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The Covid-19 Pandemic accelerated transformation for many organizations and provided an example of how companies can respond quickly to identify and change what is needed for their business to survive. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it, "We’ve seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months." 

Observing company actions, we see how the best transformations have been driven by a focus on Accelerating Value. Companies that made targeted improvements and communicated well the “what, why, and how” of transformation to their employees were the most successful in implementing effective change during this pandemic. These tips for Accelerating Value can be applied to your project.

Focus Innovation on “What Matters”

The first and most important concept of Accelerating Value is understanding what is important and focusing on what makes a difference. Whether your project is delivering a product to customers or making a substantial improvement to an internal process or system, the concept is the same. Don’t try to Accelerate Value in every aspect of your project; focus on what makes a difference! 

I’ve posted to my website an interview with Denny Georg on Accelerating Value. Denny’s experience as a Vice President and General Manager at Hewlett Packard, delivering technology solutions to customers, provides great insight. In that interview, Denny notes “In general, Accelerating Value requires a strong focus on delivering a product or project that will make a difference for the customer who is buying the product. Delivering more, whether in a single project or the complex integration of multiple projects, starts with an understanding of the marketspace, technology evolution, development, and delivery capacity, and most importantly where choices make a difference in the final product.”  These concepts can be applied to any project.  

It's important to understand the choices in your project that will really make a difference to your customers, employees and the bottom line for your business.  If you are looking for some ideas on how to do this, review my blog Focus Innovation on What Matters and Bold Transformation with tips on anticipating important innovation trends, setting specific goals, evaluating solutions and defining a customer focused roadmap. 

Create Urgency Around “Why”

It would be an understatement to say that the pandemic created a sense of urgency around company transformation. To be successful in Accelerating Value, the organization needs to align around critical deliverables, understand why those deliverables are important, and have a sense of urgency in executing those. With substantial company initiatives, the communication and sense of urgency around “why” a strategic initiative is important must be driven from the top. 

As a project leader, however, you have an important role in creating the project structure and team mindset for successful acceleration. Make sure your team understands the “why,” knows the most critical project deliverables that align to the strategic initiative, have clarity on their responsibilities, and have a personal sense of urgency. Some good ideas for driving this with your team:

• Post your project priorities in a visible place and have those priorities posted in rank order. Establish a decision-making forum and process that uses the rank-order list when making tradeoffs between important deliverables.
• Create a networked cross functional team with the expertise, skills, and mandate to drive key project deliverables and value.  This whitepaper on Business Agility from Scaled Agile might also be interesting for you.  
• Connect people’s personal success to the strategy by aligning each team member’s responsibilities back to the list of priorities. 
• Speak to your team member’s hearts as well as their heads. Help them see their role as change leaders that can make a meaningful contribution. Encourage and reward the team for their energy, enthusiasm, and passion. 

If you are facing organization apathy or resistance, continue to engage leadership for better alignment and communication. However, don’t get so caught up in getting everyone on board that you get nothing accomplished.  Start with areas that your team can make a difference. Delivering visible, meaningful value will ultimately be rewarded in an organization that has good leadership. 

Encourage Rapid Learning

The importance of responding to new information has been another key transformational concept during the pandemic. When a situation is evolving and new information is constantly coming in, the team needs to be flexible to better Accelerate Value. In my discussion with Denny Georg, we talked about the importance of rapid learning. “This requires a commitment to being, as a leader and a team, hard on the challenges and open to discussion. Change in the execution of complex programs is a reality.  Making changes quickly in the light of new information leads to better outcomes.  Being the most aggressive at learning has the benefit of leading to better execution, better projects outcomes, and in most cases, more competitive products.” As a project leader, you can use several techniques to apply this concept of rapid learning to your projects.

• Encourage your team to be aggressive in gathering new information and learning. Bring new information to the team in ways that make it easy to understand and absorb.  
• Make your thought process visible to your team and others in the organization. Use project forums to openly discuss new information and ideas. 
• Engage the team in decision-making. Share information with the team on resource and schedule assumptions, so they can be more open to change and effective in participating on decision-making about alternatives, tradeoffs, and the impact of those to your priorities. 
• Stay focused on delivering the greatest value possible in those selected areas of your project. 

The pandemic has been a time of transformational change for many people and organizations. We should leverage what we’ve learned during this challenging time to Accelerate Value in our projects.  Some ways for doing this are to focus on what makes a difference, create a team mindset and passion for accelerating value, and encourage rapid learning within the team.

Additional Resources

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also enjoy the Project Implementation Tips that Annette provided in an earlier blog post.

Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter!

About the Author

Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a business transformation coach working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and she mentors project teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources, and leading practices as a PM mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog.