The final step in change? I wonder!

Those that know me will know I have long been a keen supporter of benefit management in my professional world of change. By this I mean a keen focus on making sure that any change I am involved with delivers the benefit that is expected.

Sounds simple, eh? Well for often it seems not.

Historically project management techniques and tools focussed on the organisation and scheduling of activities ie doing things. Having a meeting counted in this respect, whether or not any decision was made. Similarly doing three months analysis would count, but need not have produced an actionable report or design.

Then methodologies like PRINCE and PRINCE2 started pushing the focus on "products" ie tangible outputs. Simply put reaching a decision was more important than the number of meetings you had to reach it, producing a signed off report or design was more important than having any number of workshops. Of course one needed to manage the activities, but success was judged on output.

More recently there has been a push to benefits ie just creating the products is not enough. Instead the use of the created products to generate the expected outcome is the driving measure of success. This has proved more difficult to embed in behaviour as responsibility for the use of products does not rest with the project manager, but rather with the business.

All this is by way of background as recently I was asked what are the developments in managing portfolios of change; my answer was themes. This is broadly speaking a focus on a broader set of related benefits and is increasingly important as businesses and their related change becomes more broader in impact, more complex in impact and dependencies and thus less discrete. At the same time the resources to deliver change are not keeping pace with demand so choices have to be made.

A case in point is the world of regulatory change in financial services where there is a tsunami of regulation coming from all quarters. Each could be and often is dealt with in isolation, but this brings inefficiency and inconsistency. Instead one could bundle change under four themes....no matter the source of individual components. The themes I have in mind "Product" ie what does the company create and offer to its clients, "Conduct of Business" ie how does it do business and interact with its clients, "Markets" ie how does the firm transact its business in the markets and "Infrastructure" ie how does the firm organise itself. Pretty much all change could be grouped under these largely discrete themes. Of course decisions within the theme are largely benefit driven, but the key is to keep perspective within the theme and leverage across it.

I see this appearing more and more and wonder if this is the ultimate focus for progressive change professional? If it is not, I struggle to see where it can go next.

Any thoughts in support of or challenge to the thematic approach to change?