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Priority Track
Your Project Portfolio: How confidently will it deliver on the organization’s strategic ambitions?
More specifically will the portfolio deliver the levels of business performance and efficiency, innovation and growth required over the short, medium and long term? That is the multimillion-dollar question that we help leaders to answer.
Are there hidden risks to your key initiatives?
Are you projects the DNA of your strategy?
Project Innovation: Where to look for it?
Your Critical Initiative(s): What is the level of confidence & ambition?
In addition to the traditional methods used to track project performance (e.g. scope & budget) we provide insights and data to predict the success of critical projects and initiatives.
Is your strategic initiative being managed like a critical project?
Your Project’s Status: How to ‘Bottom-line it’ for Senior Executives?
How important is the first mile for your project?
How will you know if your team needs to pitstop its critical project(s) or initiative(s)?
Here are the most common reasons:
- A strategy initiative or project is critical and cannot fail.
- The initiative is complex and is likely to stretch the organisation / team.
- The level of ambition behind an initiative is too high or too low.
- Confidence in the execution of a strategic initiative is below 75%.
- To help you to get your project approved internally, secure resources and executive support.
- There is a high level of risk around an initiative, when it is high profile or high visibility.
- The project team is new or is struggling to pull together and make things happen.
- Aligning stakeholders or ensuring cross-functional collaboration is proving a challenge.
- The organisation has a legacy of failed initiatives.
- Greater speed and agility, as well as collaboration and innovation are required.
- There is a proliferation of projects – too many projects competing for the same resources.
Here is an example of the phasing of the process of pit-stopping critical initiatives, including key pitstops as part of phase 1 (discovery):
A systematic analysis of confidence and ambition in respect of critical projects and initiatives, including key success factors and risks. Data plays a key role in the process – with a mix of qualitative and quantitative data painting the full picture.
Data is captured online as well as during pitstops from the leader, the team and key stakeholders. The data is used to check for hidden risks and blind spots, as well as to balance safety with respectful challenge. Most importantly, the process of analysis generates new awareness and dialogue within teams, with powerful data modelling and visualization bringing the data to life and telling a story.
The Priority Track™ is a map of the KSF and risks in the execution of strategic initiatives. It is the journey from strategy to success, illuminating the real world opportunities and challenges faced by leaders as they execute on their ambitious strategies.
In line with best practice we adopt a ‘work the team while working on the project‘ approach – unlocking the performance potential of the team while at the same time aligning project confidence and ambition or tackling project KSFs and Risks.
Thus, the Priority Track™ is integrated with Pitstop to Perform™ and Pitstop to Align™. This recognizes the fact that for many projects the ‘project team’ represents the hidden 51% of project success/risk.
Pitstop to Perform™ uses imagery and concepts from F1 to reframe the conversation about performance – to depersonalize and depoliticize it – to generate openness, ownership and creativity.
However, it is not about racing, but rather the performance and potential of your team and its critical projects/initiatives. You don’t need to be fan of F1™!
If you are curious or interested in the performance-obsessed arena of F1, then it can be a source of inspiration to managers who must also perform under pressure (see video).
Change is at the heart of any ambitious strategic initiative. With this in mind pitstops are based on a six-step group engage-change model designed to accelerate ownership and accountability for change.
A key objective is to create an environment for executives to open up and have honest, respectful and yet challenging dialogue. Such dialogue is often referred to as a ‘Strategic Conversation’ – the type of conversation that is strategically important but tends not to happen in the day to day running of the business.
Applied research with almost 2000 teams and their strategic priorities / key projects. Sample the research topics and findings here.
The track builds on the research behind Pitstop to Perform, as published in a series of 5 books.
Over 10,000 pages of background research, including books and reports.
