Blog: Challenges in “Accessing Delivery Professional Capital”

For those who don’t know me, I grew up in a low socio-economic background—not quite working class, as neither of my parents worked! And I have experienced firsthand the challenges and impacts of having limited or no access to social capital!

I often share three examples to illustrate this:

• We had to ask our family GP to sign the back of our passport photos, and they would charge us for it! We didn’t know anyone who fit the criteria and could do it and so that was our only choice.
• My school work experience was in a barbers - ?Barnets in Brighton (best barbers in Sussex), although I had no plans to cut hair. I struggled to cut paper straight – let alone a fringe – it was the only place, I could find – my cousin worked there!.
• Whenever I applied for a job, my first draft was always my final submission because I had no one to provide a peer review of my application or provide guidance/feedback. It was what it was.

I remember the first time a friend asked me to sign the back of their passport picture. I felt like I’d made it! #baller

These experiences made me painfully aware the impact that poor access to social capital can be limiting.

This got me thinking about the advantages or challenges of access to “professional delivery capital”. What do I mean by ?Delivery Professional Capital? This is my attempt at a definition:

Delivery professional capital refers to the networks, expertise, and experience that project professionals can access through their organisation, personal and peer networks, or by engaging third-party services such as educational institutions, professional memberships, or consultancy support. (Thanks ChatGPT – don’t listen to the haters)

?I am lucky with my professional network and the value it provides me.? Just this week, I turned to my network to help me solve a knotty issue. A colleague of mine said,

“I wouldn’t know who I could ask if that was me”

Adding to that, awhile back a friend asked me

“if I knew of any good and cheap risk register course”,

He was approached by a local authority as they were keen to introduce new (a) risk management practices into their delivery team.

I said “they don’t do risk management?” (whether you think risk registers are a good thing, that’s a separate conversation )

The response was, well no one in the delivery team has risk management experience, and they don’t have the budget to bring in a risk manager or 3rd party support. But they want to develop this capability – they have access issues.

Lastly, this week, I ?was introduced to someone who had some questions on benchmarking, and I was able to be introduced to them through my network and we had a great conversation around the topic, sharing ideas and thoughts (feel free if you want to reach out to me on the subject)

These examples, and many more, got me thinking about the barriers (see below- feel free to add your own) of access to Delivery Professional Capital and the impact that this can have on successful project delivery. A key cornerstone of good project delivery is the availability and access to experience and expertise, particularly in project development and decision-making and throughout the lifecycle – and not having access to expertise, experience, or support – is an issue.

?

What are the potential barriers?

Like social capital, there are several barriers and these include:

• Access to Further or Continuing Development: Entry requirements, course costs, time constraints, and the cost of professional memberships can all be obstacles.
• Organisational Ability to Pay Competitive Salaries: Delivery organisations, local authorities, and others often face challenges related to CAPEX vs. OPEX, which can impact their ability to attract and retain talent.
• Budget Constraints: The ability to raise budgets for procuring external or third-party support to help you mitigate and manage project and organisational delivery capability may be constrained
• Knowledge transfer: Knowledge transfer is often an afterthought and the opportunity to review, consolidate, and absorb new learning and insight is often missed.
• Organisational Culture: Some organisations may not prioritise investing in education or professional development opportunities.
• Talent Availability: The availability of skilled professionals can be a significant barrier – particularly in our sector, And we often see a migration of talent from delivery organisations to consultancies. ?Leading to a "Pooling of brains" ring fenced and accessed at a premium
• Access to Industry Veterans: Tapping into the knowledge and experience of highly skilled, semi-retired industry veterans (outside of standard frameworks, routes to market) can be challenging.

?What Can Be Done?

Just as with social capital, there's no quick or simple fix for building delivery professional capital. However, by adapting the now-defunct "leveling up" social and economic policy, I believe there's a pressing need to "level up" delivery organizations. Many of these organisations have been de-skilled and under-invested, particularly due to a focus on cutting or reducing operational costs (OPEX), which likely impacts project performance and drives up project costs (CAPEX).

For every pound we save on OPEX, it costs us significantly more on CAPEX.

There’s probably a PhD thesis tn there somewhere

Lastly, the above, and due to my personal experience, is why I am passionate about leveraging my network to make expertise and experience, more accessible for all through new bite-size courses.

Feel free to connect/follow for updates.

Feel free to comment/add/challenge