How scarey is raw, naked ambition?

I have written before about my teenage daughter. She is like many others of her generation, a mix of delightful and frustrating. This I think is typical and has been evidenced in her last year of GCSE's with an inability to get out of bed before noon (school days were a continual chase and perennial brinksmanship too), a difficulty to engage in the workload associated with GCSE's, at least until towards the final days, and a frequent attitude that the world owed her a living and she did not need to invest in it in order to be served. Everything was a deal, on her terms and the other party had to pay first.

I exaggerate slightly for effect, but only slightly and it is true that in the final days she knuckled down to revision and worked hard. Her results, which were better than I think even she expected, gave her tangible proof of the rewards of hard work.

Now she is sixth form (Rhetoric as it is called in her school). She wears a dark suit rather than a uniform. She says the teachers treat them more like adults and she is enjoying the first weeks of her new study courses. This is evidenced by her setting her own alarm and getting herself out to school, She was asked to address the whole school about the Duke of Edinburgh Awards (she is just about to get her silver) and even though she seems to have winged it, her performance has attracted praise from her peers and teachers alike.

This was evident at a recent evening for parents and pupils at which four teachers told us how good she was and that she has been asked to repeat the performance twice more. Of course there was a satisfied glow standing beside me.

Her tutor went further and said that she was now registering with senior staff for the right reasons and it was things like this that influenced decisions for head girl, etc. something I don't think she had contemplated. She was encouraged to take every opportunity to show service and leadership and like the actress she hopes to become she played up to that.

Today was the school open morning for prospective students and parents. Last night at 10:45pm she emailed the deputy head asking if he wanted any help(!). He replied and today she was up at school time and had me drive her to school for 9. She then did a morning of tours and when we collected her at around 2, claimed her voice was gone.

This would NOT have happened a year ago, maybe even a week ago, but I can see the plans hatching in her head and a campaign of presidential proportions lies ahead. Scarey or what?

PS: Writing this made me recall some work I did on a Dale Carnegie course over 25 years ago. The structure of the teaching was a series of principles around how to win friends and influence them. One of the principles was "Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to." This seems to fit into that mould.

Why would you not want the best? Are chameleons better placed?

I am wondering why, in a “contract” or “interim” world, a purchaser of resource would not want the best, or at least one with a proven record in the field in question?

This thought arises after two recent responses about being “too senior” or “over qualified” for roles after just a review of my CV. In both instances, this was against alternatives that were being described as “just OK," rather than “better." This is slightly frustrating as they were roles I have succeeded in before, would have enjoyed and was happy to commit to deliver. That should be win-win!

I know that for permanent employment one needs to be careful about expectations, but does the contract world not offer a different base; a way to buy the best resource you can for the time you agree at a price that suits both? To me the commitment from the company's side is so much greater with permanent and the price of a mistake is high. For hiring a contractor it is much less. But are the same criteria used for selecting both?

Is it a level of insecurity in the hiring manager that influences both permanent and contract hires? I have often heard that the world’s best leaders surround themselves with better people, they are not afraid to hire people who will contend for the senior role, indeed many purposely hire their likely successor in order to open their own opportunities. Is it the current lack of job security at the middle levels that is changing this? Or is it something else I am missing?

I am relatively new to the contract world, so I may well be missing something. While it might have been true that I could have taken on the hiring manager’s role as easily, that was not what I, as a contract/interim resource was offering. Having been on the other side of the table, so to speak, I honestly believe I have taken the best person on offer whenever faced with a decision. Over qualification being a good thing, if it raised the confidence in success; success for both of us.

Over the years I have seen great contractors and great permanent staff, the same way I have seen poor from both camps. There is no magic wand, but in general the better the people you have the higher your chance of success. Supporting this, at my daughter's school last night they were illustrating the strong correlation between effort and results and between effort and "value add." There is a similar link in delivering change.

The thought of “dumbing down” a CV has crossed my mind and been dismissed. Of course, the CV is not what gets you the job, but it gets you the chance to interview. In person, I back myself to impress, but one has to get to the playing field first.

I shall remain true to who I am, what I do and what I am good at. That includes personal agility, but without losing myself or  trying to be a chameleon. I am a change professional. It is what excites me and brings out the best. I enjoy shaping and leading change.

I wonder what experience others have, and if they would be interested to share them?

Solvency II and déjà vu.

I have to admit that I am old enough to have worked on implementation of the original Capital Adequacy Directive (CAD) back in the mid-80’s and I am experiencing déjà vu now with Solvency II (SII).

