Resetting your post-pandemic Pipeline

The pandemic pressures have heaped pressures on organisations, and as we emerge into the new state of normality those pressures have become even greater with many difficult decisions to be made.

How can we learn from the innovation seen in lockdown, embrace the global issues, build a new fit for purpose organisation, and deal with the initiatives that were important before?.

Demand is more diverse now, but then perhaps it is easier to see what is really important:

• The Previous pipeline of projects. Remember all those business cases and stakeholder pitches to arrive at the prioritised list of projects, or the Train if you are more SAFE orientated?.  What do we do with those now, and are the priorities still relevant. How do we deal with the teams assembled and the partners engaged?
• Urgent Covid 19 work to make the environment safe for our people, returning customers and suppliers coming onto our sites. Patching up broken supply chains, remodelling operations to keep the wheels turning. In some cases getting your first online sales and fulfilment capability up and running. A clear acceleration in innovation and problem solving.
• New post lockdown projects to maximise the new channels, and further look after our people, while reorganising how we operate. There is an opportunity how things are done and rebuild them from scratch, with a focus on simplification and responsiveness. 
• The big holistic topics such as equality, climate and exploitation. There are few organisations that have completely ignored these, and some who have openly embraced them, however the climate impact of the world being in lockdown, and recent equality catalysts have left many asking themselves "what more can we do?" and "did we really take these seriously enough?"  

All of the above to be dealt with at pace and with limited available funding.

1 Firstly grade each initiative as ready to go, initial idea or  in the process of shaping.

2 Revisit Values and culture statements and behaviour, aligning with the immediate strategy . Consider whether you have been direct enough so far on those big global issues.    

3 Decide on a burn rate - the rate at which your business can incur costs on projects and development initiatives, based on the resources available. Review this at least every two weeks while there are big unknowns attached to it. this redefines the diameter of the pipe

4 Be decisive on which items you want to and are able to work on over the next month as those where there is the most value.   Simplify them into small deliverables where the most value is delivered by the least effort. Assemble cross functional teams and avoid any functional silo initiatives.

5 Set up a responsive governance mechanism, where the oxygen of money and people is denied from all but the priority initiatives, and remove cumbersome bureaucracy. Give delivery teams a clear remit and accountability to deliver.  This is a key element to get right in balancing the need to manage cash closely but encouraging innovative thinking on the ground. Focus on delivering, rather than producing documents, unless they serve the outcome.

6 Recognise that the priorities will change on an ongoing basis, and each initiative will be working with a much higher degree of risk.  Be prepared to make the decisions that go hand in hand with this.

With so much to think about and consider , the pitfall to avoid is getting stuck into the Swirl of ongoing discussion and consideration. Put mechanisms in place to sort the wheat from the chaff and quickly get into the "doing", adjusting quickly when things don't work out as intended.

These types of work are very different beasts to be comparing head to head, so using the currency of Value can take some getting used to.

The important thing is to get going.