Project Authority
by Chris Boyle
President
The Ben Graham Group
© Copyright 2006, The Ben Graham Group. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to post, print and distribute this document in its
original PDF format.When a
project is carried out using the Graham Approach, one of the first steps is to
identify a project authority – the single someone who can rap the gavel.
Factual data has been collected. Detailed process maps have been drawn.
Analysis has been completed by the best possible resources available -- the
people who do the work. The recommendations are thorough and well thought out.
Now is the time for decisions. Good decisions will be made, quickly, when the
project authority plays a brief but active role in making these decisions.
An alternative is to use a steering committee model where recommendations are
brought to a group for group decision. The steering committee approach will
pretty much ensure that decisions will drag out for months often fading away
to no decision at all.
The term steering committee is itself, highly ironic. Just imagine a transport
truck hurtling down the highway with a committee behind the wheel. Or a ship
moving into a harbor under the control of a committee of pilots. My first hand
experience of steering by committee was teaching our teenagers how to drive.
The teen was in the driver’s seat. Dad was in the front passenger seat and Mom
was positioned in the back seat with a clear view of the speedometer. Anyone
with first hand knowledge of this scenario recognizes a situation
characterized by frustration, stress, contradiction and sheer terror! The only
effective (read “safe”) way to resolve this situation is to travel very
slowly. This compromise satisfies no one and quickly impacts, negatively,
every other driver on the road.
Yet we continue to manage corporate projects by steering committee – with much
the same results: slow progress; high stress; and negative impact on all of
the surrounding work.
When we use the Graham Approach we establish ideal conditions to get the best
possible recommendations. Comprehensive detailed process facts are displayed
on an easy-to-read process map. The map is thoroughly analyzed by the highly
qualified group of people who actually do the work. This group finds the
recommendations for change. This group fully supports these recommendations.
All the team needs is decisions so that they can get on with implementation.
We get these decisions by having the analysis team present their
recommendations to the management team at a meeting chaired by the project
authority.
The project authority is the lowest ranking individual whose authority spans
everyone affected by the process under review.
At the beginning of the project we identify the project authority and request
a brief meeting. During the meeting we brief the project authority on how the
project will proceed and we say: “We are using the Graham Approach. At the
conclusion of the project, the team of your people who actually do the work
would like to present their recommendations. This presentation will be at a
meeting comprising you and the managers of the areas involved with the
process. At that meeting we will present, and be prepared to defend, every
recommendation. We will come with the expectation that you will make a
decision on each recommendation (and we will recognize that ‘no’ is one
possible decision). Would that be OK?”
Every project authority I have worked with has recognized the benefits of
making quick decisions on good recommendations and, has agreed.
As analysis progresses, we then arrange another brief meeting with the project
authority. At that meeting we ask him or her to chair the meeting. We indicate
that we will start the meeting by reading through the entire report (our
reports are short so the reading usually takes only five or six minutes). Then
we will go back to the first recommendation and begin dealing with them one by
one. Each recommendation is discussed. When the managers have questions, the
team members provide immediate answers. After discussion, the project
authority looks around the table to the other managers and says something
along the lines of “I guess that looks like a yes...”
Many recommendations are in management’s “zone of indifference” and receive
easy approval. We always advise management that if they need to say “no” to a
recommendation, that is OK, but it will not mean no for the entire project
because most of the recommendations are independent of each other (This is
because the process maps enable the team to work at what we call “the
elemental level”.) It is better to have one recommendation rejected than to
hold up an entire list of good recommendations. If management needs to say
“no”, it may be because management knows something that the analysis team does
not know.
Sometimes management will be unwilling to accept a recommendation without
further work. More analysis is required. In this case we recommend that the
project authority delegate the additional analysis. We also recommend
delegating the decision to an appropriate manager. This decision should be
made within one or two weeks (with the time frame established up front). If
the decision is going to take longer, it will default to the “rejected”
column.
We recommend not releasing a copy of the recommendations prior to the
presentation meeting. The reason for not releasing ahead of time is that these
recommendations are not intended to stand on their own. They are intended to
be elaborated on and supported by the people who have spent a great deal of
time doing thorough analysis. In the absence of supporting voices, there is a
real danger that individual managers will jump to invalid conclusions.
Unfortunately these invalid conclusions can have serious political
repercussions at proposal presentation (This is the concept of “completed
staff work” where the staff that did the analysis is available to answer
questions when the report is read.)
We sometimes run into the objection: “That will never work here. Our
management needs to see a copy ahead of time. That’s the way we’ve always done
it.” We are not suggesting that management be blind-sided the day before the
presentation with a refusal to release the report. Address this issue with the
project authority during the first meeting: “Oh, by the way, we will not be
releasing the proposal ahead of time, because it is not intended to be a
stand-alone document.”
In summary, find the single someone who can rap the gavel, get decisions and
get on with implementation!
____________________
Chris Boyle is president of The Ben Graham Group in Winnipeg, MB and has been
working with the Graham methodology for over twenty-five years. Chris has
recently facilitated projects in such diverse organizations as a nuclear
generating station, a college, a smelting company and a judicial prosecutions
office. Visit the Ben Graham Group website at
www.bengraham.com
