Episode 4: What influences a Project Strategy?

Hello to all you LeadersIn Strategy. I'm Mike Harris and welcome to  episode four, which I am calling  'What Influences A Project Strategy? – A Case Study.' Those of you with a good memory will remember that I said that this episode would cover the topic ‘What makes a successful strategy?’ However, after the last blog I was asked if I could provide an example to illustrate how key factors should be considered when developing your strategy. Which I thought was a great idea, so here we are.

I am an experienced leadership consultant, and most of what I do is through workshops, seminars, and coaching.

Last year, I decided to widen our reach and help a new audience, and someone suggested doing a blog. So here we are, and each episode will cover a different subject related to leadership & strategy. I will share insights from my successful workshops & seminars & hopefully you will gain a different perspective and some helpful insights.

Everything I look at is through the lens of strategy. For some of you this will be new and for others this will act as a refresher. It will help sharpen the skills that you already have. Hopefully this will help you in considering what is currently affecting your business and therefore can be captured in your strategy. 

I'm going to quickly go over what we covered in our previous blog. I make no apologies for this because it can take a while for everything to sink in & became part of the muscle memory. By repeating it, as we build up over the blogs, you start to get the whole journey from the first podcast through to the latest episode. 

In episode 3 I explained that in looking at the factors affecting a strategy, focus on the things that you can influence, the things that will have a direct impact on your business strategy. Break it down between external and internal factors. My top 10 for each are:

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External factors

1. Your customers. Understanding their value to your business.

2. Your customers’ requirements. Their individual & collective requirements.

3. Other stakeholders. eg: parent companies, investors, & the local community.

4. The markets you operate in. Market dynamics play a significant role.

5. Your competition. Understand the competitive landscape.

6. The Supply Chain. Do you need new suppliers to enhance capabilities and capacity?

7. Where you sit in the supply chain. Review your position in the supply chain.

8. Relationships your clients and suppliers have with your competitors.

9. Obstacles and challenges that you need to overcome in order to make your strategy a success

10. Available resources. Availability of  resources in the marketplace can either facilitate or limit your expansion plans.

Internal factors

1. Your competitive advantage. How you differentiate yourselves from your competition based on your company strengths.

2. Your experiences. Draw upon company-wide and individual experiences for strategic insights.

3. Your strengths and weaknesses. Look at what you are good at as a business and what needs improving.

4. Available resources. Assess the skills and capabilities you already have in the business.

5. Your structure. Ensure your business structure aligns with your future goals.

6. Your location. Does your current location meets your business needs.

7. Your premises. Evaluate if your current premises are suitable for future growth.

8. Your pricing structure. Review and adapt your pricing to reflect your business direction.

9. Stakeholder strategies. Understand how their strategies impact your own.

10.  Your Relationships. Leverage business relationships to optimize your strategy.

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Case Study

This is a example from a few years ago when I was looking at a strategy and the things which I considered when putting it together. This was for a large project that was being  delivered in the Midlands.

I have picked a Project Strategy for my case study to show how the principles I set out in the last episode can be applied to multiple environments, not just to businesses.

The project strategy was developed through a series of workshops with the project team, including at times the customer and members of the supply chain.

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External Factors

1.   The first thing we considered was the project itself. Key characteristics such as: 

• The funding for the project.
• The complexity of the project.
• The project size, as it was a very large project.  
• There were multiple clients.This project wasn't just for one client there were 4 clients who were as part of the contract. 
• There could be no business interruption to the clients when the project was being carried out. There were huge penalties in the event that there was.

Just picking one of those things as an example and to drill down abit more further.

For the project size, the things we had to think about the scale of the project. It was too big for one person to be able to get their arms around the whole thing. So effectively, we had to break the project down so that it was multiple smaller projects all going on at the same time.Creating the autonomy for the people leading each of those smaller projects in a way that they were able to be nimble and be able to perform the same way as they would if they were standalone projects.

2.   The program was critical, as the client had a fixed completion date where this all had to be in place, and their business was hugely affected if it wasn't completed on time.

3.   There were multiple stakeholders that we had to deal with. Not just the multiple clients that I spoke about above but there was lots of different departments that we were interfacing with. Each one an individual stakeholder in their own right.

4.   We addressed the risks and opportunities associated with the project. Making sure we had effective action plans.

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Internal Factors

5.   Another factor that we had to consider was that the business delivering the project was a joint venture. Two companies coming together to form a joint-venture company in order to carry out the project.

It was important that we thought about each of the two business that formed the joint-venture. What were their strategies, why did they pick doing the job, what was their relationships already with a client etc.

6.   The risks and opportunities included Internal matters, not just external.

7.   Lastly the project culture was crucial. As you can imagine both companies forming the joint venture had different cultures. We had to find a way to bring it together, so we had a consistent culture across the whole project.  

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We also had new staff coming in to deliver the project, so they had to feel that there was a single culture they were not working for two different businesses.

So, there's an example of when I was recently involved in putting together a strategy, in this case a project strategy, and the factors that were considered.

In putting together the project strategy, the key considerations were:

1.   The Project Requirements 

2.   JV Partners

3.   Risks and Opportunities

4.   The Programme 

5.   Stakeholder relationships

6.   Project Culture.