Managing the financial impacts of change

I've had a few discussions lately about financial control in a change and project environment. Too much to discuss in detail here, but here's a 'top of my head' list of the things that you might do to keep financial control of your project;

• Build a narrative business case, and detailed plan;
• Align that to detailed numbers - implementation (revenue) expenses, capital expenses phased to show cashflow (cash is king!), and benefits case - what will be delivered when and what will the real impacts be;
• Develop a risk weighted NPV - use factors such as 'do we know how to do this?', 'do we have the resources?', 'budget?' to show an NPV - over time improve the NPV by adjusting the risk factors as you satisfy yourself that you can achieve it. The NPV (or ROCE) is a great measure to show expected financial outcomes.
• use qualitative measures to support your numbers (which of course you will monitor in detail weekly/monthly!) - are deliverables being completed or is there a bow-wave of activity building up with consequent cashflow impact, are the numbers and criticality of open issues/risks increasing etc
• Use graphs to compare measures - see the relatives as well as the absolutes.
• Make sure any numbers that you use are reconciled to source data (ie; are accurate), and preferably 'triangulated' to two sources

With proper (basic) systems and processes, much of this monitoring can be automated!

Enough for now!

Why do we deliver change...to create value

We deliver change to create value - that's it. I've written on this subject before but given one or two discussions I've had recently thought it worth reiterating the point.

Change is a difficult thing. But it must always have an ultimate goal - in corporate life we deliver change because it creates shareholder value (it is difficult to see any other reason), and in the social and governmental sectors we might go through a change programme to establish some social or environmental improvement. Why would you go through potentially gut-wrenching change for no good reason?

The real world

I received the joke below in an email today - one of those things that go around at Christmas time. You can read the joke if you wish, but the sense of it is that the real world has changed so much that saying 'Happy Christmas' might upset someone. This is political correctness gone mad in my opinion, although there was an article in a national paper a few days ago that said managers are fearful of putting decorations up. Amazing. At the other extreme there are offices where you might see decorations for Diwali, Chinese New Year etc as well as Christmas of course, recognising a social and community approach to life.

The key point here for me is that in our professional lives we are impacted by whatever is happening in the real world, and it is sometimes difficult to separate the substance of an event or activity and the interpretation of the same. Any action will mean different things to different people, and will impact them in a variety of ways. We are all different, and will vary our mood and interpretation on different days. This is key in change management and transformation of business.

THE JOKE

I wanted to send out some sort of holiday greeting to my friends, but it
is so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to say without
offending someone. So I met with my lawyer yesterday, and on his advice
I wish to say the following:-

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,
non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasions or secular practices of your choice with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their
choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally
accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the
calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society
have helped make the world a great place (not to imply that any country
is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the
race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual
preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely
transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no
promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for
her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is
revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted
to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for
a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday
greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement
of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the
wisher.

Disclaimer: no trees were harmed in the sending of this message however,
a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

Work/Life Balance - is it sustainable in the real world

My wife is retiring at Christmas aged forty-something. It is not that we're rich (we're not!), but work and life don't balance with a couple of young kids and a house and me to organise (I do my best...). Now she's working out what to do with her time!

In all of our professional lives, 10 hour days are the norm for many, and if you commute into a big city, you can probably add a two or three hours to that - leave home at 6.30am and get home at 7:30pm if you're lucky - I've been doing it a lot this year.

Why do we work so many hours?;

• because it is expected
• because everyone else is doing it
• because it is professionally necessary
• because we love work
• because we need the money
• because if we don't do it, then they'll find someone else
• because everyone else over-commits and we don't want to under-deliver

I'm sure there are more reasons that I could think of.

Today's business environment is getting faster and ever-more pressured, with results expected immediately, instant messaging, email, mobile phones etc (see other postings). It is all of these things that perpetuate the need for longer working hours, and less of a life. Let's get real and assess what is critical and not just important - there are critical things in our working lives that must be done, and surely our balanced home life is critical? This is a real world issue - how can people have a life and work, rather than work and a life. Should we talk about life/work balance?

Many large organisations have addressed this issue to some extent or other with flexible working arrangements, career breaks and suchlike - the recognition that people work to live, rather than live to work. You are a long-time dead.