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Strategic Project Management Training for Operational Excellence

Creating Dramatic Success When the Solution is Unknown

Strategic projects satisfy desired business outcomes and customer priorities when symptoms are visible but the solution is unknown.  This fast-paced Strategic Project Management Training ties the voice of the customer (VOC) and process performance to your strategic imperatives.  Learn how multiple practitioners got lightning fast results such as $20 million in savings, response and process time reductions of 80%, $48 million in new revenue, and recognition for best-in-class enterprise performance.

Educational units (REUs) are available for ASQ members

This Strategic Project Management Training will propel your success in ways you never thought possible. You’ll learn a new paradigm, system, tools and roadmap to achieve outstanding results out of initial uncertainty.  The resulting breakthrough thinking enables you to (a) select the right issues for project focus, (b) avoid scope creep, (c) engage, enlist, inspire and equip executive sponsors and team members, and (d) discover what it takes to emulate award-winning organizations that have rapidly achieved significant outcomes in these areas:

  • Alignment of strategic priorities with daily work practice and VOC
  • Reduction of process complexity, cost, and speed by >50% (or higher)
  • Record-breaking customer experience and satisfaction
  • Revenue growth
  • Cultural change, advancing core values and behavioral practice
  • Introduction of new products and technology
  • Employee engagement and collaboration
  • Innovation and design of products and services

 You will see exactly how to do that.  You will learn how to form your high performance project team, create a crystal-clear charter, and construct a final remedy that is innovative, compelling, based on unimpeachable factual data, and supported by voice of the customer (VOC) insights. This interactive, engaging, and entertaining workshop provides examples of projects that caused executive sponsors to say WOW! about the ideas they had unleashed and the results obtained.

Traditional project management methods assume the solution is known and your project management role is to implement it with least risk and resource utilization.  This can work fine when the analysis necessary to arrive at the remedy was well-conceived, supportive data was sufficient and accurate, and the intended results are what customers and other stakeholders actually want and will rave about.  Sadly, history is full of figurative bridges built to nowhere.  Initial certainty turned out to be illusive.  Whether it was the New Coke fiasco, the new aeronautics stabilization system that caused modified aircraft to have multiple fatal crashes, or the IT application that caused users to pull out their hair, the remedy was flawed and did not adequately address users’ needs. The project’s ability to implement the remedy was constrained by conflicting priorities and the remedy itself.

Most improvement projects begin with uncertainty, usually starting only with assumptions about or symptoms of a problem or opportunity. The fastest, most optimum solution is not yet known.  Projects related to continuous improvement, strategic initiatives, Lean, Six Sigma, customer experience, new product or service innovation, and cultural change fall into this category. They are often high-risk endeavors that have fuzzy direction, team dysfunction, high failure rates, and low ROI.  This highly interactive workshop is designed to prevent those problems and create heroes, starting with you.

Strategic Project Management Training takeaways you can immediately apply include:

  • The 8 Dimensions of Excellence paradigm that challenges old thinking while aligning your project’s strategic, operations, customer priorities
  • A Decision Tree for successful completion of the project
  • The Target Selection Criteria that enables you to determine which topic (product, problem, or process) to transform for high ROI and satisfaction
  • The Strategy Map for connecting strategy to daily work, applicable to everyone
  • The New Process Mapping that cuts >50% of your mapping/measuring effort, reducing 80% of total process cycle time, all with elegant simplicity
  • A Transformation Roadmap, to frame all strategic improvement projects
  • The Strategic Project Charter that minimizes confusion, chaos, conflict, and scope creep for any innovation/improvement project
  • A set of tools for Data Management and Voice of the Customer

Participants will learn how to improve their strategic project effectiveness by:

  • Aligning project definition to strategic, customer, and operational priorities
  • Selecting the critical few issues for focus, from too many choices
  • Keeping outcomes central while seeking remedies outside the box
  • Defining the problem/opportunity so well it is half-solved
  • Avoiding scope creep; creating a high performance project team
  • Incorporating the voice of the customer priorities into process excellence
  • Knowing what data to collect and how to summarize it for high impact
  • Changing how teams think, to reveal innovative and practical solutions
  • Use a new method to rapidly identify and cut 90% of process time, cost and waste
  • Using new tools, going beyond tired past practices of the last century
  • Assuring the remedy is compelling, unimpeachable and executed quickly

The Strategic Project Management Training outline will vary depending on session length and client objectives.


Module 1: Setting the Context

  • Summary of the 8 Dimensions of Excellence framework & C3PM system
  • Contrast between traditional and solution-unknown projects
  • Linkage to business strategic objectives, core values, existing initiatives
  • Using the C3PM Decision Tree
  • Choosing the project topic for focus: process, product, or outcome
  • Assuring success: potential, readiness, visibility of results
  • The project flow map
  • Rule of 5s

Module 2: Defining the Project

  • Applying the Target Product Selection criteria
  • The C3 Project Charter purpose, structure, and function
  • Using “word formulas” to write your Current Situation Assumptions (CSAs)

Module 3: Your High Performance Team

  • Team structure, roles, and rules of engagement for mutually assured success
  • Leveling the work: team communication and work management tools
  • How the C3, CSI (crime scene investigator), and scientific methods align

Module 4: Show Me the Data

  • Start with the end in mind: Final Sponsor Presentation template
  • Ten tools for collecting the VOC, with focus on the most important one
  • The subjective VOC data and discovery tools and how to read minds
  • The 6 objective data tools to collect, analyze, and manage the evidence
  • Creating the Master Datasheet
  • Differentiating the customer’s process from the business process
  • FACT Sheet: Fast mapping & measuring of information and activity flow
  • How to achieve 80% reduction in process complexity and cycle time
  • The 8 Dimensions and what to measure

Module 5:  Thinking Outside the Box

  • Convergent versus divergent remedies
  • Vital Lies and aspirational goals
  • Tweaks and moon shots
  • The four steps before you ever automate

Module 6: The Proposal and Deployment for WOW!

