Challenges
In virtually every industry, companies are being forced to move faster, become more efficient, and find fresh sources of differentiation. In addition, success generally means not just meeting, but exceeding, publicly stated targets and doing so in the face of unprecedented levels of internal and external scrutiny.
Successful change management requires a balanced viewpoint across the people and operational sides of change. However, the operational component is increasingly important and compelling in the current climate of economic stress. A 2008 survey of 200 chief executive officers around the world shows that their top three areas of concern revolve around successful execution1 . Senior executives today are facing important questions:
How do I ensure that results from change efforts are really delivered to the bottom line?
What are the main risk factors that I should actively manage in my change efforts?
How can I know when and where to intervene to guarantee success?
What is the best way to ensure that the executives and staff involved show real accountability for the program of change?
BCG Competencies
BCG has a proprietary approach to handling the operational side of change to ensure that the change effort delivers its intended results to the bottom line. Rigorous Program Management (RPM) applies a senior management perspective to a program of change that incorporates the following:
An activist governance structure, including the creation of an entity such as a program management office to ensure that leaders are appropriately armed to direct and oversee change
Smart preparation and planning, including the reconciliation of initiatives to original business cases
Locking in “road maps” as contracts to deliver results
Exception-based monitoring and management
Supporting senior management leadership and promoting ready intervention on key impact risks
Ensuring that the approach is limited to minimally sufficient actions
RPM complements, rather than replaces, typical project-management approaches. It is tailored to the needs of the executive suite by providing very effective governance and extreme accountability, clear articulation of value delivered versus action completed, and the ability to make forward-looking course corrections. Successfully executed, RPM not only helps companies meet or beat goals, but also embeds implementation capabilities into the organizations.
Within this approach, BCG often deploys a set of proven tools that include the following:
BCG Roadmapping: Program Tracking and Control. BCG Roadmapping enables organizations to set targets, define gaps in performance against those targets, and then develop and manage high-quality initiatives to close those gaps. BCG Roadmapping significantly increases the likelihood of a project’s success by creating an explicit link from business strategy and financial impacts to the milestones required to deliver against that strategy.
DICE: Project Risk Management.DICE (duration, integrity, commitment, and effort) is a framework that offers a litmus test for assessing whether a given project or set of projects will likely be successful, highlighting specific actions to take both before and during implementation that can improve the probability of success.
Rigor Testing. A rigor test is used to evaluate whether road maps are robust and consistent across initiatives. More than 50 percent of initiatives fail the rigor test the first time.
1 “CEO Challenge 2008: Top 10 Challenges—Financial Crisis Edition,” The Conference Board, November 2008.