[00:00:00] Heath: Hello, my name is Heath Gascoigne and I am the host of the Business Transformation Podcast. And this is a show for business transmitters who are part business strategists, part business designers, part collaborators, and part negotiators. Business transmitters have moved past just business design and includes oversight of implementation of those business designs and business transformation, and includes stakeholder management, coordination, and negotion.

[00:00:23] Heath: If you work in strategy, development, and implementation, and you work to ensure that that strategy is designed and aligned to the business design and technology, then you’re probably a business translator. This is the show where we speak to industry experts and professionals to share their stories, strategies and insights to help you start.

[00:00:40] Heath: Turn around and grow your business transformation. Welcome to the Business Transformation Podcast, and in this episode we are talking to one of those industry experts. We are talking to Wes McIn. Wes is a currently the practice director at business transformation, IT transformation at patina Korn Ferry Company previously project manager, transformation

[00:01:00] architect at Edgewood Razel where he was there for three years.

[00:01:03] Heath: A quick summary of the background there that Wes is actually a chartered accountant. He has a background in it. He’s also a former Big four consultant with McKenzie C s C and e d s sometime ago where he got his groundings there in in cost management roi, risk management, transaction flow.

[00:01:20] Heath: Also worked with a lot of fortune 500 and mid-tier companies. We thank you for being here. Glad to have your on the show.

[00:01:28] Heath: Well, thank you for having me. I’m

[00:01:29] Heath: gonna enjoy it. Okay, now thank you for what is, thank for being here. So you have a vast, vast background and as we just spoke brief briefly just before the start there, that you, I think you’ve been generous to, to your, to your followers and listeners and connectors connections on LinkedIn that you’ve given the summary on LinkedIn cuz your, your, your CV is quite long.

[00:01:49] Heath: So, and because of that we have over two decades of experience and, and and senior roles and, and big programs that we are gonna keep in terms of our listers that give them some

[00:02:00] groundings of what we’re gonna discuss with three points is that we are gonna talk about to keep us on. The starting point.

[00:02:07] Heath: What do you do when you start a project? What is it that you look for? Number two, is there a process in these transformations that you lead, that you follow? And number three, the critical success factors that you use to manage both the project and also risk management. How’s that sound? Sounds great. Okay.

[00:02:24] Heath: So starting off with the, the, the starting point. So you’re, you’re joining a, a project, a program. What is your approach that you look for, you do one of the first things that you kick off when you’ve joined a program.

[00:02:36] The first thing I do is sit across a table or a conference room table, a desk in the executive sponsor’s office.

[00:02:45] And I listen to them. I listened to what they’re, what the issue is or what they think the issue is and what the problem is that they’re trying to solve, what the challenges are facing the business. Mm-hmm. . And often I will sketch out what they’re talking

[00:03:00] about in a picture. with them and it’s engaging for them because they can see that.

[00:03:06] And then I’ve recorded in a pictorial format right from the beginning. Mm-hmm. what, what the, what the lay of the land looks like to them. Yeah. And what the issues are. So then, then I talk to them about all the stakeholders in the organization that need to be part of this. Yep. And get an understanding from their perspective about who’s on board, who’s likely to be on board, who may be resistant.

[00:03:32] Yep. And so, then we come up with a solution, a solution approach. And I try different things out and say, well, we could do this, we could approach it this way or that way. Okay. And then getting the executive sponsors buy-in, then then we have some agreement on what we’re going to do. The next step is usually, Okay.

[00:03:54] Go around and meet with these key stakeholders and have the one-on-one conversations with them.

[00:04:00] Get their understanding about the problem. And in every case, you’re looking for the what’s in it for

[00:04:05] Heath: them factor. Okay. The what’s in it. All right. Okay. So what’s there for them? I have a, well, you, you’re covering a lot of stuff here, so I’m, I’m making some notes here.

[00:04:14] Heath: Gonna play it back in a second. That, for the audience perspective, you said some, some great things, and I think they might’ve missed them. But let’s go, I quickly recap there before we go for that, what’s in it for them? I have a, what’s in it for what’s, what’s in it for them? I have a, what’s in it for me?

[00:04:27] Heath: So I’m so the w i i f t as you, you’ve got, I, I used to use, I don’t think I’m gonna upgrade here to the W I I F T from the FM to the ft. Mine was the, what’s in it for me? Yours is the what’s in it for them. So I love it. So the first part there, I think in, in case the audience missed it, is that you start at number one, the executive.

[00:04:47] Heath: And then you give them a, so the top of the, at top of the org chart, the top of the organization at the, at, where the decision making is. And number two is that you’ve put a visual, a visualization. And I think that’s a, a [00:05:00] critical part. And I’m, I’m, I’m helping a client here right now and up here in Manchester.

[00:05:04] Heath: And they’ve started this project by almost recording everything in spreadsheets. And when they are facilitating workshops with the business, they’re looking at spreadsheets. And I, and I, when I come along and I said, I’m not sure, unless these guys either data analysts or have a, analytical mind to be able to see what you are talking about in tables and cells.

[00:05:26] Heath: And I said, well, I think what we could do is lift it outta there and present it in a view that they can understand. And, and so what you’ve done straight away is that you’ve got everyone on the same page because it’s something they can see and, and they understand the context of what we’re talking about here.

[00:05:40] Heath: So the first point there is, You’ll get the, the top of that, we’re go onto the top of the org chart. The second part is you provide the visualization of what you’ve understood from these guys at the top of the org chart. Yeah. So that’s a key part for our listeners here, the visualization. And I wanna stress, stress to our listeners.

[00:05:56] Heath: And also, I’m not really talking to the client right now, my client

[00:06:00] visualization, get out of the spreadsheets, put it on the wall so that we can all see it and agree on it. Yep. And then you, the third point there was you are going to you’ve asked and identified who those stakeholders that you should engage with.

[00:06:12] Heath: So you’ve gone from the executive level or the C-suite level down into operations, and so operations being the people where the change happens, right? Yes. Yep. Yep. So you, yep. And part of that you said, which I, I think that it might have got missed there for the audience, is to understand who’s on board and who’s not on board.

[00:06:32] Heath: And so what, and so, so Wes, why is that important? For those that don’t know, why is that important? Those are on board, what are not on board. Why would you need to know that? . Well,

[00:06:42] Wes MacLagan: it, it’s you can have people that are passive aggressive. Yeah. Who say that they’ll help, but they really, really stall things out or they put roadblocks up.

[00:06:53] Wes MacLagan: You can find out that there might be just antagonism between different personalities and you need to

[00:07:00] understand that and, and see if there’s a way to work around that or resolve things. Yep. And then you want people on board. You want them energized. You need people in the organization who are gonna be champions.

[00:07:12] Wes MacLagan: So the executive sponsors a champion, but he needs other, other people also championing. Yep. The, the the effort.

[00:07:21] Heath: So you need champions up and down the organization.

[00:07:23] Wes MacLagan: Yes. Yes. So eventually, eventually, once you find out what the lay of the land is and you find out the different. Stakeholder perspectives.

[00:07:31] Wes MacLagan: You get everybody in a conference room and you go over the same stuff again, but now everyone’s in the same room together. Yep. And that brings an honesty to the picture. Yeah. In that they have to look at each other eye to eye and they’re all looking at the same whiteboard and understanding the flow from beginning to end altogether.

[00:07:53] Wes MacLagan: And they can discuss what their real issues and problems are and you can really tease out

[00:08:00] at a very fine level what needs to be worked on. Yep.

[00:08:03] Heath: Okay. So and then, and then that

[00:08:05] Wes MacLagan: marshals people and they, and it becomes, matter of business. Logic that, yeah, we should fix this. This is really what our main issue is.

[00:08:14] Wes MacLagan: And so we should really rally around that and do something about

[00:08:17] Heath: it. Okay. So that part about that, get ’em all in the same room so that we can agree end to end. So everyone sees the full spectrum or the scope of the project or the, or the problem. Yes. And then so part of there you’re doing a bit of identified identification of the issues and then prioritization.

[00:08:34] Heath: And then part of that is, okay, in terms of business sense, business priorities, what are we gonna attack first? Yes. Yep. But that was with the, so you, the key part there is that you went from the senior sponsor, senior executives, down to operations, identify the key stakeholders. And part of the key stakeholders is, okay, there’s some that guys are gonna be with us and some are maybe not with us or against us.

[00:08:57] Heath: And some, they’re just gonna follow what everyone else does. And so the

[00:09:00] key part there, I think in case the audience missed it, is that there are, Like, or love it or lo it, the there are some people for other reasons, including empire protection, that they are probably a bit reluctant to the change.

[00:09:14] Heath: They might think change is they’re gonna lose something. They they lose headcount. They lose a shear of the bonus. So they are protective about their uh, their empire. So what do you do in that case and how do you get those people on board?

[00:09:30] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So if there’s some kind of obstacle like that, then it, it makes me wanna dig further and find out what’s the story behind the story. Yeah. Try to resolve things at a cause

[00:09:43] Heath: and effect level behind the, the story behind the story I’m gonna quote you. And they like that story behind the

[00:09:48] Wes MacLagan: story. And, and that’s also practically speaking, one of the things that you go back and you talk to the executive sponsor about.

[00:09:54] Wes MacLagan: Yep. Because if there is somebody who’s gonna be a roadblock, you’re gonna need more, you need

[00:10:00] your individual influence, but you also need. The corporate structure and the influence and the authority structure there. Yep. To help work the

[00:10:09] Heath: issue. Okay. There’s a good point there. So that executive level I’m sure you know the, the, the common causes of program failure, there’s lack of business user involvement, lack of senior leadership support, change in requirements and incomplete requirements.

[00:10:22] Heath: So that one there is the senior leadership support. And so what you have is you have the senior leadership support. So you’re making sure with that senior leadership support that one, you’ve got it, and two, you use it to your ability to help with that engagement of the first problem being that the lack of business user involvement.

[00:10:38] Heath: So, and that involvement and also engagement of course. And then to the want to do it or not. So the key part there is that you have, you are using the right tools for the listeners is okay, you can’t continue beating your head against the wall. If you know it’s an issue, how do you address it? Take it to the top.

[00:10:53] Wes MacLagan: Yes, you take it to the top. And then when you’re trying to structure your plan, once you understand. [00:11:00] The lay of the land and all the requirements and you don’t always understand all the requirements, that’s impossible to do. It’s a discovery process that goes throughout. Then you bring it back to, okay, well maybe in our first phase we attack the parts that are more controllable.