The trigger has been the number of roles around now asking for project/programme managers for insurance companies. These are pretty stringent asking for experience of both the insurance business and of SII. This combination is pretty rare for reasons I will explain, but the behaviour is not uncommon and happens whenever this type of change has hit the world of finance eg CAD, Basle, Basle 2 and now Solvency II. Interestingly I sense that Solvency I slipped by under the radar.

In principle all these changes have been focussed on building confidence in a specific sector of financial services (insurance in the case of SII) by requiring that senior management can articulate and understand (still a question there) the risk in their business and the make appropriate provision of capital to protect the business against foreseeable crisis. The need for capital has a significant impact on an organisations profitability and ability to grow and/or move into new markets. It needs for greater transparency and consistency in reporting, which for any complex business non-trivial and tends to create another internal industry to just crank the machine and report the numbers.

It is not unreasonable to expect senior management to understand the risk(s) there are managing, is it? Indeed there is a whole risk industry researching and modelling risk. Cynically, one could suggest that its prime intent is to justify a business decision and create an acceptable “small” number that purports to show the risk. One major organisation I know ran its primary trading limits as cash limits until not many years ago when ownership changed. I do believe that was in large part because the senior managers understood cash better than deltas or thetas and behaved more prudently when they were talking about gross positions of £500 million rather than a delta of £25 thousand.

Recent history is littered with evidence that risk is not well understood in many quarters, hence the drive for regulatory reporting and back to Solvency II.

So SII has been on the cards for a few years. I believe it is due to be implemented at the end of next year and that for many large organisations they are expected to be running “as if” from the last quarter of this year. So why are we now seeking so many project/programme managers? A bit late one might say.
In defence, businesses have had a lot to cope with in the last few years and indeed the details of the requirement were still under discussion until very recently (may still be as I haven’t checked recently). The other aspect is that in many cases this has been given to IT to effect, but this is not an IT change. Yes, they are part of the solution, but not the driver. It needs business ownership. I know the SFA have been banging this drum for a while, but still I wonder how many businesses really embraced it. That is other than the consultancies who see it as another gravy train and have looked to “support” their clients with views, presentations, reviews etc.

So now we are 12 months or so away and the realisation is there. It is a bit like the start lights on a grand prix grid. There is not amber as a warning, they just flash “go” and every driver tries to make the first corner in front or at least intact.

By definition there are few programme managers with any demonstrable experience in SII, everyone is learning the specifics as they go along. Similarly as this is new to Insurance the pool of relatively experienced programme managers who can show “insurance” on the CV is not huge. So we enter into a scrabble.

When I was helping start up an SII programme, over two years ago, I went to the SFA and managed to attract someone who was working in their side. He then moved with six months.
So the déjà vu element, well it seems like a perfect storm again, one that has been seen in Banking a few times. There is evidence of under-thinking, where companies hold out doing little looking for an industry solution or that it will be delayed or at best give it to IT. This can lead to the over-thinking that IT and some consultancies are guilty of where they get lost in the weeds, over analysing, over complicating, building disproportionate fear and resources.

Yes it is late to be doing this and there will be people who strive to take commercial advantage, but I do think there are ways to progress and they are:-

•    Make sure this is absolutely a business change, owned, driven and supported by the business. IT is important, but not paramount.
•    Pick relevant experience in the programme team. There is experience out there from other sectors who have faced essentially the same challenges. Don’t hold out for perfection as it probably doesn’t exist.
•    Keep perspective on the solution – the experience above can help. Don’t over-engineer a solution, make it just as complex as it needs to be, while striving for simplicity.

As they say learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

The last chance to make a difference in 2011!! Financial target golf and other joys.

As we enter September we are in the last effective session of 2011. This is important for all those who control budgets in companies that use calendar year accounting and have the pleasure of playing financial target golf, ie the need to meet this year’s targets in order to a) register strong performance in 2011 and b) protect/support budgets for 2012.

I have been a participant in this game a number of times as both a business budget holder and as head of a Corporate PMO and it plays out pretty much the same way each year. Let me summarise the path.

In these times of constraint  and competition for resources the budget for a new year is rarely enough to do all that is wanted/needed. As a result we start in January with a situation of over-demand.  Add to this the fact that there is nearly always some hangover from the previous year that will impact the early part of the new period. While there may be some financial accrual, if that is allowed, one cannot accrue human resources. As a result, in order to complete the existing book of work, one has to use current resources (both human and financial). This delays work on the new work, but does nothing to change the total appetite or expectation.

