Deliver That!

Special: Summer Break

A little announcement for you. It’s summer, just about, so we’re taking a little break from the podcast. Time for some holidays, to rest and recharge and regather ourselves ready for more discussions on leading projects and delivery teams, and everything involved in getting big stuff done. So, we’re off for a while. But we’ll be back soon, ready to go. Thanks for listening along to everything we’ve talked about so far. We really appreciate your company. While we’re away, do listen back to anything you’ve missed. And send us a message, if you’d like, with your thoughts or questions on the things we’ve covered and the things we haven’t. To do that, you can find out everything you need at deliverthatpodcast.com [http://deliverthatpodcast.com]. So, we’ll see you when we’re back in a few weeks. Until then, ciao. Have a good one.

Episode 009 — The First 30 Days

You've started a new role as CDO. How do you get up and running? The first month in a new position is the time for making impressions: for what you can understand about the business and it's for you to make your impression on the organisation too. We talk about what's running through your mind in those first weeks, and discuss some practical things to do to get your bearings.

Episode 008 — Creating High Performance Teams

How do you take a group of competent individuals and bring them together into a high-performing team? We take a look at the presumptions, rules-of-thumb, and particular actions a Chief Delivery Officer can take to raise the water level so all the boats float higher. And then we discuss how things can get off balance and the potential to sink a happy ship, the strange tidal forces both inside and outside the team. --- We begin our conversation talking about 'normal times', taking a group of people and doing the hard work to gel them into an effective team and lift them to high performance. Beginning with an assumption of individual expertise in each of their fields you're aiming to create a 'one team' mindset, all working towards a single goal: * This is what we’re trying to do * This is how we’re trying to do it * This is how you add to that We then discuss some of the practical actions to get there, including: * Shared outcomes — everyone owns it, the good and the bad; learning and improving together * Show-and-tell — demonstrate what you’ve done, describe why it’s important; receive recognition, and maybe a platform to display that, internally or externally * Praise, credit, and encouragement — direct, one-to-one; within the team; to the wider business and/or clients * Standards — establishing, achieving, and maintaining standards; lifting the bar * Personal development — Who do you really want to be? What do you really want to do? How can we get you there? * Offboarding people — sometimes you need to recognise dead wood and do the tough task of trimming In the second half, the conversation turns to those things that can cause your sleek powerboat to sink. First, we discuss rock stars and divas in delivery teams. They can be a huge asset, the big guns that you can pull out to deal with difficult problems or important achievements. But rock stars can get frustrated, bored, or even resentful and cause all kinds of chaos. There's ways of responding to that, which may mean keeping them out of the ongoing work of a delivery team, but could also mean using them as ambassadors for your organisation's rock star capabilities. And then we talk about less containable outside forces. We look at the impact of micro-managers in the executive or other parts of the business. And we talk about commercial pressures — commercial performance in the business, which you may be powerless to resist, and commercial dynamics in the market, which may force you to pivot.

Episode 007 — Strategic Vision, Tactical View (pt. 2)

Lovely though the views are, you're static on the mountain top. The journey doesn't happen here. To get stuff done you have to come back down to ground level. This is the world of your tactics. In part 2 of the conversation we talk about execution — taking the strategy you created at the top of the hill and turning it into reality, with a thoroughgoing set of turn-by-turn actions. This isn't a conversation about day-to-day delivery management — you already know plenty about all that. This is about executing your strategy. We look at 4 dimensions: 1. Tactics: step-by-step instructions 2. Tactics: equipped for the journey 3. Tactics: managing risks, known and unknown 4. Tactics: Supporting the team, maintaining the tools --- Note: Strategy should always come first Tactics are a vector property. It's not just speed you want but velocity — travel in a particular direction. Tactics need to be directed toward a goal or outcome in order to have focus and purpose. Tactics depend on strategy.   Beware of too much improvisation, too often Often the term 'tactics' is used as a synonym of 'improvise', but that's not really right. Yes, occasionally you will have to react, to be spontaneous. But if you're doing that too often then it's a strong clue that you didn't spend long enough at high altitude, that you were impatient. Pause. And go back up the hill.

Episode 006 — Strategic Vision, Tactical View (pt. 1)

As with many aspects of the CDO role, being able to hold a creative tension between strategy and execution is a distinctive quality. The role requires you to do both * to see far ahead, and determine how to get where you're going * and, to take one step at a time on the path you've set, without getting distracted or discouraged. Or, to put it differently, it's about altitudes of thinking * taking the time to stand on higher ground to get the long view * whilst knowing that things are put into action back at ground level In part 1 of this conversation we talk about the first part — the need to build a delivery strategy and how you might go about doing that. We start by asking the big 'why?' question — why do you even need a delivery strategy in the first place? — which is actually two questions: * Why are we doing what we’re doing? * Where do we want to be in 6/12/24/whatever months, and why? We then spend a while milking a powerful but progressively more tenuous metaphor: Walk up the hill to see the horizon At ground level, things can appear quite suddenly and erratically, almost as if out of nowhere. That'll cause you big problems, as if you're always putting in effort just to stand still. And it's because your view is too short — the horizon is very close, where things can hit you without much warning. You need to get to higher ground where the horizon is further out and your view is both longer and broader, taking in the landscape all around you. * Keep focused on the end-goal, on the outcome you want * Take account of what's immovable in between * Evaluate what's moving, and understand the risk it poses on your path * Choose the optimum route to get to that destination * Work out a plan for the journey you're going to take * Test that plan as thoroughly as you can, so you're not unduly surprised * Break the whole thing down into achievable steps * Work out how you're going to know how you're getting on when your vision isn't as clear, when things get tough * Put in place the team and the equipment you'll need along the way How do you get going? What does a delivery strategy look like? In the second half of the show we talk more about how you can build a strategy, and some of what you should be including in your strategy. We talk about important elements, like … * Problem sourcing * A methodical practice for identifying problems in the business, proposing solutions, and determining priorities * Processes * The systems needed for what should be done at different stages of the organisational lifecycle * Tools and methods * The right practices of the right kind for the specific configuration and context of your team * Ways of working * What is the operating model for your team to work together, to achieve consistency and quality? * Documenting all the things * Creating the map for the journey you're going to be taking * Metrics * Understand the progress you're making — what gets measured gets managed