[00:11:17] Wes MacLagan: So the scope of the project that’s within stakeholders that are for the project and for the initiative. And you defer the part that’s later and what you hope to do is to win converts. Yeah. To your project over time where they start seeing success. Yeah. In one area that momentum people into wanting to be part of that success.

[00:11:42] Wes MacLagan: And then you have a a basis for going back and talking to the stakeholder that maybe is resistant and you have a success story or many success stories to talk about. Yeah. And you, again, you’re looking for the what’s in it for them, which is. What’s the with them for [00:12:00] them, right? It’s what’s in it for me.

[00:12:02] Wes MacLagan: But you’re selling that to them and you’re looking for that over a course of time. So you may not convert somebody right away, but you don’t cite of that over the course of

[00:12:12] Heath: the project. Okay? So there’s some really good points there. You talk at, you see, beginning of that was that you have the requirements, but you know, you don’t have all the requirements, but you start with where you can get the quick wins.

[00:12:27] Heath: The quick wins there to get the, the momentum and also the let’s say it’s More Mr. Stakeholder management approach that method so that those ARDS or those resistant will be okay. They will come on board event, they, they might see the benefits of starting to realize some benefits.

[00:12:44] Heath: Here, let’s get ’em on board. I do something similar with starting the project with the vision and say, so what’s in it for me? So this is the what’s in it for me? We’ve break that down to strategies, objectives, and measures. And then once we’ve got everyone on board, and we might have those same people that aren’t interested and for, for

[00:13:00] whatever reason, protecting their empire, is that when we get that first, what’s in it for me?

[00:13:04] Heath: And they can actually see it. They go, you know what, if this is the way we’re going about it, and we’re started with the what’s in it for me? And, and I can see what’s in it for me. Hey, I might, let’s just give this thing a go.

[00:13:15] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So one example is that one client I was working with their corporate fp and a of two of their business divisions and we did a comparison and benchmarked each other.

[00:13:28] Wes MacLagan: Against their best practices, and then maybe in the consulting firm, bringing in other best practices from other places, Uhhuh, . And we benchmarked their process. So we mapped out all their processes for one division, mapped out those same processes in another division, and did comparison. Uhhuh. . Yep. Then, then the one one of the divisions said, we’re gonna go on and implement.

[00:13:54] Wes MacLagan: So we went on and implemented over the course of about 18 months successive

[00:14:00] phases. Yep. In the course of that, we did organizational transformation for that FP and a department. We cut their head count by 22%. We cut their business process cycle by half, went from seven months down to three months for their annual budgeting cycle.

[00:14:17] Wes MacLagan: Whoa. And then, and we implemented A tool that they already had and avoided buying 3 million worth of licenses for another tool that the IT department was planning to do uhhuh. So we saved a million capital costs. Wow. So after that project got implemented, then every other division, even beyond the second division, we were doing the benchmark with that division plus the other IT division, which was a billion dollar organization implemented the same fp and a model that we put in at the first division, and they just replicated it across the company.

[00:14:55] Heath: And it was, forgive me, sorry. The f What does fp and A stand for?

[00:14:59] Wes MacLagan: Oh, for

[00:15:00] financial planning, ANA and analysis.

[00:15:02] Heath: Okay. Sorry. Thank you.

[00:15:04] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So it’s a, corporate E P m, enterprise performance management systems like E E R P E P M. M, enterprise performance management. All right. Nice.

[00:15:17] Heath: Okay, good one.

[00:15:18] Heath: So, so what you were able to do, demonstrate by probably some, a king partner if you like, or division in, in the an organization, you got some proved your approach that delivered the result, delivered the benefit. And the other divisions what, you know, what if that was, we use that as the blueprint, if you like, and so they, they copi that approach and got the same outcome.

[00:15:41] Wes MacLagan: Yes, that’s right. And, and the neat thing was while we were working with that one division, they grew from 4 billion a year to 8 billion a year to 16 billion per year over the three year period that we were engaged with them doing different phases of this project. Whoa. So we were able to help them

[00:16:00] absorb the acquisition and grow their size tremendously.

[00:16:05] Wes MacLagan: And and we, we replicated it out to these new D new Acquisitions that they were, that they were doing. Okay. And then after all that, then the organization replicated it across their other divisions. So that one division was growing from 4 billion, 8 billion to 16 billion during

[00:16:21] Heath: that time. Wow.

[00:16:23] Heath: That, that, so usually with actually I was just commented on actually, I, I, a previous guest on the podcast, he, he shared something about the m and a activity and about the failure of the MNAs. Actually it was a healthcare just had recently did an acquisition and, and and the failure is really around trying to integrate.

[00:16:39] Heath: And so there, the integration part is effectively going from two current operating models to a central operating model. And it fell apart. And that’s why probably you get groups, like a, a company that’s a group that owns different brands, different labels, they don’t integrate because that the issue of trying to put these two companies together, people, process technology and data and

[00:17:00] culture is that’s.

[00:17:01] Heath: So big a change. They don’t want to integrate, but the benefits and value that you can get out of it if it’s done well, tremendous. As you can see here, that you’ve gone 1 billion. Yep.

[00:17:13] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So I, I made me think of another client. I was actually a vice president of enterprise integration internally for this company, and they had acquired their, they acquired three companies.

[00:17:27] Wes MacLagan: Whoa. So they had three different 24 by seven operations going on in parallel, and they were all operating on their own e r P platform. Okay. Yeah. So, so as that VP of Enterprise integration, my job was to figure out how could we consolidate them all into one business operating model and get them running on one set of systems.

[00:17:51] Wes MacLagan: So, so, We did that. And one of the benefits, for instance, was they were planning to go public. So they needed to become

[00:18:00] Sarbanes Oxley compliant.

[00:18:01] Heath: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:02] Wes MacLagan: Okay. And so if you had to implement Sarbanes Oxley across all three business units, it would cost three times as much as if you consolidated business process and systems onto one platform, you’re automatically saving two thirds.

[00:18:20] Heath: Yeah. Do it once. Do it three times. Okay. And so how did you do that same approach?

[00:18:27] Wes MacLagan: Yeah, same approach. So the, the key thing I think there was getting together all the business, and this is the layer we haven’t talked about getting together the different business owners of work groups. So all the accounting different departments, the financial planning of departments, the p, the field engineers.

[00:18:48] Wes MacLagan: And looking at their c r m, their customer resource management system and looking at the install base of where stuff was implemented in their customers and

[00:19:00] looking at it from the whole, all the, the entire world, the whole satellite of core e r p plus all the ancillary systems. Yeah. And bringing all those people together and talking about how to get onto one way of doing things.

[00:19:15] Wes MacLagan: Wow. One way of working had systems. Yeah. And we, that’s right. One way of working, we had, so we had business systems analysts, we had technical architects, we had business people, we had accountants and controllers and directors of finance involved. And we had directors of operations and of field engineering.

[00:19:33] Wes MacLagan: And they, you, you bring ’em all together and you work the problem. And so I held a series of workshops where we went through, All the processes and teased out what the problems were. And then I brought the core team together and we said, how are we gonna get onto one platform? Okay. And we figured out where, first we had to do an inventory, where is everything?

[00:19:57] Wes MacLagan: What is everything really working on? And

[00:20:00] usually in companies, you gotta talk to Susie and Fred and Joe and Bob to figure out all the pieces of stuff. Yeah. So that’s what we did. And we diagrammed visualization. Again, we diagram visual. Yeah. Everything in how all the systems, how they all integrated or whether it was human integration or whether it was systematic integration.

[00:20:21] Wes MacLagan: And we ended up with these giant maps and but we knew where everything was for the first time. And then you can make realistic estimates on what’s it gonna take to do that because you have all the experts in the room all looking at the same information. Yep. And then, It’s much better controlled on your scope.

[00:20:41] Wes MacLagan: It’s much better on giving valid estimates and you can build top-down models. You can build bottoms up models. Okay. Middle out models

[00:20:49] Heath: for estimating. Alright, so the key part there in case the audience missed it, and this is a, it’s a, I dunno if it’s a, a funny thing or a, what do you call it? A

[00:21:00] oxymoron about processes and process is fundamental to business transformation.

[00:21:05] Heath: And so you, you talk there about getting everyone on the same, in the same room, on the same page and looking at the processes and all the, the universe of where things are, which I and guys see, I hear these conversations when I go into programs and I talk, well, we’ve got these capabilities, we want this capability.

[00:21:20] Heath: And I go, okay, so this capability that you want or have, how is it enabled? Well, we have the, how it’s enabled by the. , the processes that that make up that capability. So if you wanna see what makes up that capability, just look at the processes that are in that capability, because that’s where the work is done.

[00:21:35] Heath: And when we make changes, oh, we want a new ways of working. So what does that mean exactly? You’re gonna change the processes. So where do you need, they need to go to? You need to get to the processes. But what do I see People wanna avoid going to the processes, and I think there’s a part there to it. I’m not sure if you also see it itself, but there has been.

[00:21:52] Heath: And I’ve seen it a few times now. A little cottage industry’s been created around processes and process maps and process models.

[00:22:00] And it sometimes it serves when it should serve a purpose. It serves one purpose. And that purpose is usually from the creator of those process maps. And that creator isn’t the business.

[00:22:11] Heath: It’s a part in the, in the change transformation team or department who manages the all the processes and process models. And they’ve made it at a language, mostly BP men business process modeling notation that them themselves love it and it’s useful for them. But when you want to show the business, the business, look at it, look like they’re looking at blanks this, and they’re going, this looks interesting, but it’s not very useful.

[00:22:37] Heath: Yeah. It,

[00:22:38] Wes MacLagan: it can be so detailed that people get lost. Yeah. So that’s one reason why you bring people into the same conference room. so that everyone can look at it and they, and I encourage people to stand up, point to something. Yeah. And talk about certain processes or what’s going on here, what’s going on there.

[00:22:56] Wes MacLagan: And people can interact with it and each other.

[00:23:00] Yep. Okay. And so, and you have to build it together. , if you just build something asynchronously and then, and then bring ’em into a room, they’re overwhelmed. But if they’re part of the

[00:23:12] Heath: building of it, then

[00:23:15] Wes MacLagan: they own it and they understand it, how it nests together.

[00:23:18] Wes MacLagan: But you do have to. Yes. So, so that’s the point. And the next point is you have to take that working group session and you have to report back to executive management. So somehow you have to distill all the detailed process maps and create a higher level picture of that. That’s simpler, more consumable for executive levels.

[00:23:42] Wes MacLagan: But then usually you work in tandem. You show ’em the overview, and then you also bring them into that same war room where your maps are all over the wall, and you can then say, okay, this is where you’re hurting, and you point to something on the map. [00:24:00] And so they start to understand, instead of being five levels removed, they start understanding.

[00:24:06] Wes MacLagan: Is going on in the trenches and there’s aha moments that go off.

[00:24:10] Heath: Yes. People. Okay. Yeah. The I think what we’re talking about here is that when, when executives come down and they see the detail or they understand it for the first time, it is that, as you said, aha moment, is that they, in most cases, they are, their perception versus reality is a little bit removed from reality.

[00:24:29] Heath: They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re not like I on on some programs. I get, I didn’t, I get told who is the stakeholders that I need to speak to? And I go, now they’re too high, they’re too far removed from the pain. Their understanding of the pain is different to the reality when you’re talk to the guys in operations.

[00:24:45] Heath: So when talking there of, there’s the case audience twist it, there was one workshop. So there’s, it’s a collaborative environment. So they, they are involved. But two second that you didn’t. Like business architects

[00:25:00] and probably more likely also technology architects get accused of, they have one or two meetings with the business disappear for one or two weeks, maybe a month, maybe a couple more.

[00:25:08] Heath: And they reappear and they go, da da, here is your target operating model. And the business is scratching ahead and going you worked that out from that one meeting that we had and cuz they weren’t involved in the creation. And then from that point on, it’s this, they don’t understand what it looks interesting but it’s not very useful.

[00:25:24] Heath: But the key part there is that you built it together, so, so the audience, you don’t go off and run away and create it because you have half the knowledge and you play it back to the business and say we’ve got it. But if you do, my caveat to that would say it’s for discussion, not for decision. Cuz then you start to scare people and thinking that these consultants have made their mind up for us.

[00:25:48] Heath: We just gotta go, yes or no. And most of the time I think, you know what, they’re gonna do it anyway. So let’s just go. Yeah. Okay, fine. Yes. So, so

[00:25:56] Wes MacLagan: there’s a a point where you, you found

[00:26:00] out enough of what the problems are mm-hmm. , and you’ve identified the pain points. Yep. Then you have to array it into some project plan, and that also needs to be collaborative.

[00:26:09] Wes MacLagan: Okay. And it needs to be prioritized using business value, technology value and risk management factors where you put a whole laundry list of things, well, we’re gonna do all these things. You organize it into different project and rollouts. And usually I encourage, let’s come up with three different approaches.

[00:26:32] Wes MacLagan: Uhhuh, , let’s, let’s solve the problem over time. But we’ll have three different starting points. Yep. And then it leads to the second and third being different, but eventually you get to the same place. Okay. And you’re looking in that to manage risk and you’re looking, where are you gonna deliver the business value?

[00:26:49] Wes MacLagan: And you get everybody to vote on what the business value is and you get the technology cost also. And then you have three different alternatives of

[00:27:00] what your, your project plan, your transformation plan could be. And then you discuss it. And, and often you come out with different variations. And so you end up on, oh, we’re gonna use version three point B one

[00:27:14] Wes MacLagan: Yep. Because people worked on it together and collaboratively. And it just defines and makes a better approachable model. And everyone’s bought in. Again, they’re collaborative.

[00:27:24] Heath: Okay. So I think when you’re saying the options or I say similar, similar thing is good, better or best, we’ll give you this before, and I think you do this, is that you have, you’ve identified the low hanging fruit to get the, the wins some medium term long-term goals and yeah, so, so those, those three options are as short term, medium term, long-term, short term being the quick wins at a little, the less effortless cost for that other part that we talked earlier about the getting the momentum to get the stakeholder involvement, those ARDS that can’t, well aren’t quite on board yet to see, get, see some results, some benefits realization.[00:28:00][00:28:00] Heath: And then the second, second one, some medium term goals and the third one, the longer term. Yep. Yeah.

[00:28:07] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So, so usually there’s something around the business model that overlays that, that’s driving your decision making. Mm-hmm. . Okay. So it’s not just what can you do quick and what takes media, what takes long.

[00:28:19] Wes MacLagan: That’s part of it. But the other part is, Where do we look at the whole process map and where can we deliver business value? And look for what the 2080 rule again, you’re looking for where do you provide 20% of the effort, but you can get 80% of the gain. Yeah. So you’re looking for that and you’re looking, where’s our business model need to change?

[00:28:42] Wes MacLagan: It could be how fast we go to market. It could be, Hey, we have some costing problem. Like one place I was at, they, they said A pair of shoes costs this much 20 bucks. But if it comes directly to us, the

[00:29:00] costing system gives us 20 bucks. If we first put it into inventory in the warehouse and then take it.

[00:29:07] Wes MacLagan: It costs 40 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. That just doesn’t make sense. So working out the, that problem in the costing makes a difference to the business model. Cause you need artificial results. Yeah. It doesn’t really tell you what the true cost

[00:29:22] Heath: of something is. Yes. Okay. So that, that’s actually so, so I’ve got a post a, a blog post that, that I just about to come out, talk something about the designer on its own is not good enough.

[00:29:32] Heath: So that there, what you’re talking, you might have a great design, but hey, you’ve just sent the stock to storage, which now has to be pulled out. And the extra handling cost, although might have made it efficient, has just doubled your, your cost.

[00:29:46] Wes MacLagan: And, and to make matters worse you can have salespeople providing added services or packaging.

[00:29:54] Wes MacLagan: So for say like for shirts or something, oh, we’re gonna put ’em on hangers. We’re gonna do, we’re gonna Dr.

[00:30:00] Drape them a certain way. and they’ll give that for the same cost as just a regular shirt. Yeah. So you have to, you have to look out at the customer front end and make sure what’s the contractual deals that remained and control that in the terms of your business model.

[00:30:17] Wes MacLagan: If you’re, if you’re looking for profitability, you’ve gotta be aware of what your salespeople are doing. It’s not just a costing cost accounting kind of

[00:30:28] Heath: exercise. Okay. That’s looking at really all the people in that, your ecosystem that are involved in this process of what their role and responsibility is.

[00:30:38] Heath: And yeah. So because everyone, everyone that touches it’s got a cost. Yes. Yes.

[00:30:44] Wes MacLagan: Okay. And you got people making deals. You got, you got people making deals and, and a lot of companies end up with, Really uncontrolled sales. They don’t have standard sales contracts. Yeah. And, and they’re trying to be

[00:31:00] innovative and creative, but you can end up giving away a lot of value and not getting anything for it.

[00:31:08] Wes MacLagan: And you start, if you do an analysis of all your contracts, then this stuff starts to pop out and you really reign into your business model and your profitability.

[00:31:18] Heath: So part of that, there’s a, with the, with the E R P or CRM systems to understand that data, to understand the story, as you said earlier, the story behind the story.

[00:31:27] Heath: So, and, and I think that’s, we talked so that the story behind the story is like the collaboration we, we taught, alluded to before that, that a collaboration and executive level doesn’t start. And it’s a one off, like risk management. In, in my world, where I come from, they’ll want to just do risk management meeting one time at the start of the project and never do it again.

[00:31:48] Heath: And, and what happens, big issues happen. Cause these risk current manage, same with your, your approaches. Collaboration starts at the start, but it always continues throughout the process. And that like for

[00:32:00] the, the, the same, same approach.

[00:32:03] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. No. So you talked about visualization. Yeah. You talked about collaboration.

[00:32:08] Wes MacLagan: We talked about negotiation. Those are not just something you do at the front of the project and then forget about it. It’s an ongoing process because you’ve got people that you’re, again, trying to provide value to. That gets into the what’s in it for them, what’s in it for me, factor. So that’s an ongoing process.

[00:32:29] Wes MacLagan: And staying visual keeps everybody oriented towards this is what the truth is. This is a map of what is really going on. And so then you can also, it’s good for performance measurement that you can show that, hey, we had 30 things that were pain points and we have a way of solving 10 of ’em within three months.

[00:32:52] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. And then being able to measure and show that this is solved, this is solved, this is solved.

[00:32:57] Heath: Okay, so I think we’re actually, we might have just already discussed

[00:33:00] the, the, the process. Well, I’ll recap that in a second. Cuz what you’re talking about here is, is critical success factors which was our third point actually on, in our agenda.

[00:33:07] Heath: So I’ll, I’ll re the, the, the last recap there of, of what you just said. So the audience, we didn’t pick that up. The three key points there have been visualization, collaboration, and negotiation, which is an ongoing process as we’ve just said that. And it’s funny because, these, these business transformations, whether it’s an acquisition or organic or this internal driver for whatever reason, the bit change business model, the three components, people, process, technology, technology and data.

[00:33:33] Heath: And so people is this is the main, where does this, we’re just talking about is that visualization for the people, collaboration for the people, and negotiation for the people. It’s if you dismiss the, the impact that people have on your transformation that’s a red flag right there, right?

[00:33:50] Heath: Yes,

[00:33:51] Wes MacLagan: I agree. And I’m glad you brought up the data part because a lot of times people talk about transformation as people process technology

[00:34:00] and they forget about what data is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And data actually starts from the very beginning. So when you’re drawing those maps from the, and you have your initial conversations with these stakeholders, and then the rank and file is, you’re trying to understand their language, because if you’re working cross-functionally, you’ll find that there’s different silos of ways that they talk about things.

[00:34:22] Wes MacLagan: And what’s the definition? So what’s the definition of a sale? What’s the definition of profit? What’s the definition of operating delivery time? Yep. Yep. So you have to define those and, and create lexicon that goes along with these process maps. Mm-hmm. that says, this is what the meaning of this is.

[00:34:44] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. Yeah. So then, then data’s overlooked because, In any project of size, 30 to 40% of your efforts really gonna be involved with, with doing something with data. Yeah. It’s curing data, bringing the quality up. It’s

[00:35:00] finding additional pieces of information that aren’t being captured somewhere in the process.

[00:35:05] Wes MacLagan: Yep. And or you’re moving where it’s being captured up to the front end. I. Trying to capture it at the back end. Yep. Okay. So data’s just a, it’s an overlooked subject in a lot of transformations, and I’m

[00:35:17] Heath: glad you brought it up. Okay. So thank you. So the, the part there about, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll summarize it for the, the, the data is that it starts, so for the audience, it starts at the beginning, so don’t dismiss it.

[00:35:29] Heath: And then, so when, part of, when I join a program, one of the first thing you talked about it is the definitions. So it gets the, clear terms and, and terms and definitions, the, the glossary. And so let’s, with this current client and I, and I’ve just recently come on to help them and said, okay, so where’s the vision?

