In Search of Lost Time – aligning Time across your Projects, Programmes and Portfolio.

‘What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.’ St Augustine

I first came across the definition of a project as a ‘temporary organisation’ a few years ago and it fundamentally changed the way I thought about change management. This definition emphasises that one of the main differences between a project and a ‘permanent organisation’ (like the organisation the project sits in) is that for the project ‘time is always running out since it is finite from the start’ (Lundin and Soderholm, 1995) whereas the permanent organisation – ‘the company’ – acts as if it is ‘immortal’. Given how fundamental time is to us I felt certain this difference in ‘organisational time’ must drive a difference in how we operate within those organisations.

As a change professional time, along with cost and quality, should be fairly constant obsessions. But the relationship most change methodologies have with time is simplistic and objective. Time is simply a fixed ruler - something to be tracked and managed against. Our approach to it has moved on little from the first wave of project management methodologies in the 50’s.

Compare this to how the approach to ‘quality’ has developed over the years. Quality was originally managed as a series of objective measures to be tracked against on a product description. However following what I think of as ‘the subjective revolution’ quality was seen as something dependent on the subjective experience of key stakeholders (‘what is value to the senior stakeholders’?) and, more importantly, the effective programme manager actively engaged with their stakeholders to both understand and help shape what that value looks like, thus helping to ensure success.

So could there be value from exploring a similarly subjective approach to time in the change management space? And what could this even look like? Personal experience strongly suggests our relationship to time is complex – we’ve all experienced moments where hours feel like minutes (usually in the run-up to a deliverable deadline) and minutes felt like hours (usually in the Programme Board where that deliverable is being presented). More significantly there’s plenty of evidence that not only people but organisations and whole cultures work to their own temporal codes. Erin Meyer in her wonderful book ‘The Culture Map’ talks of cultures working on a spectrum from ‘linear-time’ to ‘flexible-time’ – time is hard and the focus is on deadlines or time is fluid and the focus is on adaptability and fluidity. Understanding what temporal codes the organisation works towards is critical to understanding how to manage that organisation in the most efficient fashion.

Temporal Codes:

So, what temporal codes might help us understand how change organisations operate? Well, the academic literature abounds with different models for looking at time and how we relate to time. The two models I find most practical are Clock vs Event Time which captures how we relate to the pacing of time and Linear vs Cyclical time which captures how we relate to the progression of events around us.

Clock Time vs Event Time is sometimes known as (and best thought of as) Chronos vs Kairos after Chronos - the Greek God of Time and Kairos – the Greek Personification of Opportunity or Happy Accidents. An organisation, group or person operating to clock time performs its functions based on clear and regular time periods where the ticking of the clock is king. Event time groups operate based on the flow of necessary events, taking the opportunity where it arises, to reach a set goal – think of pre-industrial society where the farmers life was not driven by any sort of clock but the rise and fall of the sun, the onset of spring and the growth of the harvest – far more event-driven than clock driven with the development of events driving ones focus and resource allocation. If we look at this in the context of change management we instantly see the juxtaposition between the ‘clock time’ driven project plan (with its milestones measured against a calendar dictating success) versus the reality of the project manager seeing delivery as a series of events that need to occur (draft TOM, establish integration approach, build product A, test product A etc.) building towards a final goal.

Linear vs Cyclical is easier to conceptualise. A group operating with a linear-time mindset see the future moving in one direction, forward and often towards a clear (and usually better) end-goal. A group operating to cyclical time inevitably sees their progress bounded by a regular, repeating cycle that provides the drumbeat of their movement through time. An example may help – the Programme Director should be sitting with a clear vision of the future and the major steps to get there and predominantly operates within a Linear Time-Code showing how the programme will achieve its goal. The Finance Director sees the organisation primarily through the lens of the annual financial planning cycle which, on a regular basis, dictates what can be spent and tracks spend against that – the Finance Director operates to an annual cyclical code.

If you combine these two codes in a 4by4 you get an interesting framework from which to explore the time codes that any organisation operates to:

For instance, a simple and perfectly predictable project can be said to operate to linear clock-time – it is going in a clear direction to a clear pace. The financial cycle of a permanent organisation can be said to operate to cyclical clock-time – perfectly regulated to key calendar dates on an annual and repeatable basis.

More interestingly large, complex programmes can be said, at their highest level, to operate to linear event-time – it progresses in a general and (relatively) clear direction (i.e. to a ‘better’ position) but in a way that is relatively uncoupled to the movement of time and far closer coupled to the delivery of major achievements or events. 

Probably the most conceptually challenging would be cyclical event-time organisations – there is considerable debate over whether it can even be considered to apply to organisations as opposed to trends in industries or polities. For instance, the shift of society from liberal to conservative and back again or the shift of industry from being vertically integrated to horizontally integrated and back again can be considered cyclical and event-driven.

Many People, Many Timecodes:

And if organisations might operate to different timecodes – well so what? For me, the really interesting aspect of this is that within any organisation of even moderate complexity there will be numerous groupings all of which operate to different time codes – driving their priorities and pace, their focus and attention. There is a growing body of literature that argues for the acceptance of a multi-temporal view of organisations where different time-codes overlap at the individual, team, organisation and, indeed, cultural layer. And a growing body of literature that discusses the damage done by mismanagement or ignorance of the inevitable misalignment of these time codes. This is particularly evident in those most time-sensitive of organisations – the Major Change Programmes.

