Leadership is often frustrated by Strategies missing their mark and Initiatives having low completion rates.
How to improve your 90 Day Initiative Success rate.
Unless you have a solid Game Plan
Meetings Grind on as Opportunity slips by
There are many advantages in breaking out strategic projects into 90 day initiatives. This is a proven and effective method to manage strategic progress. However:
- Many organizations report high demand for critical projects and not enough capacity to execute them.
- Without laser-like focus to identify and respond to delay causing issues, organizations risk falling behind competitors.
- Without strong procedures and a decisive Technical advantage, many organizations leave strategy realization to chance.
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How can we ensure everything is getting done?
There are two main items that keep cropping up.
- For 90 day Projects, committed priorities drag well beyond the 90 day commitment.
- Weekly deliverables are missed, Tasks due at the weekly review are incomplete.
Teams can drastically increased their weekly completion percentage to 90%+ by correctly structuring Strategy and Tactics into 90 day engagements.
Here is how to help your completion rate skyrocket.
Here are 7 steps to increase your team’s success
- Quantify a Strong Sense of Value and establish a Progress Measure: Without a sense of Value and a Measure of Progress towards a Purpose, Teams can become easily sidetracked. Sport with out a “scoreboard” would be incredible boring and purposeless. Business is a Team sport.
- Solid Network Building with complete and Realistic Dependencies. Do not tackle the issues / Tasks from top to bottom as a subjective task list. Rather, build a network of dependent Tasks, starting with the Objective.
Start with the end mind.
Objectives must be aligned with Strategy, or a the very least vetted for:
1/ Financial Throughput,
2/ possible Risks,
3/ Strategic Importance,
4/ impact on Cash Flows over time.
Begin building networks by starting with the End-in-Mind. Build from right to left, asking your team, “In order to accomplish a Successor Task, what are the immediate Predecessor Tasks?”
This prevents team members cherry picking a subjective list will ensure the correct sequence during execution. In addition, progress can be judged against a sensibly sequenced time-line of activity. Important yet difficult items do not drop to the bottom of the list to linger without resolution.
- Ask the Right Questions:
When a major project is broken into Initiative as a series of 90 days predecessor Tasks, the team will realize the magnitude of particular issues as being much greater than they had originally thought, Without sufficiently interrogate a Task, Teams run the risk of discover missing key items too late into the 90 day Initiative
- Create SMART Tasks:
Another reason why the teams’ don’t get Task finished in time, Tasks weren’t SMART.
Specific:
Define a clear deliverable as the Task Name (include a verb in the statement).
Measurable: Clearly establish the Touch-Time* Task Duration.
Attainable: Correct Skills, Resources and Tools are assigned.
Realistic: Resources contention within the network is resolved when planning.
Timely: Correctly Sequenced within the network of dependent Tasks.
Tasks required for each week, should be highlighted, with urgent and critical Tasks clearly marked for expediting.
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- Check and Recheck Check Task Sequencing:
- Carefully define Task Names as Deliverables, this is critically important. Check that Task Names would still be understood by all Team members six months from now without misinterpretation. Task Names should be complete short sentences and preferably containing a verb / defined as a deliverable action.
- Read aloud to the team: read the entire network from right to left – start with the Final Task – using the following approach: “In order to ensure (Successor), we must have (Predecessor) completed.” Repeat this for each Predecessor. If anything sounds out of sequence or if something is missing, check with the team for their understanding of the successor and predecessor sequence. Clarify until the Team is confident all members understand the logical dependencies have been connected.
Do not rush this exercise. Allow the team to digest each set of statements. If a string of statements does not sound correct – check with the team. Clarify until the Team is confident all dependencies make sense and all members fully understand the network.
- Allocating Task Duration and Resource Types:
Only once the Team is completely satisfied that the Task Names are clear and the Network Sequencing is correct, then add the Task Durations.
Adding durations has three considerations:
- Assign Resource Type(s) – required number and appropriate skill to each Task.
- Full or Partial availability of Resource Types working for the duration of the Task.
- To determine Task Duration, ask the question: how much work can be accomplished in a 24-hour period, recognizing there can be a single, double or triple shifts within a 24-hour period.
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- Reward and Recognition:
- Daily updates of Remaining Durations on each active Task is required. Knowing the Future conditions allows for corrective action. Weekly review with the Team and Senior Management will monitor progress and reassure accountability.
- Weekly review need only discuss Tasks exceptions in deep Yellow (prepare intervention) or Red (active intervention).
- Teams should discuss appropriate recovery actions for any deviant Tasks.
- Do not neglect to recognize, reward, and celebrate effort.
John Thompson is a co-founder and COO of Exepron, a cloud-based Critical Chain solution, and the owner of Global Focus LLC, a business consultancy specializing in positioning organizations for sustainable growth and business turnarounds. With over 30 years of experience, John has led numerous companies through facilitated analysis, turnarounds, training, and implementations across diverse industries.
Contact John: info@Exepron.com
