Are you an effective leader?

Does being a control freak make you an effective leader? Micromanagers take perfectly positive attributes - an attention to detail and a hands-on attribute to the extreme. Either because they are control-obsessed or because they feel driven to push everyone around them to success, micromanagers risk disempowering their teams. They ruin their teams' confidence, hurt their performance and frustrate them to a point where they quit.

Here are some traits...

• Resist delegating


• Immerse yourself in overseeing the projects of others


• Start by correcting tiny details instead of looking at the big picture


• Take back delegated work before it is finished if they find a mistake in it and


• Discourage others from making decisions without consulting them

Start by asking yourself, what is wrong with that. The diagram above attempts to explain how to create an environment of energy and innovation for successful outcomes.

Outcome Management Vs. Project Management

Outcome Management is a set of methods, processes, tools and techniques for planning, selecting, managing and realizing results of benefits. It addresses: What problem are we trying to solve? So begin with the end in mind..

However, very often it is confused with project management. The table below attempts to point out some differences between the two and hopefully broadens your perspective on outcome management.

Meshing Technological and Organizational Change?

Programs are structured groupings of projects designed to produce clearly identified business results or other end benefits. The program focus is on all steps required to deliver business results. It is the effectively managed, blended business investment program that delivers the benefits to the organization. The program view is more powerful than many managers expect when they first see it. It has proven its worth to clients who have used it, for example to mesh organizational change with the introduction of new technologies.

Consider the example of Client A, which wanted to use new software to help in its effort to decentralize some of its human resource (HR) activities. The department wanted to reduce the long chain of handoffs for many HR operations, typically beginning with HR associates from different departments moving to HR managers and then the central recruiting department and then back to the associate. It believed a new HR software package would provide the solution. At first, it looked like a vision of technology-driven change.

The new system would drive a radical decentralization of responsibility to various HR departments handling everything from approvals, compensation packages to processing of payroll and online forms for vacation approvals. This would be inline with pressure to streamline the department and reduce HR operating costs, all while improving the level of HR service to employees. Changes would be required at the individual, department and organization level.

It did not take long for the department heads to realize instinctively what the Benefits Realization Approach makes explicit. The benefits being targeted were not inside the new package. And there was a big difference between a new technology that drives organizational change and one that enables change - along with many other elements of the business system. These were questions, in particular about people and organizational issues. Would people feel threatened by the software project? Would employees perceive the decentralization as extra work for them?

Department leaders diagnosed the problem early. They realized this was a business transformation initiative with broad scope and impact. A Benefits Realization approach was used to expand a potential silver bullet project into a well-rounded change program. The program manager included not only steps to introduce the new software smoothly, with appropriate coaching, but also these key projects: preparing a detailed communications plan for all stakeholders groups, holding department vision workshops, developing transition plan with well-definef accountabilities and organizing discussions and feedback sessions.

Today this is one of the most successful programs at Client A. Meshing the Technological Change with Organizational Change lead to the success. Managers and Leaders need to take a large mental leap to understand the program view. They need to embrace the benefits mind-set that sees investments in IT as part of blended business investment programs rather than stand-alone IT projects.

Value of IT and Program Management

It is very unfortunate that most IT systems are built on the principle of "Build it, and the benefits will come". It is assumed that the desired business outcome will happen automatically through faith.

I have seen this more that once. "Hey lets build a portal, and customers will come and use it". Sometimes I seriously start thinking about the "Value of IT" or it has just become cost of doing business rather than adding strategic value. Very often we see that IT departments are so deep buried in the tactical things that they forget why they exist? IT exists to support business and if it cannot add value to the business, then is IT required?

Anyways, from a project management standpoint... this has made me realize that "Projects deliver capability & Programs deliver benefits". The concept of program goes way beyond technology. Most often we would see thatorganizations think that the role of a program manager is the one who oversees multiple related projects/project managers. There may be some truth in this statement, but program management looks at the following things:

1. Business Need
2. Technology/ies required
3. Organizational Structure
4. People
5. Process

The combination of the above-mentioned elements defines a lifecycle of a program. From concept to "Benefits Realization". Any business initiative generally involves 20% of work around technology but the remainder 80% is around Change Management. If effort is put in all aspects, the chances of success are way higher and not just blaming the technology later that it did not work out.

Improving the odds of delivering business benefits requires more than just better project management. We have to take off the blinkers and look at the full program of activities involved in changing the business system, and then manage the investment program as a whole, with full knowledge of the linkage between initiatives, reach, people and process related issues involved.

In summary, a program is the meshing of technological and organizational change. If this perspective is not maintained, I am afraid.. IT will soon loose its strategic value.