The position I’m often privileged to fill in Major Change Programmes is that of the PMO Manager and from this vantage point, I tend to dictate one major timecode of the organisation whilst managing its misalignment with a number of others.

As PMO Manager I tend to operate primarily to the Governance Cycle with my activity dictated by the regular cycle and interaction between the project and programme boards. The main tool I use for this tends to be a combination of ‘Gardening Calendar’ (listing the Boards) and information flow diagram (showing how the various streams of information and decisions flow between the various boards). My focus and the focus of my team tends to be cyclical and clock-time driven as the governance structure (and activities and data-collection into the structure) tends to be linked to specific dates.

However, the Programme Manager operates to a very different time-code – linear and event-driven based around the major activities that need to be successfully completed. This will be captured across a number of artefacts including the Blueprint and the Programme Plan but, given the complexity of the undertaking, the hard dates will be guidelines rather than points of absolute certainty. Certainty will come from knowing the order of major events and stages and how they build towards an end-points leaving him free to look for opportunities whilst manage risk.

If we pull across to the Financial Manager for the Programme their focus will be linear and clock-driven. For them, there is a hard link between the cost per day of their programme and the number of days it is expected to run (as dictated in the Business Case and Programme Plan). Time passes and time is money.

Drop down to the delivery level and you’ll tend to find a mix of linear and clock-driven at the task-management level or linear and cyclical as individuals work within a weekly cycle of deliver, report, deliver, report….

One world, many lenses:

So far so good – but how does that help you, the busy Programme Manager. There’s a wonderful book, by Mary Midgley (2011) called ‘the myths we live by’ that proposes that there is no one perfect and perfectly insightful view of the world. The insightful individual does not have access to a single privileged view of reality but access to a range of different ‘lenses’ through which to see a particular situation and judge the best course of action. For instance, the well-armed programme manager will see their programme through a design lens, a risk lens, an organisational lens and a social lens (to name but a few) and have the insight to meld the information from those different lenses in a way that drives effective decision making.

A time-code lens can be an incredibly powerful lens through which to understand some of the machinery of the programme. For instance Figure 1 articulates a classic time-code clash that occurs on a major programme.

At the bottom of the diagram, we see the workstream leads and deliverers of the project operating to a simple linear homogeneous/clock-driven timeline. There are tasks that need to be delivered, they will take a certain amount of time and are likely to be completed by a certain date. Wrapping around this activity, though, is the governance cycle imposed by the PMO – as discussed the PMO tends to operate to clock-driven and stable weekly/monthly cycle of forums that provide the formal tracking and decision making function of the programme. Often the timelines the workstream leads are operating to will find themselves artificially changed and adapted to fit into the decision making and approval cycle of the programme. And all of this works within the linear and heterogeneous/event-driven overarching structure of the Programme Manager that tends to focus on an end-point and the major events/goals that need to occur on the journey to that end goal. Each group has a different focus, and each group focus may be at odds with each other – as the workstream leads who have to provide his deliverable a week before they were expecting to fit into the Programme Board paper distribution cycle would discover.

Fig 1. Classic Time Codes on a Major Programme

Temporary Organisation in a Permanent World:

Another area of major clash is between the portfolio level and the programme level – or rather between the temporary organisation (the programme) and the permanent organisation. Where the Programme, at its highest level, works to an event-driven linear timeline the Portfolio inevitably works to a time-driven cycle – usually annual to align with the financial cycle. This can drive a misalignment of organisational reporting with the programme being forced to predict cost and resource needs to the timings of the permanent organisation rather than aligned to more ‘natural’ programme stage ends. For instance one major programme I operated on pulled its testing phases artificially early so as to ensure the cost landed within a specific portfolio financial cycle and then experienced significant pain from having to shift that testing one month into the new funding period. This single month shift was nothing within the timeline of the 3-year programme and the wider events occurring within that programme however within the time code of the Portfolio it was extremely significant.

Managing your Temporal Codes:

So how can the lens of temporal codes be practically used to support delivery of change. I see intervention at 3 levels:

1.      Temporal awareness – simply being aware that individuals, and therefore different groups, operate to different temporal codes is a massive step forward in this space. Identifying a group's temporal code can help you understand their focus and priorities and identifying misalignment can help understand the root cause of problems or inefficiencies.

2.      Temporal engineering – crudely put this means spotting a misalignment and manufacturing a solution to reduce that misalignment. Classic examples would include providing significant contingency between the portfolio and programme level to smooth out the uncertainty of programme delivery within the hard time cycle of the portfolio or adopting retrospective governance that allows the workstream level to continue to deliver at its own pace whilst achieving sign-off retrospectively when the governance cycle occurs.

3.      Temporal alignment – most effective of all is aligning your temporal code across your change culture. Clearly, this is no mean fete but even just to sensibly align within the programme is a major step forward. In practice this involves the programme adopting a linear, event-driven mentality whilst being extremely conscious of any artificial blocks created by organisationally imposed ‘artificial’ or external governance points.

Through these approaches, you can start to both understand and work with the many temporal codes that will be working within your organisation. In this way, time can stop being simply a resource that bookends what you can achieve and starts to become a tool to help you align your change community and have them deliver faster than ever.

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Bibliography:

Midgley, M. (2011). The myths we live by. Taylor & Francis.

Meyer, E. (2014). The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures. PublicAffairs.