Governance & Lobbying is the glue which connects each
phase together in an aligned and cooperative manner.
Governance has long been seen as either some kind of
policing activity where people are either forced to comply with things or alternatively
a watered down box ticking exercise. Both approaches are insidiously
destructive as they appear to have solved a problem when in fact they are
making things worse!
In fact the first part of governance is often overlooked -
that of handover. There needs to be some handover to explain the why, to
explain the constraints, to explain the reasons behind the decisions that have
been taken.
The key to effective governance is balance that Lobbying
provides and is built upon the simple premise that a problem or an opportunity
can be discovered at any time by anyone rather than the “normal” western type
management approach which tends to be the person who
is right is the person who is more senior.
Things change. Always. Continually. Guaranteed. So you can
either ignore that inconvenient truth or accept it and put in a method to deal
with it when it does happen. In the domain of Transformation it is not only the
change related to the transformation we are executing but more importantly
change to the context - the why - that we must also deal with.
What we decided to do yesterday (and how and why) for many
good reasons could be a massively bad thing to do today. This is a fact of life
in the 21st century. So, if we are to deal with transformation in a Pragmatic way we need to accept this fact and deal
with it rather than pretend it doesn’t exist and hope for the best. The overall
idea that someone creates a strategy and 24 months later it is delivered is
rubbish. The plans for the project portfolio (and the reasons) could (and
generally do) change as the projects execute. Therefore we need a holistic and
coherent environment for transformation to happen within which allows us to
backtrack as soon as possible rather than blindly following a flawed plan.
It is not only that work at any level can deviate from
guidance (it will - the devil is in the detail) but also the fact that the
strategic plan or roadmap changes (or should change) that causes the disconnect
between each level.
