The missing engine room
One of the more alarming patterns I encounter in programmes is the stacking of governance. As programmes grow in size, cost and complexity, the trend is towards adding governance layers. Too often this is slowing decision making, adding cost and often neglecting the key to successful delivery. It’s understandable, given the spending of public money. But I fear that the art of creating, and curating the conditions for delivery is falling away in favour of governing harder, rather than enabling and empowering at the right level.
The poster child for this is risk management. Registers are gathered, fettled, formatted and forwarded. To be reviewed increasingly infrequently by seniors many layers removed from detail and context. Worse, as pressure and responsibility grows. The well intended desire to put control in the hands of the most senior leaders - (often the most contended people in the organisation.) creates delays and bottlenecks. It happens outside of risk management too of course. A blooming of sub committees and boards. Of reports and dashboards.
That’s not to say that this approach is completely impotent. It’s not the busyness that results in stuck programmes. SROs and stakeholders with real clout can, and do make a big difference. But there is a significant issue. Cross boundary structural blockers are not single-decision problems. They need sustained effort from multi-functional teams. Risks that sit within a single zone of control are sometimes tractable. Senior leaders alone are the wrong tool to make continuous, deep improvement to delivery conditions.
To unpack that a bit. What I am referring to as systemic blockers are things that meet the following criteria.
- They cross team, project or portfolio boundaries. So no single team can clear them alone.
- It’s a condition of delivery. Not a deliverable. It’s the machine that the delivery runs on. (Governance load, overheads, contract friction etc.)
- They are complex, and dependent on multiple, often changing factors. And so cannot be resolved by a decision alone.
These are the blockers that quietly climb the stack as they grow. Common across teams and projects. Often existing in different prose across the risk registers of many teams. Big, usually systemic. They need running to ground with dedicated, empowered effort.
Delivery teams are accountable for their bit of the work. But increasingly nobody is accountable for the conditions the work is done within. And worse, the more prevalent and embedded the issue is. The less likely the default governance models are to be able to tackle it. The amber trap is sprung.
What’s missing in almost every big programme I’ve encountered, is that engine room. A team (or teams) whose purpose is the clearance of systemic blockers. Not just greasing the machinery of delivery, but the continuous replacement and improvement of it. Same RAID logs and risk registers (although these should be dramatically simplified in my view as they have become an industry in their own right.) But different consumers. No new data required, no new reports or sub-committees. Just an active, empowered team acting to create the conditions for delivery. Reaching up to the SRO only for targeted, evidenced requests where rank is genuinely the unblocking force required.
Ironically, the frameworks don't preclude these teams. The Teal Book recommends the work: reading the register in aggregate to find common causes (21.6.3.3), and giving systemic issues a single owner even across many teams (21.6.1.3). It stops short of telling you to build a team to do it. But it recognises the need, recommends the steps, and permits the vehicle.
There is even allowance (13.3.9) that enabling work can be constituted as a work package inside a programme. So if you did want to form a team to act. You can.
The rules allow it. It’s entirely possible. And yet these functions are absent from the majority of programmes and portfolios I’ve encountered. At least in a way that can properly grip the systemic stuff. Instead it feels like the habit has become to try and govern harder. To put in place more and more assurance and oversight to prevent problems. But proportionally less of the machinery that can solve them. There are hard working PMO teams everywhere. But most are swallowed up by the administrative load that increases as assurance layers are added.
And that’s important. To be really clear. I am not suggesting another board, panel or sub-committee. This is not a governance layer. It is an empowered, multi functional delivery team. Formed with the skills and knowledge to tackle the problem slowing teams.. It takes the blockers off the teams so the teams can hold their course. Its purpose is to reduce friction.
If this sounds a bit hypothetical, that’s because it is. Almost. It’s not without precedent. I have successfully established a version of it through my first career. Albeit more by necessity than design. And I’ve seen the seeds of it in other organisations in my second. But it is a break from the dominant norm. I suspect the reasons for that include: Inertia, habit, even cookie cutter government procurement routes buying in templated roles to run programmes. Rather than building around the principles set out, and continuously iterated by the teams supporting the coloured books. Be honest, when was the last time you actually read them?
I’ll be honest about where I am writing from. I’m not writing about this from the outside throwing rocks. I helped design a lightweight programme with a version of this built in which is alive in the world. And I am currently in a team trying to establish a version of it within a vast, complex nest of programmes. It’s delicate but I’m hopeful that we will be able to show our worth in a way that we can share some day in a way that will help others.
What inspired this wasn’t these fragile examples. It was over a decade working in the shadow of their absence. Growing governance costs, frustrating delivery conditions and slow delivery. Making it hard to get things done doesn’t just cost money. It costs you people. Ultimately, both lead to critical government deliveries stalling in the face of increasing pressure.
The frameworks allow the approach. The symptoms demand a change of approach. And the impact is of national importance. Now we have to do something to restart the engine rooms of delivery.