Don’t Let Big Misses Lead to Digital Messes

For a decade, we have been swamped with pundits selling bumper stickers extolling the arrival of a new, greater Digital World of the promised Fourth Industrial Revolution. Yet in over 200 Prometheus Endeavor (PE) interviews with executives of legacy enterprises who saw digital investments potential, 90% of the executives and stakeholders expressed:

• Frequent failures
• Frustration with progress
• Questionable material benefits, if any
• Surprising costs to sustain …

… related to large scale Digital and Information Technology (D&IT) efforts.

One industrial products CEO said “We approached the AI based customer self-service portal as just a set of IT projects. There was little or no thought that we were unprepared to adequately define the project. We had not determined what enabling programs would be required. We were clueless as to how our poorly conceived projects would link, evolve and need ongoing refresh and support for us to achieve our desired outcomes. We wasted a lot of time and money trying classic project and program management to turn an aspiration into a success. A higher level of leadership, consideration, oversight and management was needed.”

Granted, we heard of hundreds of successfully targeted digital projects or programs. Enterprises have been at the Digital game for over a decade, but with larger or more complex efforts, the successes were few, isolated and far between. So, Prometheus Endeavor asked the digital and large-scale effort proponents:

1. What were your Big Misses on the D&IT journey?
2. What went wrong?
3. What should have been done differently?

In this new series of blogs, PE will address these Big Misses and what could have been done to prevent or mitigate them. We will address Big Miss 1 in this blog.

Big Miss 1: Digital Endeavors are not more of the same old IT projects … NOT the Same Circus with Different Clowns:

This first common Big Miss theme is:

• Major D&IT efforts that founder are approached and managed using familiar techniques: pilots, projects, or programs.
• These techniques are narrowly focused and don’t deal with all the factors and contingencies of visionary and transformative D&IT Endeavors.
• Success requires leaders and enablers recognizing they are dealing with a very broad and impactful D&IT Endeavor that transcends these familiar management techniques.

In legacy enterprises, the IT game has been played internally with well-defined goals, requirements, outcomes, proven methodologies and experienced players.

The D&IT game is very different. New and often external questions arise:

• Who are the Stakeholders of a D&IT large-scale Endeavor? 
• What is the Context?…the emerging regulatory, competition, cultural or other external forces that result in unanticipated impacts and changes of direction? 
• What governs the adoption of the D&IT Endeavor?
• Does the enterprise have the mature skills, technologies and processes needed to be successful?
• Will inertia or resistance (existing culture, markets, practices, behaviors, incentives) inhibit the Endeavor?

At Prometheus we have identified 3 key differences:

1. Two D&IT Endeavor factors, Context and Stakeholders, emerge beyond the enterprise and have extraordinary impacts and influence. 
2. Few enterprises have the appropriate experience, methodologies, and skills to lead and ensure Endeavor success.
3. Endeavor goals, scale, and scope are rarely well understood at the start. 

Existing enterprises trying to succeed with digital endeavors find themselves confronting new Grand Challenges or Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). Many non-profit organizations and NGOs struggling with their master plan BHAGs, need to master the art of balancing expenses with fund-raising, navigate legal barriers, overcome cultural resistance, and anticipate stakeholder reactions and acceptance.

All these cases are dealing with the Endeavor’s evolving context and stakeholders where classical (project or program) management isn’t enough. New Digital large-scale Endeavors require people and processes to do things they’ve not done before, or to do them in new ways.  A few rare individuals like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk are the kind of executive “Happenators” needed to envision, create, deliver, and continually enhance D&IT based transformative efforts. The rest of us mere mortals don’t have those inherent talents. A framework is called for to guide us along a path to success.

D&IT Endeavors cannot be approached as the same old management challenge. Using our circus metaphor for existing enterprises, Digital is a new circus, no longer contained in just three rings, relying on the existing cast (of clowns). There is a new kind of audience interested in different acts and outcomes, outside the old familiar big top tent of the past.

A comparison of the familiar project and program management techniques to the emerging Endeavor management issues helps:

New approaches to leadership, structures, and techniques in an Endeavor management framework will lead to more successful outcomes.

 In the remainder of this Prometheus Endeavor blog series, we will discuss the other Big Misses and present what Endeavor leaders should be doing to achieve better outcomes. Our next blog will introduce how this new game has changed the fundamental “Power Corridor” and Management approach.