Consequently in the first half of the year there is usually a forecast overspend that is recognised in the detail, but no one wants to adjust the headline numbers. It also means that new, unexpected and thus unplanned items are challenged hard – they will just add to the overspend – and often discouraged, even if they do make more sense that some of the previous planned and communicated items. When one looks at the enterprise level the problem is very clear, but few business managers see past their immediate environment and how their change is absolutely essential to meeting their targets. (We can consider the management of objectives and rewards somewhere else at another time.)

This is usually the situation until May/June. We then hit the double bear pits of summer vacations and annual planning.

Summer vacations usually expose the over optimistic planning that seems to plague many aspects of business, change or BAU, these days. It takes distracts and removes many resources from planned endeavours in an unco-ordinated manner, eg you can rarely control when a key resource from a supplier or support function is away and while there may be cover it is rarely as good or efficient. Of course the natural laws say that the absence of key resources tend to be contiguous (ie adjacent and touching) to yours and each others’ creating an extended period of depleted resourcing. None of this is surprising yet is repeatedly ignored, year after year.

The second bear pit is the redirection of attention and thinking to planning for next year. Many big corporations look to lock down next year’s plan by October/November – we all know December is not a good time to get key Executive focus. This requires contributing plans to be submitted by September, requiring detailed work during July and August. With this happening and the impact of vacations, the current change and BAU continues on a best efforts basis with reduced executive oversight.

So we hit September. The kids are back in school and business leaders are back from vacation and realising how much they have still to do before year end. This is the first time that honesty hits in a big way. There is the sudden(and surprising?) realisation that not everything will be completed by year end. This will leave money unspent! When one is charged with hitting budget by plus/minus 1-2% this is a problem. If unaddressed it will also perpetuate the cycle of left over work from previous years impacting the plans for future years.

What to do? There is usually a scrabble to replan, co-ordinate, re-forecast and anything else that gives a sense of control and doing something. In practice this often has the opposite effect to that which is desired. It creates uncertainty and distraction when one is really trying to regain the traction lost over the summer and rush for completion by the end of November, less than three months away. I say November as increasingly December is a non-delivery month with IT freezes, staff forced to take unused leave and seasonal distractions.

The net effect is usually a significant forecast annual underspend. This does not mean that projects are coming in cheaper, but rather that the business cannot spend that which was budgeted in the time remaining. So now comes the second scrabble to find additional ways to spend money. Sounds nice, eh?

Well it is if one acts promptly. The  problem is that it takes time to spend money these days. In many businesses the primary costs are human costs. Additional resources take time to locate and onboard. When you only have around 12 weeks to spend the money, the loss of even a couple of weeks is significant and in fact it is usually more like 4 to 6 weeks. This presumes that your own governance processes can move fast enough to approve this “new” spend – this is not a given in a modern enterprise.

If one looks to purchase something significant, software, hardware, external consultancy, etc. then there is usually a considerable degree of “due diligence” to go through and this takes time. Of course it can be done, but takes focus and the willingness of many parties. I can of course be a win-win, allowing a supplier to book revenues in times for quarter and year end reporting (and of course commission and bonuses), but often it is more a financial tool that again adds to the over-run of activity into next year.

As year-end approaches the management of this financial target golf gets a little like holding a snake by the tail and trying to predict where its head is. This can become a pre-occupying activity if one is not careful.

So what?

The trick is to act quickly and act decisively. Do not to get caught up in bureaucratic delays, but do have the courage to make/take decisions that will move you in the right direction. What you do may not be perfectly correct, but you have time to fine-tune them if you get them started now.

If you are not perfect what is the worse that will happen? The worst is that you will overshoot your budget, but probably by less than you are currently undershooting. If this happens it will probably balance other undershooting functions. The best is that it gets you to or at least much closer to your target; a position from which a business finance person can probably bridge the gap.

Empower a small, group – they can move faster than a large group – and support them in reviewing recommendations quickly and then implementing them. Protect them from the inevitable politics.

Inaction is probably the worst response as every day of delay shortens the time you have to implement decisions and reduces the impact of those changes. As time goes by the decisions needed will get bigger and more frightening. Can you spot the dangerous spiral?

If you are not in this position, then please take a moment for a smug smile and hope you can achieve the same next year.

If you find yourself here for the first time, don’t be afraid to ask for help from others with experience.