[00:35:46] Heath: I never, we’ve got objectives. Okay. So that’s the first thing. The what’s in it for me is missing the next part. Okay. Where’s the glossary? Well, we started one and it’s well, how’s that going? Well, a couple terms in the end, they forgot about it. I said, so, so. The, the ambiguity that has already started.

[00:35:59] Heath: So

[00:36:00] people’s description of what actually happens and the, the, the, the use of different terms, meaning the same we’ve gotta help ourselves out here. We ought be good talking. The whole point of the, the, the process we should follow. First step focus is get us all on the same page, includes the vision and the terms we use.

[00:36:14] Heath: So we, the same words we use mean the same thing to everyone. So, so, Lord, if we missed that, get the vision the, the, the glossary up upfront and the and you talk about the lexicon, so making sure that it means the same thing throughout the process. And the other part is dismissed overlooked about the, the effort involved around data.

[00:36:32] Heath: If it’s as is said, whereas it’s 30 to 40% of the effort on your program is to do with data, whether it is ingestion, completing, transforming, moving through the org through the organization, data can’t be dismissed. It’s, yeah, that’s what you, yeah. Great. Yep. Great. Okay. Now, so lemme me recap on the pro. I think of if I recap on the, on the process there, our second point we, we’ve kind of covered it.

[00:36:59] Heath:

[00:37:00] Sorry audience here. I didn’t signal it before we, we got into that deep, the discussion. So the, the, the process you follow, if I can recap this properly or correctly rather is that you start at the boards that you identify the challenges. There’s a visualization, which you talk, we touched on those visualizations part, the visualization, collaboration, negotiation.

[00:37:19] Heath: But the key part is you’ve got everyone on the same page. And so for the audience. Get outta the spreadsheets, get it into a view. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but, and my approach, I talk about building blocks and blueprints, is that a blueprint has two parts to it, has a, has a model or diagram, provide context and a table, a background table that provides a detail of the detail that said it in the, in the blueprint on the model, so that you don’t put too much information.

[00:37:42] Heath: And I think you touched on it as well. You said you under, basically you understood the audience, you understand who your audience is, so you present to them, like you said, you summarized you when you took your, the detailed work that you workshop with the, the guys in the workshop for the process is you took the, the detail out to take it back up to executives.[00:38:00][00:38:01] Heath: Yes.

[00:38:01] Wes MacLagan: And I think what’s important there is. The executives need to know what’s going on on the ground, but you have to ease them into it. And you have to give them the overview first in a, in a simplistic format, and then you can drill into the different pieces Yes. To educate them. It’s an education process throughout.

[00:38:21] Wes MacLagan: Yes.

[00:38:21] Heath: So the, we have a couple of things throughout and that, so the visualization, collaboration, negotiation, but also the education process. It is like risk management. And I think we might get on that. The third point in, in a minute is that the risk management is not a one off event. Neither of these, it’s an ongoing event and if, and, and with your critical success factor.

[00:38:44] Heath: So we’d get on there in a second though. So, what we got was we got to the visualization. You got your stakeholders, you identified those on board, those not on board. You, you you come up for an approach. Of how you’re gonna work or identify your pain points [00:39:00] that then outta that based on business priorities needs and concern drivers that you identify with projects you are either, and not just based on short winds, medium to or long term, but risk management strategies and other changes that were happening in the business.

[00:39:17] Heath: Yeah. Am I, am I right so far?

[00:39:20] Wes MacLagan: Yes. And looking for that 2080 rule where can make the, the impact with the, with the 20%, that makes an 80% impact.

[00:39:29] Heath: Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So the 80 20 rule, the 20% effort for the 80%. . Where does, if, where and if the business model needs to change you also considered the customer experience, the customer point of view.

[00:39:39] Heath: And like you, we still talked about moving the inventory into, into storage and out again, it’s okay, might have made efficient, but it also doubled your cost. So understanding that whole end-to-end journey, how you understood that whole end journey was in the processes you got down to the processes.

[00:39:54] Heath: So for my business architect colleagues and for the business architecture

[00:40:00] listeners there is some approaches that say that business process is not part of business architecture. I, I, I wonder how that is possible. The main parts of a, of a business in terms architecture, people, process, technology and data.

[00:40:12] Heath: And if you don’t have processes, how are you moving the data? So for a process, so you have identified the process, you’ve prioritized, you’ve got your projects in place, and then you are, you are off, it’s off the races, but you are also, when you are doing delivery is that you have got these constants in place at all times.

[00:40:30] Heath: The education system, which started from the education process, it started from the beginning, was the executives, the you are working in, you have visualizations that also collaboration and negotiation. Yeah, those, those three plus the education is happening continuous as well as risk management.

[00:40:47] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So risk management, critical success factors. You ready to get into

[00:40:51] Heath: that? Yeah. So now the third part, the, the, the risk management. What are the critical success factors and risk management that you’d use and look forward to make sure it’s

[00:41:00] implemented for the projects?

[00:41:03] Wes MacLagan: So the, the first one is that stakeholder analysis is understanding who’s on board, who’s not on board.

[00:41:09] Wes MacLagan: Uhhuh, . So that’s a risk to begin with. Yeah. Then, then there’s the particular parts of what is business process risk. How much of the, when you talk about a business model, if we’re trying to capture new revenue by introducing new products, new services, then there’s risk associated with that.

[00:41:28] Wes MacLagan: Then there’s the part where the, the technology itself, so you might have some technology if you do an assessment on it, there might be something that’s broken or near broken are always problem. Yeah, problem failing. and so there’s technology risks you look at.

[00:41:46] Heath: Yeah, just on that. On the, on the on the stakeholders, that stakeholders part, there is also the or the, it was the backfill that you’ve gotta provide the relief for if you’ve got these stakeholders that you need is part of the, cause we’re dealing with the people in

[00:42:00] operations.

[00:42:00] Heath: We can’t just put our, say these are the guys we need, bring ’em on board if they’re seconded to the project or even working in b a u, their time and attention to be working on transformation as well as doing their b A U is a little bit, it could be a bit of a stretch. So what you do for that,

[00:42:18] Wes MacLagan: right?

[00:42:19] Wes MacLagan: So, so that’s something you have to talk with the executive sponsor about, is that realistically when you do projects like X, Y, and z. You’re going to need to provide backfill. Yeah. So again, the idea is you want to take your best and your brightest. Yes. Put them on your project, but free them up from having to do the normal day job.

[00:42:43] Wes MacLagan: So you look for backfill in roles and responsibilities that are lower risk, they’re operational business as usual, and you can bring in temporary resources oftentimes to do a lot of that do a lot of

[00:43:00] that work.

[00:43:00] Heath: Okay. So sorry for the, the list for the listeners there is, when you’re thinking about your core team or project team to run your project and you’re gonna second or get your SMEs from the business.

[00:43:11] Heath: Don’t think that you can just go get the SMEs from the business and they do their b a u work at, at 1.1 or both will fu will suffer. So you got to, as WEA saying, they’re backfill it and, and there’s options to backfill whether you’re doing temps you are maybe moving. And the key part there is if you want your project to be successful and you’ve, you’ve mentioned it really fast, is that you’ve got your best and brightest.

[00:43:32] Heath: You don’t just get who’s available. Cuz what usually happens, and my previous client, they would, they did their requirements, they sent out a spreadsheet to the whole business and said, what is your pain points? And I said and they go, oh, we’ve got a really good success rate. We got 30% a response rate.

[00:43:46] Heath: And I said, was that response from effectively the best of the brightest or was it just from those that, that speak the loudest because you might be listening to the wrong people. So the the key part there goes, listeners, in case you missed it, Wester

[00:44:00] said the best and the brightest and you find options to, to give them relief.

[00:44:06] Wes MacLagan: Yes, that’s right. And, and you mentioned just another thing, you touched on something and I is, are you interrogating and understanding the voice of the process or are you also talking to the voice of the customer? Ah-huh. So a lot of times companies make a mistake. They, they might use their best and brightest, but they ask them, what do you think your customers want?

[00:44:30] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. Instead of going for the true customer. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s a difference cuz a lot of people do their transformation and they can massage the process, but if their process is not serving what the customer really needs, you can spend a lot of money and only affect 20, 30% of what really the customers care.

[00:44:53] Heath: Okay, so there’s a,

[00:44:55] Wes MacLagan: we spending millions of dollars by fixing something. That’s not

[00:45:00] even the right answer.

[00:45:01] Heath: Yeah, it’s not the right. Okay. So in case the listeners missed that you, you were talking in, this is a term that I haven’t, so I even learned before, which is the voice of the process of the, so v o p, if it’s v o p versus v o C, the voice of the customer.

[00:45:13] Heath: So know the difference. And that difference could be and and turn to a critical success factor is one, know who know which one it is and make sure you focus on it. Not the voice of the the customer, maybe the stakeholder that you’re talking to, but who is the actual end customer then customer And may in some cases being the paying customer.

[00:45:33] Heath: That’s right.

[00:45:34] Wes MacLagan: Okay. That’s right. Or it can be an internal customer. So for instance, like for the financial planning analysis project I talked about earlier, their customers were internal CFOs and directors of finance. That were outside the fp and a department, but they were the consumers of the different kinds of reports and analysis.

[00:45:55] Heath: Okay. So two times general

[00:45:57] Wes MacLagan: audience. Yeah. We found by talking [00:46:00] to them that we found out what they really cared about, and that directed us in how we did our organization transformation because some of the capabilities that the FP and a department had Yep. Were providing things that the customers didn’t even really need.

[00:46:18] Wes MacLagan: Yeah, yeah. Led to one of the reasons why we could cut headcount even while we were growing the size of the company. Oh,

[00:46:24] Heath: wow. Yeah. Very good. Good. If it, okay, so I, I think with you, you talked about it, you, you, you touched on it, but we went pretty quick there too. After the backfill. You’re talking about that in the terms of ongoing collaboration, negotiation is the regular meetings with the executive.

[00:46:41] Heath: Yeah. So

[00:46:42] Wes MacLagan: that’s all, that’s all part of the the risk management and the critical success factors. Yeah. So from the very beginning, you put together your risk register. Yeah. And then you work it throughout the process. In a, in a series, a regular meeting, weekly meeting on issues management that come out of

[00:47:00] the risk cuz you’re trying to mitigate the risk.

[00:47:02] Wes MacLagan: Yes. You’re trying to manage the risk and so you gotta work those issues. And some of them you can work on with your core project team. Yep. Some have to be elevated up to your steering committee or your executive committee. So that governance of the project is something you establish right from the beginning and it, and you have to make sure you’re communicating with that group.

