Organizational Agility

I’m sharing a series of articles inspired by and/or summarizing my experience at the online Impact Summit hosted September 18-22, 2023 by PMO (Project Management Office) Strategies and its CEO Laura Barnard.

~Dori Gilbert, my jam is PMO Optimization for Business Agility

5 of 8 - Organizational Agility

The goal of organizational agility is to be able to adapt and change quickly in a rapidly changing and ambiguous business environment.?

Technology alone can’t help. We must set up our data, our culture, our strategic alignment, and our skills so that we can get the most from our processes and tools. Our project frameworks must be adaptable and scalable.?

In the sessions I attended, thought leadership was shared on:

• Data Quality to help navigate uncertainty
• Using Outcomes to problem-solve
• Organizational planning for tough times
• Aligning Strategy and developing a Strategy Delivery Office (SDO)

All these topics were a relevant part of the discussion around project impact and business agility, but I’ll focus on data quality and planning for tough times as the outcomes and strategy delivery topics have been covered in article 2. Change management was also addressed in some sessions, but I deprioritized those sessions, since I keep my eyes on change management in other ways.

Data Quality in Project Management

Thought Leader Marcus Glowasz spoke about how the pace of change is increasing. He said we will not be able to keep up with tomorrow’s pace using today’s processes. There is so much change, project management will not be able to keep up with the demands from business. And/or the business will not be able to handle all the change that project management is able to deliver.?

He warned against focusing only on short-term tactical changes. Stay in touch with the strategic goals. The trick, he said, is to balance management rigor with increased agility. (See image).

He said not to treat complexity with more complexity. I also love this advice, “take advantage of complexity and uncertainty. Explore it instead of fighting it.” I have a feeling I’ll be writing more on that later!?

From Clean Data to Information Flow

If we can allow information to flow freely in an organization, we can focus on risk prevention rather than mitigation, faster decision-making, access to learning quickly by partnering with AI, and then collaboration will become easier.?

Marcus discussed ways to improve information flow. The quality of information must include lessons learned, even what is perceived as “bad.” Adaptation, he said, relies massively on insights and insights rely on diversity. Culturally we need to support inconvenient truths, what might not work, and embarrassing mistakes so that they can become part of the record. He even suggested a “pre-mortem” where you get all the cynics in a room and let them share what could go wrong with a project!?

As part of becoming adaptable, he suggested simplifying where possible, empowering people, and treating knowledge as an asset. And so much more! I really do think we need to consider our project information architecture and design it to be adaptable for a future of rapid change.?

How the PMO can Build Resiliency

Thought Leader Hussain Bandukwala (who has PMO-related training in LinkedIn Learning) shared some great ideas for the PMO to help build resiliency for any cash downturns an organization might experience. He focused on five areas:?

• Improve operational efficiency so you don’t have to cut headcount
• Workforce agility - skills alignment and flex contracting
• Control expenditures and cash flow
• Increase personnel throughput - cross training
• Strengthen internal communication with more transparency

The PMO can help make sure solid prioritization procedures are in place, help the People Management function with knowledge of skills needed, assist Finance with tracking expenditures on projects, cross train staff in project management, and become a stronger partner in cascaded communication throughout project teams. And these will help in rough times and in good!

My Take: Optimizing the PMO for Business Agility

I am passionate about brainstorming, and I enjoy conversations to develop specific actions around building agility. I have already had ideas around information architecture, like internal AI assisted wikis, self-serve dashboards and user training and practice environments. With the ideas that Marcus presented, I think we need to really look at our data quality and integrity ecosystem, too. Once we can offer simple and informed data entry, we can expand AI’s intelligence and our intuition, even and especially with the rough topics included.?

I also love the idea of partnering with the folks responsible for People development to make sure the skills portfolio is versatile and contract staff can be called in as needed.

I agree with Hussain that the PMO is poised to help cascade communications. Once we have an adaptable information architecture in place, the PMO can augment their relationships with access to timely and relevant information about projects, organizational goals, and other related topics.

Contact me and let's ideate!