important aspect of the business. The CEO has written a memo describing the strategy. He has also provided written answers to a large number of questions. Problem is, nobody knows what to do next. (Well, the people I work with are having trouble figuring out what the strategy means; I haven’t spoken to everybody.) The Program Management Office managers feel they need the strategy to be articulated well enough so that program charters can be written and the business basis for the work can be determined – a very reasonable point of view. My advice is to develop a document that sets out the strategy in clear, unambiguous, actionable terms. Now nobody knows what I mean! So I agreed to take one of the main themes and develop the sort of clear document I’m talking about. Writing this article will help me get going by helping me clarify my own thinking. (There is a pattern forming here that’s a little too recursive, like an Escher drawing. I’d better get linear, or I’ll accomplish the opposite of my intention.) The fact is, clear thinking is difficult. So is clear communication – probably because it requires clear thinking. Visionary leadership is necessary to get organizations moving, but so is clear communication. In fact without it people generally don’t know what to do next, as we have discovered. Let’s analyze the three words I used to characterize the communication that helps turn Strategy into Action and results: Clear language is, to use a dictionary definition, (The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition) “Free from what dims, obscures, or darkens; unclouded…” and from another dictionary: “Plain or evident to the mind; unmistakable.” Clear language seeks to communicate so it over-communicates if necessary. Repetition and examples are used in clear language, as is structure. Clear language should appear to have been parsed for easy reading and digestion. Unambiguous language can only be interpreted one way. Unambiguous communication does not equivocate, it is explicit and not obscure. This is difficult to do and sometimes requires a series of communications. The key here is to realize the importance of getting the information (in this case the strategy) documented unambiguously. Once this is realized, a dialogue that encourages active listening needs to be started. The questions and answers that followed the CEO’s first memo was a good example of this. However, the dialog has apparently stopped and needs to be picked up again. Actionable language specifies the changes in behavior or the work that should be started based on the communication. The term comes from the legal world (again from the dictionary): “Law. Giving cause for legal action.” Used in the context of business communication, it refers to statements that cause specific actions. If the communication is also clear and unambiguous, then the call to action will have those characteristics as well. Of course not all communication needs to be actionable, but if it’s about business strategy, it does. Or at least the essence of the message needs to be actionable. I believe that one role program managers can play is to be active listeners and work with strategic memos that set direction to help clarify them so that what should come next becomes as close to apparent as possible. Of course, the process for doing this is difficult and important. If you are interpreting corporate strategy so action can be taken, you have to get it right. So it must be done collaboratively with the original author directly or indirectly. He or she must endorse the clarifications as well as understand the need for them in order for this to work. For us the point is that clear communication is the bedrock on which effective program management is built. In some situations a message from the highest levels of a company may not be subject to immediate clarification. There may be aspects of the business environment that call for a degree of equivocation. The need may be on the part of the management team to figure some things out before taking direct action. If this is the case, my recommendation is to make that situation itself clear. In reality it is the situation and environment that is ambiguous; the communication should not be. The point is, unless a strategic directive is clear and unambiguous, is it very difficult to figure what to do about it. In an article I wrote some time ago (Setting up a PMO -- A Million Dollar Question?), I recommended that the first step in setting up a PMO is to define its charter. Same thing goes for a program. However, if the business purpose is not clear, the charter of a PMO to support it cannot be either. So in setting up a program charter, make sure the business objectives are clear, unambiguous and actionable. If they aren’t, the first action to take is to get clarification – even if you have to create it yourself.