Tag Archives: management

Trust Your Gut

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We are change and strategy practitioners. We have the privilege of working in many corporate settings and on a wide range of projects. Over time, when you do what we do, patterns start to emerge.

In previous articles we have written about the psychology of program management and the role of optimism and human biases in project failures and delays. We have also explored why strategic plans fail and suggest a number of remedies.

One of the reasons that strategic plans and associated projects stall is a failure to follow thru, a failure to take account of varied, and sometimes diametrically opposed, inputs and pick a way forward. Sometimes this is a change management issue, a failure to inspire and galvanise a team with an achievable plan designed to overcome human and technical hurdles. But surprisingly often, it just comes down to an unwillingness to make a “big bet”. Continue reading →

The Thrill of the Chase

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A well-considered large pursuit capture strategy should initially be drafted years in advance of a formal release of the Request for Proposals (RFP).

This may seem like motherhood, but we rarely see well developed, long term, mature capture strategies, even in corporations with sophisticated bid and capture processes. More often we see some combination of last minute decisions, very poor competitive intel, simplistic pricing, late teaming, unnecessary additional program costs, and risk.

Why?  Most likely because humans generally hold off, fear mistakes, want more certainty, like to deal in “the now” and underestimate their competition. Our articles on human biases here and here explore this issue. Continue reading →

The “Executive SuperTemp”

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In their article “The Rise of the Executive Super Temp”[1] , Jody and Matt Miller describe the growing phenomena of highly skilled executive level independent consultants in the market.

“Supertemps are top managers and professionals from lawyers to CFOs to consultants who’ve been trained at top schools and companies and choose to pursue project-based careers independent of any major firm. They’re increasingly trusted by corporations to do mission-critical work that in the past would have been done by permanent employees or established outside firms.” Continue reading →