[00:47:22] Wes MacLagan: You’re having ongoing meetings at the right cadence. And you’re working the issue. So you have an issues management team, they try to resolve stuff. If there’s something they can’t do, you’ve gotta elevate that to your, one of your regular e executive steering committee meetings. Okay. So, cause you’re gonna need their help pushing back down in the, the organization and making

[00:47:45] Heath: stuff happen.

[00:47:46] Heath: Okay. So part of your, the risk manager and approach is that there is a steering committee, a risk and issues management committee. The the project itself is tasked with addressing issues that

[00:48:00] can at that level, and it is takes up to the steering committee. Anything that is beyond probably the scope or power authority to answer.

[00:48:08] Heath: You manage it in terms of ongoing effort once a week in an issues meeting. Am I, am I close So far? Yes

[00:48:15] Wes MacLagan: you are. I just fine tune. One thing is the issues management’s not a committee. It is. It is the project team. It’s the project manager in different project leads and they’re talking about how can we resolve the issue, what do we need to do?

[00:48:31] Wes MacLagan: And then they try to solve it within the confines of the project team. Yep. If there’s something that can’t, they escalate it up to the executive steering committee.

[00:48:41] Heath: Okay. Help. And that’s the, that’s the, the, this is the ongoing effort. So for the listeners, like we, we said it there, not say at the top of the hour, but at the start they’re about the ongoing activity, the education, the risk management, the collaboration, negotiation is ongoing.

[00:48:59] Heath: It’s not a one-off.

[00:49:00] Okay. So you’ve, you’ve set up the register, you’ve set up the committees. The, the, the, the, the project team itself is managing within the scope that they can, and they escalate up to the steering executive. And then you said from there it gets pushed back down, down to operations and into the projects from the top.

[00:49:17] Heath: Yes. Yes. You,

[00:49:18] Wes MacLagan: you need people to do things differently or you need policies to change. You need,

[00:49:24] Heath: okay. Alrighty. Sorry. Needs to change

[00:49:25] Wes MacLagan: and it takes the authority of corporate structure.

[00:49:28] Heath: and how you would do that. And I think we touched on it a little bit before about champions. Is this, your champions are the what are the messengers?

[00:49:37] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. The champions are the, the executive sponsor plus key stakeholders that hopefully you’ve got a champion in each work group. Yep. That that can take things forward and they’re the ones that will work within their work groups on the business as usual side to solve things or research how it can get done and, and

[00:50:00] be practical in bringing solutions.

[00:50:02] Heath: Okay. I think, yeah, you’ve mentioned that key word before that word practical. There’s a key word. Like I I’ve been on projects where they use, talk about a high level model or logical model and so, well this is nice and interesting, but. Like practical in practice, in implementation, not a, let’s get away from the Harry Fairy 25,000 foot view that there’s not aspirational for everything.

[00:50:29] Heath: But in reality, how do we actually use this? When I talk about, and you, you talked about it, understanding who your audience is, that you, you’ve, you’ve got the information to them or for them that at a level that they understand. So it’s, there, there’s two parts there. It’s maybe interesting but most importantly useful.

[00:50:47] Heath: Useful cause they can use it, use it in actual it’s practical implementation.

[00:50:53] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So, one client where I was doing the secondary financing three month project that

[00:51:00] it said would take 12 months. Yeah. I ran into an accountant who was tabulating some report mm-hmm. and the way they were doing it was taking eight to 12 hours to do.

[00:51:13] Wes MacLagan: I ran across this and I said, Hey, I have a way you can do this. And I built them a simple Excel cross tab and got it down to 30

[00:51:25] Heath: minutes. Wow. From 30, from eight to 12 hours to 30 minutes. Yes.

[00:51:30] Wes MacLagan: And so you find that people have different levels of their technological. So an accountant, they say they know Excel, but they don’t know some of the advanced features.

[00:51:39] Wes MacLagan: Yep. And, and there’s an opportunity. So you’re looking for that all along the way. And that’s, again, another example of what’s in it for them. Wow. Yeah. I can do this in half an hour. And that’s a big win.

[00:51:52] Heath: Okay. So yeah, the, the, the, what’s in it for me? What’s in it for them? The one of, one of the success factors.

[00:51:58] Heath: So show

[00:52:00] is that the, is that the, is there more success factors? Should I give them the summary? We

[00:52:07] Wes MacLagan: So, so, so we talked about the steering committee. You’ve gotta have the governance model, you’ve gotta have a risk management and an issues management theme going on. The other thing that we haven’t talked about related to this is the scope change.

[00:52:20] Wes MacLagan: Uhhuh, changes are gonna happen in scope. And so, even, even in the agile models, you can, you can, you’re continually identifying new things and putting ’em in the backlog. Yep. But even on the traditional SDCs, you’ve got, you’ve gotta be realistic about, things are gonna change, the business is gonna change, is gonna be outside, change changes, regulatory changes as an example, or things internally.

[00:52:48] Wes MacLagan: And you have to manage the scope of the project ongoingly. So there’s a continual iteration about what’s our scope? Is there some opportunity to change something? It has to be [00:53:00] considered, it has to be adopted by the project. Plan, and and then it has to be agreed to, we’re going to do it. So there’s this estimating going on throughout the project, and your project’s gonna be different than what you initially thought it was gonna be.

[00:53:15] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. By the time you deliver. And that’s practical.

[00:53:18] Heath: So how, how do you manage expecta expectations with that, with, with executives down to operations and you say, okay, here’s the scope of the project. This is what we intend to deliver. But today we dunno all the requirements we may learn, we will learn more as we go along, but at the same time, our business environment is changing.

[00:53:37] Heath: Our customer needs are changing. So what we think today versus what will happen in 30 days, 90, a hundred days time, we’ll also change. So there is, is there a mindset change or mind that you have to plant this? Maybe this education part? Is that your education, educating from the start all the way through to that exact Our scope today, we believe to be this.

[00:53:57] Heath: 30 days time, we will learn more. Our scope may [00:54:00] change, it might expand, it might contract well, our, the, the, the reasons why. One, we are learning more internally what is probably important to us. That’s why, and, and my approach, I, I talk to students and saying that why? By visually showing the, the business as you are going through and sharing the blueprints as you’re updating or creating them, they will see the, the problem for probably the first time in this, this way.

[00:54:24] Heath: And they will change what’s important to them. And by changing what’s important to them, it changes priority. And then it may also then change the scope. And that’s okay, but you have to communicate it. So how do you, with, with that education process, you are constantly doing that, right?

[00:54:40] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. That, and part of that education process is when you talk about scope changes, what’s the impact?

[00:54:46] Wes MacLagan: Yes. So you’ve gotta have ways to measure the impact, communicate the impact, and then bubble that up to the decision makers. , if you do this, if you adopt this new thing, then this is

[00:55:00] the impact. Yeah. And this is the impact on the, the, the triangle. What’s the impact on time? Mm-hmm. cost,

[00:55:06] Heath: cost quality. Yeah.

[00:55:08] Wes MacLagan: And, and it’s a conscious decision and sometimes if there’s a fixed budget on your overall project, it means will something new’s happening. So you gotta carve out something else. Yes. Very often. Okay. So you, they have to be so critical success factor is you gotta be willing to be flexible. That means the executive sponsor needs to be flexible also in, in what’s going to be

[00:55:35] Heath: delivered.

[00:55:36] Heath: Okay. So this is part of that initial, so this initial, that’s part of the initial conversation with the education process is, We’re gonna go through the process there. There’s, there’s, we’re gonna put in the risk management, the issues escalation process. Their scope may change by the key part there.

[00:55:52] Heath: And I’ve worked with founders of startups and I’ll say, okay guys, you want me to come in to help you, but I’m gonna tell you now what’s gonna look like in six months time. Well, we’re gonna change your model.

[00:56:00] I’m gonna ask you today, are you willing to change? And I’ll say, yes, absolutely. And we do all the work.

[00:56:05] Heath: And six months later I say, okay, now it’s implementation. They go, no, you’re changing the company. I said, but this is the conversation that we had six months ago. And so if the, the key part there, w what we’ve just said is that you have to be flexible and you’ve asked the question.

[00:56:23] Wes MacLagan: Yes. And I think that’s one of the things when you talk about business transformation, people being part strategy Yep.

[00:56:29] Wes MacLagan: Is I think business transformation people have an ability to look far ahead, further ahead than maybe anyone else in the organization does. And, and so they anticipate, but they’ve got to share their thoughts and what the possibilities are, where this could go so that you don’t wait six months and then someone says, well, this is a big surprise.

[00:56:52] Wes MacLagan: Yeah.

[00:56:53] Heath: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, it’s I, I, yeah, so what you’re talking about there is when you have the knowledge, you [00:57:00] have to, and back to the start again, is the education, the visualization and collaboration negotiation part is that you have to communicate that you communicate that in a, a language.

[00:57:11] Heath: A language. The, the, the, there’s agreed common terms that the business, your audience understands. So the, the, the audience, if you’re not picking it up on it, and we’re talking about transformation, people, process, technology and data, and pretty much this, the majority of what we’ve been talking about is a all to do with people because, data was a good part.

[00:57:30] Heath: We, you manage the data through the whole process, but a strong part being, although there’s money spent on technology and. The most of the issues come from and can be resolved if you focus on and pay attention to the people element. Yeah. I think

[00:57:45] Wes MacLagan: that the people element is really business psychology. I think that, that people look at re-engineering or, or transformation mechanically a lot of times.

[00:57:56] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s the people, getting them on

[00:58:00] board, convincing them, influencing them, and, and developing influencers within their ranks. So that business psychology part really is a bigger part of success on a project. It’s not just the mechanical, Hey, I can implement this software in so many days or so many months.

[00:58:18] Wes MacLagan: Yep. And it’s not just the, the mechanical parts of what my policies and my procedures are. Yeah, yeah. But it’s the buy-in. Yeah. That’s a big part. And every group’s different. That’s, that’s the challenge going in consulting is. , every company has its own culture, and you’ve got a, and you have different personalities.

[00:58:36] Wes MacLagan: And that’s why the upfront is

[00:58:38] so

[00:58:38] Heath: important. Yeah, that’s a, a key part there. Yes. Every company is different. Like every individual is different. Cultures are different across different countries. They’re different companies. And so when I get, people will, will call me for the book or what the book, I’m trying to apply it by the letter or by the book, and I’m going there’s a key word on the front of that title and it says framework and it, it intentionally

[00:59:00] doesn’t say policy.

