Getting the Right Projects Done

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  PMO   Strategy  

Something often happens between the time an organization’s business plan and objectives are blessed by the CEO and the way they are executed throughout the year. This can be especially true when it comes to the pursuit of projects that in turn can cause the best laid plans of CEOs to fail. It isn’t that the project managers don’t want to please the CEO, it is just that the process of getting the right projects defined and deployed is flawed.

Typically, this flawed process goes like this:

• The CEO along with their executive leadership team (business unit and division head leaders) craft a business plan that contains the strategic objectives (including project related initiatives) for the organization. These objectives usually are lofty in language but lack clear measurements of success that do not easily translate into meaningful operational terms.
• The leadership team members each take these objectives back to their respective organizations and craft a business plan (complete with objectives and initiatives) that they believe will support the objectives from their silo’s point of view. Rarely do they collaborate with fellow operating unit and division heads to ensure that their plans fit together.
• From the initiatives identified within these plans come projects that are submitted to the PMO for approval. The PMO--seeing that …

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