  • Preparing for eye-popping results
  • Integrating everything we now know
  • The politics of selling change effectively
  • Ensuring deployment of your remedy
  • Next Steps/ Q&A

The length of the session determines the depth of material covered and the amount of hands-on application time.

  • Live in-house workshops (customized to the client’s special objectives and circumstances):  2 to 4 days depending on client objectives
  • Public workshops:  1/2 to 3 days
  • Executive seminars and dinner lectures:  90-120 minutes
  • Interactive webinars:  2-4 hours

 

If you are impatient for transformative results and are an executive, change agent, product development manager, project leader, Lean Six Sigma MBB, or innovative disrupter, this jargon-free Strategic Project Management Training is for you.

This 3.5-hour interactive webinar is a modified version of essential elements of the full-length workshop.  It is designed to make your transformational efforts much easier, faster, and more impactful than anything you’ve seen or experienced. It is based on a brand-new way of thinking, new tools, and a proven track record of stunning results.  It will benefit change leaders in all knowledge-intensive organizations.

Strategic projects satisfy desired business outcomes and customer priorities when symptoms are visible but the solution is unknown. You will learn how to form your high-performance project team, create a crystal-clear charter, and construct a final proposed remedy that is innovative, compelling, based on unimpeachable factual data, and supported by voice of the customer (VOC) insights. (See VOC Webinar).  Success requires a transformation system as well as a systems approach to transformation. You’ll get both here.  See how insightful leaders achieved “impossible” outcomes, excited customers, engaged employees, and set new records for success at high speed others can only dream about.  Optional C3 Mentoring is available to support your deployment.

Most improvement projects begin with uncertainty, usually starting only with assumptions about or symptoms of a problem or opportunity. The fastest, most optimum solution is not yet known.  Projects related to continuous improvement, strategic initiatives, Lean, Six Sigma, customer satisfaction, new product or service innovation, and cultural change fall into this category. They are often high-risk endeavors that have fuzzy direction, team dysfunction, high failure rates, and low ROI.  This highly interactive webinar is designed to prevent those problems and create heroes, starting with you.

If you are impatient for transformative results and are an executive, change agent, product development manager, project leader, innovation leader, or Lean Six Sigma MBB, this jargon-free session is for you.

Objectives

In only 3.5 hours, you will learn how to:

  • Align project definition to strategic, customer, and operational priorities
  • Select the critical few issues for focus, from too many choices
  • Keep outcomes central while seeking remedies outside the box
  • Define the problem/opportunity so well it is half-solved
  • Avoid scope creep; creating a high-performance project team
  • Know what data to collect and how to summarize it for high impact
  • Change how teams think, to reveal innovative and practical solutions
  • Use new tools, going beyond tired past practices of the last century
  • Assure the remedy is compelling, unimpeachable and executed quickly

Takeaways include

  • A Decision Tree for successful completion of the project
  • The Target Selection Criteria that enables you to determine which topic (product, problem, or process) to transform for high ROI and satisfaction
  • A Transformation Roadmap, to frame all strategic improvement projects
  • The Strategic Project Charter that minimizes confusion, chaos, conflict, and scope creep for any innovation/improvement project

Course Outline

Setting the Context

  • Summary of the 8 Dimensions of Excellence framework & C3PM system
  • Contrast between traditional and solution-unknown projects
  • Linkage to business strategic objectives, core values, existing initiatives
  • Using the C3PM Decision Tree
  • Choosing the project topic for focus: process, product, or outcome
  • Assuring success: potential, readiness, visibility of results
  • The project flow map
  • Rule of 5s

Defining the Project

  • Applying the Target Product Selection criteria
  • The C3 Project Charter purpose, structure, and function
  • Using “word formulas” to write your Current Situation Assumptions (CSAs)

Your High-Performance Team

  • Team structure, roles, rules of engagement for mutually assured success
  • Leveling the work: team communication and work management tools
  • How the C3, CSI (crime scene investigator) and scientific methods align

Show Me the Data

  • Start with the end in mind: Final Sponsor Presentation template
  • The 6 objective data tools to collect, analyze and manage the evidence
  • Creating the Master Datasheet
  • Differentiating the customer’s process from the business process

The Proposal and Deployment for WOW!

  • Preparing for eye-popping results
  • Integrating everything we now know
  • The politics of selling change: An example of your final presentation
  • Ensuring deployment of your solution
  • Next Steps/ Q&A

A Few Practitioners Results

  • Cycle time reduction of 70%
  • Cost savings from a contracting process simplification of over $16K per contract
  • Employee and customer satisfaction ratings dramatically increased
  • Improved supply management practices, saving $13 million in the first year.
  • Cut the imaging error rate at a major national clinic by over 30%, reversing customer defections.

Sample Participant Comments

“Using this system, our project reduced process time by 68-75%, cut 60% of requirements complexity, and reduced costs while improving customer experiences. I don’t know where this project would have been without the new C3 system and tools.”  Sue Mulvihill, Deputy Commissioner/Chief Engineer; Greg Coughlin, Project Manager, Minnesota Department of Transportation

“I have personally used [Rob’s] concepts and methods to address a strategic project at California State University.  The approach is taught in a way that makes it accessible to a wide audience. Lawton’s methods revealed opportunities for improvement in customer satisfaction while simultaneously making significant reductions in costs, staff inefficiencies and response times, which exceeded what we had thought possible.” Steven Walker, Ph.D., Associate Dean, College of Social Sciences, California State University

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(Prerequisite program – Strategy and Tools)

Educational units (REUs) are available for ASQ members