[00:59:01] Heath: And if a framework means that you can take parts that you like and needs and adjust it and apply it two ways, proportionately and appropriately to your situation. And so just as Wes just said is like every company is different, every organization is different. And so that there I, I think this is where the skill of.

[00:59:22] Heath: The, the, the success of a transformation has got a lot to do with the skill of the business transf to be able to apply these different tools and techniques, but proportionately appropriately and all these other personal people, interpersonal skills. And I think that is summed up there and, and you said it like so elegantly that business psychology is yeah, that’s, yeah.

[00:59:41] Heath: I’m gonna quote you for a lot of these things. Actually, I gotta look at, this is the recording. This is great stuff. Okay, so yeah, the, the part there. The mechanical changes versus understanding the people and the psychology of one of the people, and then collectively as the business understanding who they are.

[00:59:57] Heath: Focus on the people, getting them

[01:00:00] on board from the start all the way through the process. It’s not a one-off effort, it’s education from the, from the front, from the start, from the top, all the way down in a manner that they can understand, like you’re talking big projects here that are generating massive revenue for, for the organizations, 1 billion to two, to four, to eight to 16 billion.

[01:00:23] Heath: These are, if we talk about the Fortune 500 companies, we’re probably talking into Fortune 50 companies here. These are some of the biggest companies, not just in the US but the world. And so what’s the approach? If you’ve not listened, this is the approach. This, this, this, Wes has just gone through it of how to transform these big organizations using these, this approach that, that we just said.

[01:00:50] Heath: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

[01:00:53] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. So, you, you have to take care of your project team too. As a project manager.

[01:01:00] You have to take care of your core team and understand what’s motivating them to be part of your project. Yeah. And are they getting the career value out of it as a stepping stone for their own development?

[01:01:13] Wes MacLagan: That’s a big thing. Again, you’re looking for the what’s in it for them. Yeah. Factor in, and then you’ve got, you’ve got different people. You’ve got business analysts, you’ve got systems analysts. You. Technology architects, and they all have different things that drive them. You need to understand your people.

[01:01:31] Wes MacLagan: Yep. And so I think that’s another critical success factor in the health of your team.

[01:01:36] Heath: Okay. Health of the team. Alright. So, I’m gonna summarize those ones up there. So the audience will recap that part. Is that the, it’s not just understanding the what’s in it for me, what’s in it for them, element of the organization, but it’s for your core team.

[01:01:51] Heath: The, the, the core project team, your business architects, analysts so, solution architect, et cetera. So not, so look after the, as you worked your words there. Health of the team. Look,

[01:02:00] I like to do with our building blocks and blueprints. When you deliver them, you celebr. You celebrate the success and part of that, they get the momentum.

[01:02:07] Heath: So they go, yeah, hey, cool. Look, we’re getting, we can see it. We can feel it. This, they’re, they’re excited, they’re engaged. And then until we get some momentum, and like I talk about even from a startup world, is, you should protect your time and your energy because once you’ve got momentum, cause it’s very hard to get you sh once you’ve got it, keep it.

[01:02:23] Heath: And the way you do that is protect it. And so what you’re saying there is you’re looking after your team, you’re protecting them. You are, you are, you’re clearing the way for them to operate in the best environment for them. Answering those questions, the two questions, what’s in it for them?

[01:02:34] Heath: What’s in it for me? . Yeah.

[01:02:37] Wes MacLagan: Yeah,

[01:02:37] Heath: that’s true. Okay, so if I can recap your critical success factors, there’s the initial stakeholder management, a stakeholder analysis, analysis, you understanding who’s in, who’s out. Cause the key part there is you wanna know who’s gonna support, who’s gonna, who’s not then. So from those there, there’s you wanna make sure that you when you come to your identifying projects and getting your quick wins, you wanna be coming back to, cuz

[01:03:00] you said you’d circle back, go back to the executive board to keep them updated of what the findings seeing so that these guys come on board eventually.

[01:03:07] Heath: It’s not a one off activity. You un wanna understand what the process is. You, so where the, where the detail, where the work actually happens, the change happens for as you. Coming from the executive level, got the direction and stare of who to go to. You go to those people you understand at the operations level.

[01:03:25] Heath: So, and the reason why you do that, not just take the word of the, the, the, the word from executive team, because their perception versus reality in most cases is not as it is in, in reality. Yep, that’s true.

[01:03:39] Wes MacLagan: Yep. That’s true. The other, the other layer that we haven’t talked about, which is a critical success factor is communications,

[01:03:45] Heath: uhhuh, , communications.

[01:03:47] Heath: So at

[01:03:47] Wes MacLagan: the front end, you need to have a communications plan that you’re constantly refining. Yep. And it’s two ways. It’s, one is what’s the communications to the overall governance structure? What’s the communications

[01:04:00] within the project team? What’s the communications of the project team or the organization out to end customers?

[01:04:07] Wes MacLagan: Yep. When something impacts the end customer. . And so I look for ways to make that proactive rather than reactive. Okay. So you, and you think about multimedia ways of delivering a message. And oftentimes when you’re gonna send out the message, it’s not just, I’m gonna send out an email. It could be I’m sending out email.

[01:04:30] Heath: There might be, please hold for a minute. My battery’s gonna drop dead. Hold it. Hold one second. Drop dead and I’m gonna lose it. One sec.

[01:04:57] Heath: That was close.

[01:05:00] Okay. You need me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry. Come on, Karen. I can cut that out. The near my, I thought I might be able to my battery’s usually pretty good, but it must be draining on resources. I was just about to lose. Oh, okay. 2% batteries gonna switch off. Okay. So you’ve got your, sorry.

[01:05:14] Heath: You’re in the cations

[01:05:16] Wes MacLagan: communications planning. In the communications. There’s, there’s reactive different levels of that outside. Yeah. Doing inside the project executive staff governance and, and making it proactive rather

[01:05:29] Heath: than react. Proactive instead of reactive. Yep. Okay. Yes. So we’ve got 40.

[01:05:34] Heath: Yep. And yeah, Carol.

[01:05:36] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. No, no, that’s, that’s the thing. And that that means that you’ve got to make your project team proactive so they don’t just say, we’re gonna do such and such, and then wait for their. end users to re re come back with an answer. But they’re gonna be go out, going out and saying, Hey, how are you doing?

[01:05:57] Wes MacLagan: This is coming up with, we’re about to do this. Do you need

[01:06:00] any help? And walk managed by walking around rather than by waiting by the phone or waiting by your email? Yep. Okay. It’s getting out there among the

[01:06:09] Heath: people. . Okay. Good one. Alright. And I think where we are right now in the in the virtual world, mostly, like in this, this client here, the reason why I am, I am in Manchester, usually London London, is that they have an, they, they call them anchor days.

[01:06:23] Heath: And so you’ve, they want to be anchor like physically. They think that’s the term onsite three days a week. So that, and I’m, as much as working from home and, and being virtual again, have clients all around the world is great, but that part of being physically in the room with them, you and like you, you said about the, the workshopping and so everyone can see one, two things.

[01:06:42] Heath: Everyone can see everyone and everyone can see the board and it’s one single. And you talked about the single source of truth, the one single source of truth. People can get up, walk 2.2 and have that discussion, that open discussion. So everything is out on the table. All the agendas have, hopefully they, they’re good enough for all on the table, but through

[01:07:00] being transparent, the key part there,

[01:07:03] Heath: Yeah. You’re

[01:07:04] Wes MacLagan: being transparent. The other thing is not being locked into the size of a computer screen. Yeah. So a lot of times I’ve seen people come in, they’ll have a presentation, maybe it’s PowerPoint or VIO or something, and they’ll just put it up on the screen for everybody and they’ll walk through something.

[01:07:21] Wes MacLagan: But I find that too confining because it doesn’t show how this relates to the others. They parcel it out into screenshots. But how does it all connect together? Yeah. You lose that. That’s why I like everyone in the conference room and you have big process maps that don’t have any limit, basically. And I think it’s very limiting to work on a laptop screen.

[01:07:44] Wes MacLagan: And then it just amazes me that people present stuff and nobody takes notes. Nobody does stuff. So they call it a kickoff session or a workshop. Yeah. If someone presents and nobody takes any action items out of it. Yeah. So, so again, that’s part about the [01:08:00] being the proactive and how you facilitate meetings and you get value outta the meetings.

[01:08:05] Heath: Yeah. The, I, I worked off a, a program director who who, two things. We were, had a program team meeting, which said everyone on the project, the program would’ve went about 40 people. And we had a, had a meeting in the boardroom and the program director wasn’t in, I don’t think he was invited. And so he just happened to walk by the boardroom and he saw us all in there.

[01:08:27] Heath: And he comes in there, just stands down the side, and then he listens and then there’s, it is wrapped up. And then he just walks the front and then counted everyone. And he said, how did you guys go? And he said, did you get what you wanted? And he said, yeah. And he said, I hope so, because this room, this meeting just cost $20,000.

[01:08:44] Heath: And he said, there must be a reason why you had this meeting. And he said, you have. And so that point was when there was, no one goes to this a meeting, if they don’t get an action. , if you have no action, you’re not going to the meeting. There’s no point in you going, you have nothing to contribute. You’re not taking anything away.

[01:08:58] Heath: So save your time and

[01:09:00] save the cl, the project, the cluster, and the client that time of say, yeah. So yeah, I’ve been in meetings with people like, if you are not taking Yeah, yeah. That,

[01:09:08] Wes MacLagan: that’s true. I mean, I, I I’ve sometimes have done work in government, most of mine’s commercial. Mm-hmm.

[01:09:15] Wes MacLagan: but sometimes I’ve done projects in government and I was amazed at all the people that came to a meeting and half of them didn’t have any reason for being there. Yeah. They were like hangers on. And I just, just thought, well, that’s why government’s so inefficient. And, and that’s, and that’s one reason that for me, I had a hard time working in that environment.

[01:09:36] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. Cause you’ve got all these hangers ons and they’re not there contributing anything. If anything, you might have somebody that’s gonna be throwing. Smoke grenades or something, they might be disrupting

[01:09:49] Heath: things. Yeah.

[01:09:50] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. You gotta be careful about who’s involved in your meeting and why they’re there.

[01:09:54] Wes MacLagan: Yes. And there’s a lot of thought that gets put into that about each work session and workshop.

[01:10:00] It’s part of the upfront planning. You can’t just jump into a project and go, yes, there’s a lot of planning that has to be done in order for indepen. If it’s a big project, more planning needs to be done. If you plan well, then your implementation phases will go a lot smoother and and faster.

