Our approach for leading any change initiative is based on 3 pillars: people, processes and tools.
We believe that what separates good from great projects is not that much dependent on the just processes and tools anymore. It’s not about the amount of control and oversight what we see increasing as soon as projects start to go off the tracks. It’s not about having the best-written and best-formulated processes and procedures. It’s not only about having the right PM certification, although it’s definitely a good foundation. You can have all of that and still miserably fail in the delivery of a project. Many of us have seen it or lived even lived through it. So what is it that separate the good and the not so good change initiatives? What makes the difference? If somebody expects a single silver bullet…. there’s none. The current change initiatives are complex and political sensitive endeavors to expect a simple solution. However, we do know what significantly improves the success rate based on our own experience and those initiatives that we have studied: the right people with the right mindset.
The People
People matter. In particular when dealing with change initiatives such as technical projects & programs. Many people are involved and effected but our focus here is on the leadership of the change team. Often these are referred to as the project manager, program manager or change manager. In order to deliver successful results they need to have some very specific traits. At baseline7 we have captured these in our Guiding Principles:
- Invest wisely
- Focus diligently
- Engage relentlessly
- Measure continuously
You will find these traits back in each of Baseline7's leaders. It is part of our strict selection process and we work with our leaders to foster and grow these traits on ongoing basis. And the structure of self-managing teams stimulates each leader to become even better at it.
Two of our 'believes' are directly related to the people aspect:
- "Having the right people can overcome lack of good processes. Having all the right processes can never overcome lack of good people."
- "Good leadership alone will not result in success. However, the lack of good leadership will most likely lead to disappointment."
The Processes & Tools
At the surface our processes do not differ from those that many organizations have in place.
The change leadership approach is based on John P. Kotter’s eight step process for successful change. Baseline7 tailored it for changes related to rolling out business-critical software solutions.
The approach for leading projects, programs and portfolio’s is very typical for delivering software solutions with some minor adjustments to reflect differences between agile, waterfall and hybrid approaches. Besides, for many of our engagements we adhere to the processes and procedures which have been put in place by our Customers.