The Project Book

CHAPTER 38 KEEP IT SIMPLE

Jason Fox, author of The Game Changer, says, ‘If the concept is complicated, no one will understand what it takes to change’. In other words, if your project team is playing buzzword bingo during one of your meetings, then you’ve already lost the dressing room. Oh the irony of my mixed metaphors.

I thought I’d share with you some actual objectives that were written into project plans, along with my understanding of what they really mean. Authors and organisations have been protected (although for a bottle of single malt they’re yours):

1. ‘To clarify the extent to which the efficiencies will corporately cascade’ (to find out who will lose their jobs and when)
2. ‘To instigate a mechanism by which change responsibilities are understood and executed’ (to get people to actually change this time rather than only paying lip-service to it)
3. ‘To reimagine the internal mechanisms by which approvals are gained or rejected for external proposals’ (to get better at choosing suppliers because we currently suck at it)
4. ‘To uplift the capability such that stretch targets can be met’ (to give our people the skills to meet our ridiculous targets — or at least stop crying so much)
5. ‘To maintain velocity while implementing an innovation construct’ (to give our people more to do and reduce the time for new stuff while saying there’ll be time for new stuff)
6. ‘To design, build and implement a CRM capable of flex’ (to put all the information from that spreadsheet into something ...