[01:10:19] Heath: Okay. I’m gonna repeat that thing. I’m gonna quote you on it and I’m gonna repeat it for a few reasons. Mostly for the audience and also maybe the current client that there’s that to quote, we said, you can’t just jump into the projects and just go, you’ve gotta do a lot of planning and if you plan well, the project should go well.

[01:10:37] Heath: Now the, that part there about can’t just jump into the project. There, I think there’s two parts of that. There’s you can get a project manager who makes sure you’re doing the, the things right. But the second question is, are they the right things? And so what I, what you’ve gotta ask those questions of, in our previous client, I said they, they had a.

[01:10:57] Heath: They had a, a, a, a, I’ll call it the

[01:11:00] Bible. They had a team put together a high level, let’s say an advisory pack of what you should do. And now this has been, walked around, the business says, this is what we’re gonna do now. And I said, well, wait a minute. That document you’ve got is two parts. It’s a commercial document in a marketing document.

[01:11:15] Heath: It wasn’t intended to implementation Of all these now 20 plus projects that you think, so I’m gonna implement, we’re gonna implement now and then approach. And it’s called question the question, which means that you question everything that you’re asked to do, including question me. So that you don’t just say, okay, here’s this what the recommendation is, we’re gonna run with it.

[01:11:34] Heath: Because into your words, it’s basically, it’s not, not planning at all, it is just jumping into the project. You’ve been given a remit, but you’ve not questioned the remit. That remit there. Where, and you’ve, you’ve said that you’ve showed the accountant there to, to take their eight hours, 12 hours, work down to 30 minutes, is have, at what point did someone stop and say, Is this the best way to do it?

[01:11:56] Heath: At no point in time did anyone question this lovely

[01:12:00] piece of work that say, well, should we do that? They just said, we’re going to do that. And so what happened to that, that that client is, they were creating 20 inch initiatives and to, to the examples that you used earlier, is that you, you used, maybe we, you quickly covered that off, off, off, off camera, was that you helped a large, large company with their transformation and cut, cut down the amount of work that needed to be done on a technology change while using an existing system, then implementing a new one and saved them thousands because you won, you partly you questioned the question.

[01:12:34] Heath: Yes.

[01:12:34] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. In, in that case it was really saving them 3 million. They were, they had an old budgeting technology and they said, well, we’re gonna buy a new one. So they were looking around and they figured out, oh, we’re gonna buy a new one and it’s gonna cost 3 million. And I looked at the situation, I said, Hey, you’ve already got this other tool over here.

[01:12:56] Wes MacLagan: Let’s purpose it to do this also. Yep. [01:13:00] And that’s where the savings of 3 million in capital

[01:13:03] Heath: came from. Yeah. We using existing systems instead of going to market, buying a new one, then of course the cost of, yeah. And then onboarding, integrating it all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And so there’s a, so the audience here missed that there’s, that we just covered about the meetings, not just have meetings for meetings sake.

[01:13:19] Heath: The, the planning plan, well plan ahead. You can’t just jump into projects, you gotta plan it. Well, and the second part there about questioning the question is that question, what you been asked to do and then, and then what leads this done. The example of they reused existing kit that was already on the estate and, and repurposed it, changed it and adopted it for for the, the, the need served as opposed to going to market onboarding, integrating, saved them $3 million from questioning.

[01:13:50] Heath: Yes.

[01:13:51] Wes MacLagan: Yes. So another example around just, you can’t just start a project. A recent client of mine brought me in

[01:14:00] and they said, we’re gonna implement like in two months. This was a, this was a smaller organization. Mm-hmm. . So we’re gonna put in a new financially e r p fine. When I got in there, I, I started to look at the contract, the software license contract, and the services contract, Uhhuh , and then look at, okay, what’s the work plan?

[01:14:20] Wes MacLagan: What’s the timeline that has been promised? Yep. And, and it was unrealistic. So that’s one of the things about planning. Sometimes companies figure, oh, we’ll create the contract. We’ll set this all up, and then we’ll just bring in a project manager to run it. Yep. But then, then there’s a bunch of rework because the contract didn’t include all the scope.

[01:14:46] Wes MacLagan: Oh, of what was be delivered. Okay. And the services level wasn’t right for delivering within two months. And so you have to s it turns out we had to put in a realistic

[01:15:00] budget estimate timeline, and we had to change the software contract. We have the same change the services contract. And so it took about a month to do that before we actually could start the work.

[01:15:13] Heath: Okay. So what you’re talking there is, you said realistic, it needs to be real, realistic, the, and based on reality. And you’ve used this before, you said practical. The practical. And we talk, use the illusion, the aspirational. But you’re talking, we are talking about. Actual, practical, usable, realistic. So getting away from, and I think that consultants get accused of it a lot is, it’s all hairy fairy and it’s, it’s touchy fairy and it feels good.

[01:15:43] Heath: But then the actual, I saw, I call that interesting. The second part being is that useful, useful as in you, in your terms, you’ve used realistic and practical. How do you use it in real life? How do you use it in implementation? And if it can’t be, and I, I, I, previous client went with their

[01:16:00] massive bible that they wanted to adopt.

[01:16:02] Heath: It’s like the, the, the, if you don’t understand it today, don’t think by us continually using that as a single source of truth and trying to understand it in two days time or two weeks time, it becomes any clearer. It is as clear as it is the day that you look at it. And if it’s not clear now, it will never be clear for us to try and use that as the true north to adopt from without questioning it.

[01:16:26] Heath: We’re, you are kidding selves. So to, to your point there of understanding the one was the scope and then breaking it down into what can we actually do? And you talked about resources and backfilling and, and getting those, those resources backfill, but it needs to be realistic and practical for our audience.

[01:16:42] Heath: You got that And

[01:16:44] Wes MacLagan: planning. You gotta do the planning. You can’t avoid the planning and you gotta have the right resources helping you do the planning. A lot of times organizations will buy software and they’ll do it unilaterally

[01:17:00] and, and then they expect, oh, it’s time to implement, but they’ve left, they’ve left a lot out.

[01:17:06] Wes MacLagan: And so bring in your project manager earlier while you’re doing the planning, while you’re doing the software selection, while you’re doing the, the contract work with your vendors. Okay. It’ll save you a lot. It’s part of that, it’s part of that planning. If the organization could do it all on their own, they’d be fine.

[01:17:27] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. But, but if you’re bringing in a project manager and a consultant, it says that you don’t have all the knowledge. Yeah. And that person oftentimes has a lot of knowledge that can help you in managing your vendors Yep. And managing what your contract says. And the scope of it gets back in the scope of project and cost a project timely

[01:17:47] Heath: delivered.

[01:17:47] Heath: So the, the awareness then of the client is really their strength and weaknesses. And one of them may be they don’t have the technical knowledge of managing, running the project. So go out and get it. And, but the key part

[01:18:00] there is, hey, yes, self-awareness or self-evaluation that you have recognized. You don’t have that resource.

[01:18:05] Heath: Go to go and get it. Don’t either think you can do it on the back of a fag packet and go, okay, we can try and get away. What you’d end up doing there would be burning through your trust, your stakeholder trust of your business. If you’re trying to fudge a a large project un like you’ve talked about before, under under resource it, under finance it if you don’t have it.

[01:18:24] Heath: And then of course the, the, the, the key part under planning. If you, as you said, you can’t jump into the project, you’ve gotta plan ’em. Well,

[01:18:31] Wes MacLagan: yes, that’s what, that’s what we’re

[01:18:33] Heath: saying. Alright. Shall I sum up, sum up what I think then is our our critical success factors. We got our stakeholders upfront.

[01:18:40] Heath: We understood the process from a risk perspective. We have, we dealt with our our senior stakeholders. We’ve got our senior steering group committee in place. We have a risk management approach in place. So we have our risk reg issues register. We have the steering committee where issues get taken from within the project up to steer steerco steering

[01:19:00] committee for approval.

[01:19:01] Heath: We have. Our voice to the customer. I missed a step there. We’ve got our technology. Make sure you got the technology in place. In terms of resources, the, the, I think we talked about the, the knowledge. From the SMEs and come from the business that we need to get the best and the brightest and how you get the best and the brightest.

[01:19:21] Heath: You don’t ask them, we’ll try to put ’em under pressure by getting to do two roles. The trans, the trans, oh, where’s my hand there? The transformation and the b a u, you backfill them. And there’s different options to backfill, including the low skilled, low operational work that you can move people into those roles, but you want the best of the brightest.

[01:19:40] Heath: Now there’s the other one is the, I don’t know if we call it there. Well, the comparison between the voice of the v o P and the V O C, the voice of the process versus the voice of the customer. And that part there is about knowing who is the customer. There is the customer, internal customer, and external customer.

[01:19:55] Heath: There’s internal being other stakeholders within the organization, external being

[01:20:00] outside of the immediate process or even the organization. And in some cases it’s the paying customer. So make sure you’re listening to the right people because of why you’re solving the wrong problem. Yep. . And if

[01:20:11] Wes MacLagan: it’s governmental, there could be regulations.

[01:20:13] Wes MacLagan: That’s gonna be another customer too. Yeah,

[01:20:15] Heath: yeah. Another, another one. Yeah. And so it’s not, and you’re not paying,

[01:20:20] Wes MacLagan: but they’re expecting

[01:20:21] Heath: Yes. By law. Yes. Yeah. So there’s actually a slight nuance there. There’s the, the, the government’s customer. Yeah. It’s not a pay customer, it’s a more Yeah. Compliance check and balances relationship.

[01:20:33] Heath: Then we, for your risk rent register, which got us onto the risk in steering committees that yeah. The issues that get managed within the the projects. If they can’t, they escalate them up. You have a you make sure that you’ve got the change champions. The change champion starts from initially the sponsor and you want them down and across all different areas of the business.

[01:20:53] Heath: Now, the, the, yeah. We talked about the practical implementation and understanding the, what’s in it for them, what’s in it

[01:21:00] for me? . The, the issue with the scope change there is from, from the kickoff and part of the education process that help happens all the way through. What also happens all the way through the process was education, which it starts at the front and the top, as well as negotiation, collaboration, and visualization all the way through.

[01:21:20] Heath: Now that the the scope change is being upfront, excuse me, managing expectations of yes, this is what we know today in 30 days time, a hundred days time, we will learn more and their scope may change, it may expand or track, but you’ve communicated that and you talked about the the business transf that they have some insight fore.

[01:21:45] Heath: That they can more, more likely see longer trajectory than the the business. And it’s, and we talked about the, the skill there or the business transf is in communicating that to and, and, and to words we’ve used before about understanding

[01:22:00] your audience, understood the business. Transf must understand the audience, understand their needs and wants, and communicate them in the language they understand.

