Clarity, intellectual honesty and a frank exchange of information are critical to the success of the initial assessment and the early development phase of any project. They’re key qualities for subsequent stages too, but the critical point is that fundamental flaws built in right at the beginning have the greatest potential to cause damage, up to and including project failure, as things progress.
Few will dissent from a call for clarity, intellectual honesty and frank exchange but the question is, what does that actually and usefully mean in terms of process and the people being asked to make that process work?
A project is, by definition, an agent of change and a disruptor, both externally and internally, and this needs to be clearly understood and embraced from the very start. It’s surprising how often this isn’t the case and one of the most common causes of project failure is when an organisation fails to understand what it’s actually trying to do and to adapt its intellectual and emotional outlook accordingly. Change is risky and it’s about understanding that risk and being comfortable with it.
Put another way, if the status quo works then the de facto business case is in favour of the status quo and a wise organisation needs to understand and question the possible value-destruction involved in disruption. ‘Should we be doing this?’ is a legitimate question but it doesn’t always get asked, either because of the inherent excitement and appeal of the ‘new’ or for reasons of mis-placed corporate pride. ‘To thine own self be true’ is excellent advice for any organisation considering a project but it’s easier said than done and it requires self-discipline and corporate self-awareness to make it happen.
In this instance, the pertinent questions are: What are we trying to achieve? What are the implications for the business if this project goes ahead? Are those implications desirable or acceptable?
Without this clarity, together with the intellectual recognition and acceptance of the identified consequences by the executive team, it’s difficult to make a rational and binding decision to commit and, perhaps even more importantly, to sustain that commitment over what may be a period of years and through some very tough challenges.
Clarity requires a degree of honesty which can verge on the brutal and, in practical terms, brutal honesty in a corporate environment is problematic, given that many organisations are temperamentally pre-disposed to temporise and defer in order to maintain operational equilibrium and political peace. This may be very necessary in the context of maintaining profitable operations and in the context of corporate culture, but it is death to any attempt at robust project assessment. Being prepared to have the difficult conversations is a critical component of success.
Finally, it’s also very tempting to dive straight into a project and let the momentum generated by everyone’s initial enthusiasm carry the process forward, but enthusiasm can only carry a project so far. If key issues are not identified and resolved at an early stage, they will return to cause trouble later on. This is particularly true if the project involves a consortium of organisations, since any significant variation in the degree of enthusiasm shown by one or more partners inevitably leads to a process of second-guessing by everyone else. This is a quick and reliable way to destroy trust and cohesion in any project partnership.
Given these challenges, what are some solutions?
First of all, don’t be afraid of the difficult conversations. Asking the right questions in the right way and properly interrogating and assessing the answers is critical. Temporising at this stage will almost certainly have long-term implications for cost, schedule and possibly even overall success.
Next, make sure you have the right type of person on the team. Projects are, by definition, inherently dynamic and loss of dynamism is an immediate warning sign that a project is in trouble. An effective project team needs a significant contingent of dynamic individuals who are comfortable with change and disruptive environments and it will struggle if such a personality type doesn’t predominate. It’s also important to make the distinction between those who are comfortable with risk and those who think they are but who will quickly revert to what they know when the pressure comes on. That is not always an easy distinction to make.
Not only does dynamism have to be reflected in the project team, it also has to be embraced at executive level. Though there is a clear executive requirement to manage a project in the context of the wider business, even the best project team can only ever be as capable and dynamic as those it reports to allow it to be. The team will struggle if those charged with oversight do not give a clear and confident lead and the result will be hesitancy at all levels. Hesitancy is infectious, it destroys momentum and it invariably burns up the vital commodity of time.
The answer to hesitancy is confidence and the creation of confidence is one of the big payoffs of an intellectually robust first pass. If participants have a clear idea of what the project is trying to achieve, how it can be achieved, what it will cost approximately and what the implications are for the business, then they have clarity on what they’re being asked to endorse. The key objective is an initial assessment with no hidden surprises, no convenient assumptions and nothing of material significance deferred for another day. This is an ideal, but it pays to get as close to the ideal as you reasonably can.
With an assessment that people trust, magic begins to happen and the process starts to work in your favour. Above all, executive decision makers have a clarity which enables decisiveness, whether that decision is ‘Go’ or ‘No go’. With no hidden surprises, convenient assumptions or material omissions, the scope for qualification, hesitation or, in some cases, outright corporate gaming, is massively reduced. This promotes executive unity which translates into effective support and direction for the project team. If the process is worked properly, the project will have a robust corporate platform to build on. This will increase project resilience when the inevitable challenges inherent in project development and execution arise.
Thorough assessment is critical for any project but it is indispensable when a partnership is involved. The fundamental requirement for any business alliance is unambiguous, consistent and regular communication and this is only possible in a project environment if all the parties have a clear understanding both of what they’re trying to do and the objectives of the other participants. By flushing out the unknowns and the variables it is possible to minimise the hidden surprises and project planning holes which put pressure on cost, schedule and working relationships and, consequently, on the partnership as a whole.
The scientist Thomas Huxley described the great tragedy of science as “the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact”. In terms of time, cost, risk, resources and the strength of any project through its execution phase, it should be a corporate priority to make sure that the questions which might reveal that ugly fact are asked at the earliest opportunity.
For information about how Swift & Falcon can help you ensure a robust appraisal and development process and much more besides, please visit Project Developers