[01:22:06] Heath: Am I, am I, am I close so far?

[01:22:09] Wes MacLagan: Yes, you are. And, and I think another term that carries throughout the whole project, you just talked to managing expectations. Yeah. That’s a project manager’s job. So as a strategic person, you can see far out how this all comes together. You’ve gotta be educating, managing the expectations that we don’t know everything now that we will know.

[01:22:34] Wes MacLagan: And, and then, out there in the future, there’s these risks. I have one client who. I, I was losing sleep over because I could look out there and I saw six months out Yeah. Where things were going and things that need to happen. Yeah. And then on the project, I got to a point where I could start sleeping at night cuz I felt like it was managed.

[01:22:58] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. But at the same time that I

[01:23:00] started to sleep my project sponsor, she started to lose sleep because she started to worry about other things. Yeah. Yeah. And so that, so that’s a realistic thing. How’s it impact the persons that are responsible for the project?

[01:23:15] Heath: Yeah. Which you talked about was another success factor.

[01:23:18] Heath: Or get it in second. Yeah. That was the business transmit looking. Part about the people element that needs to be practical. That the business psychology, people, psychology that it’s not, the business transformation is not so much about the mechanical changes. It’s around the business.

[01:23:31] Heath: Psychology changes and it’s about people getting the people on board. And then we talk about every organization culture and people are different and so different approaches or the degree that you apply different approaches will change for that different environment. And it goes back to the end, the skill of the business transmitter to apply your tools and techniques appropriately and proportionately.

[01:23:50] Heath: But you’ve got that common thread of the education the negotiation, managing expectations collaboration and negotiation. And then the, this part you just mentioned here was the look,

[01:24:00] the health of the core team, understanding there’s two parts. You’ve got your core team internal to your business, analyst, architects, project manager solution architects, developers, et cetera.

[01:24:08] Heath: Then you’ve got the seconded SMEs that make sure that. The, the what’s in it for them, what’s in it for me is being listened to, you pay attention to it. Communication is also the other theme that, that runs through the start right through is that you make sure that it’s proactive as opposed to reactive.

[01:24:24] Heath: And there is there’s three types of communication. There. Is the communication f within the then and from the governance structure within the program and then within the project itself? Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. And then you talked about the, the, the practical side of walking around walk, like I said, like physically walking around, put it being the face, building that relationship.

[01:24:47] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. That’s not just for the project manager, it’s your business analyst, your people who are liaisoning with the end user. They have to be proactive. They have to get out there and meet

[01:25:00] with the people. They have to be setting up workshops and work sessions and meeting with people. It can’t be just going off in a cubicle and

[01:25:07] Heath: doing your work.

[01:25:09] Heath: Yes, yes. Yeah. This, this is this is partly why I like being in the office, is that you, one, you build the rapport with your colleagues, with the other both core team and within the extended business. Is that because this business transformation is, and this I, I did a, a post recently. You’re talking about that if you don’t understand your people trying to do your business transformation, you don’t understand your business transformation, you’ll never, if you don’t understand your people, you won’t understand the business transformation.

[01:25:34] Heath: You’ll never get it done. You need to understand your people. How do you understand the people you build a relationship with them. Okay, so, and then we said about meetings in sessions about planning. You need to you can’t just jump into your projects. You’ve gotta plan it and plan it well. And they’re part there being about.

[01:25:47] Heath: Practical and realistic. And then we had resourcing that you’ve gotta put the right resources, both yeah, the right resources onto the project and technology that that the, the

[01:26:00] project manager, and that was a, the part of resources, people, resources of identifying self-awareness, that self-evaluation what you have and don’t have, and then going and getting it.

[01:26:09] Heath: Don’t think you can do these transformations on a shoestring budget or a back on a fag packet. You need to resource them. Resource them, both people in the project. But then also we talked to just recently just, just before, was that backfill those SMEs that you are seconding or bringing into the project so you don’t put them under pressure so that you, give them the space to be creative, to contribute.

[01:26:29] Heath: That yeah, their, their roles are backfill. That they they have that relief. That’s right. .

[01:26:35] Wes MacLagan: Yeah, you gotta treat them well, I mean, you might even, you might even do something on the compensation plan, terms of bonus or something for, for the project meeting

[01:26:45] Heath: milestones. Yeah. Actually we had lo Lauren spec Robins talked about with re in terms of reward is that she tied the executive team, c, c-suite, the the benefits and changes that were delivered from

[01:27:00] the transformation would be one of the metrics.

[01:27:02] Heath: They would be, they would, they personally would be measured by, so that, that incentive one incentivized them, but also they had really had a change champion with their, not so much Nick on the line, but incentivized in a positive way that those, those, those changes of the realization of the, the transformation would actually.

[01:27:21] Heath: Yeah, and I

[01:27:21] Wes MacLagan: think you have to consider cascading that down into the core team, the rank and file. A lot of times those people do put in extra hours. They can’t completely give up their old job. They still have to sort of shepherd that. And so they end up putting in a lot of hours. So you wanna have some way of rewarding them.

[01:27:41] Wes MacLagan: Tangibly it could be small things plus big things. Small things being like gift cards, restaurant cards bigger things. Say, Hey, take your wife out, or take your significant other out and on the company. And it can be bigger things to have a bonus plan involved

[01:27:59] Heath: in

[01:28:00] the project.

[01:28:00] Heath: Okay. So there was a part there about the reward is not just reward at the, at the top level, but at all levels. Yes. Yep. Okay. Awesome. Okay, so there was our, that was actually 17 success factors. So to, to summarize and, and so that was awesome Wes. Thank you very much. So to summarize and in summary, so we covered here today.

[01:28:23] Heath: That was, where’s the starting point when starting on a project and we talked about is straight, straight to executives level. From there, there’s a process that you follow and there there’s a few steps involved and there’s a common theme that runs through the whole lot of it about being, about communication, negotiation, well the first part, sorry, being visualization.

[01:28:41] Heath: There’s education that’s happens at the start and all the way through. That’s there’s collaboration, imagining expectations, negotiating then that happens. Not at the start. And it’s a one-off event. It happens through continuous, throughout the project to the end. And that, that’s the process.

[01:28:55] Heath: And then there was 17 success factors. So, so to mostly evolv,

[01:29:00] evolving involving, revolving around collaboration education, communication visualization, negotiation. And I get collaboration. I see the already education, education and managing

[01:29:12] Wes MacLagan: expectations. Yeah. Wow. A common

[01:29:15] Heath: theme. Yeah. Okay.

[01:29:17] Heath: And then, so, and to, to qualify then, not that we need to, from where’s immense background and experience. You can, well, and, and the show notes. Wheres, I’ll, I’ll put your a LinkedIn link and if you want just let me know. I’ll, I’ll put the company so people know how to get in contact, how to find you.

[01:29:32] Heath: If they wanna more information, wanna work with you then they know where to find you. So there you. In terms and we get some great examples of the projects that he’s been with and the benefits and values for the changes that we just talked about. So this stuff here is not from well maybe originally at some point in time.

[01:29:49] Heath: Like my workers, we learned it from practice and a application and, and and theory and books. This is practical application. So you’ve just heard from a an expert, a, which [01:30:00] Wes on Wes’ is LinkedIn. You’ll see that he’s been generous to his audience or his connections that he’s not put all of his experience there.

[01:30:07] Heath: He is only put some of it, it goes back longer. Although what you will read is pretty impressive. So Wes, thank you very much for your time. I know right now in, in the US Yes. For, for, for transparency Again, we, we Which part of the world are you in right now?

[01:30:22] Wes MacLagan: I’m in Virginia right

[01:30:23] Heath: now. Okay. So we are on East Coast Time, east time.

[01:30:27] Heath: East Coast. So I am in, I’m in UK in Manchester, as I said for this, this project up here. And Wes is in, in the states who are two different continents. And so as, as I and I get missing, you’ll see that on YouTube content comments. And I’ll say, oh, it’s only applicable to the us And that’s only happens to the us.

[01:30:44] Heath: Doesn’t happen anywhere else. Now, what we’ve just discussed is symptoms and issues that exist in project management, program management, and business transformation. And it’s not unique to the US nor the uk. It is a symptoms and issues that involve

[01:31:00] around infin these projects. So if you are seeing this and these issues in events and you are tackling a business transformation, just listen to what Liz Wes just said about the, what the starting point the processes follows and the most of the critical success factors he make sure is in place to to, to generate what you would’ve just heard.

[01:31:17] Heath: The, the, the returns that these projects and acquisitions and mergers that Wesa has been involved in are massive.

[01:31:26] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. Thank you, Heath. I appreciate the conversation and the, the friendly back and forth around comparing notes on, on our experiences. So it’s great. It’s great to have a touchpoint with yourself representing what you’ve seen in your, the UK world. And I agree with you. These problems are and challenges are similar all across the world in running projects.

[01:31:51] Wes MacLagan: Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve run projects with people f offshore from India and some of them coming onshore here. And some of them just still working

[01:32:00] there. It’s, it’s it’s a great experience. It’s a great place to be in to do business transformation.

[01:32:05] Heath: Mm-hmm. Oh, yes, very much so. Okay. With, and I, I, I enjoyed the, the, the conversation.

[01:32:11] Heath: Like we could actually, I don’t know how long we were going for, I wasn’t watching the clock, but I think that we, we could, we could continue talking for a long, long time. So, I, so, actually we’ll have another one. We’ll have another one, sometime later and we’ll, we’ll pick up and see how the world has changed and, what are they doing, be differently better.

[01:32:26] Heath: Is approach still valid? Have we need to adopt? Has, has Hoberg gone to version 2.0 and everything else that’s happening in the world. Okay. So where’s a wrap it up here? Thank you very much again for your time. I’ll get I’ll, I’ll, I’ll post. We’re not as soon as we can. And I’ll share, share it with you.

[01:32:40] Heath: You can share it around if you want. It’ll go onto YouTube and all on the, on the podcast channels. Yeah. So, but again, thank you very much. We thank you for your time. Thank you for getting up early on a Saturday morning. Especially I know that you’re on your, on a vacation right now, so, and very, very, thank you.

[01:32:55] Wes MacLagan: Hey, you’re welcome. Thank you. I, I enjoyed it, Keith.

[01:32:57] Heath: Thank you. My pleasure. Okay, enjoy your

[01:33:00] rest your weekend in the holiday. Thank you. You too. Bye. Thanks, buddy. Bye-bye.