Strategy and Capability are essential to superior performance, but they are not sufficient for company success. Excellence in execution is the third key ingredient required for superior performance. Execution is about getting things done. Excellence in execution is about consistently getting things done right.
Many individuals know what they need to do but they don’t always do it. Companies are not much different as they are made up of people. Many companies have superior strategies, superior capabilities, but they don’t always execute! There are many reasons why execution is particularly difficult for organizations. While formulating strategy and developing capability usually involve only a limited number of individuals within a company, execution must necessarily involve everyone within the organization. Strategy and capabilities focus more on future planning, while execution is about the present moment. It is often easier for well-meaning people within solid companies to talk about the future than it is to actually carry out, in practice, what they have discussed. When everything is said and done, a lot more is said than done!
Because of these difficulties, many consulting companies do not want to be directly involved with their clients at the execution phase. At Pyramid, however, we understand the importance of execution and are convinced that, without proper execution, the client does not receive the full value of our recommendations. Consequently, we partner with our clients during this crucial phase.
Our involvement during the execution phase is usually categorized under one of the following, or a combination of the following categories:
Monitoring and measuring performance metrics and ensuring efficient execution and alignment to business strategies and potential capabilities
Outsourcing of some of the client’s business processes either long term, or sometimes temporarily, until the client organization develops its own internal capabilities
ARE WE DOING THE RIGHT THINGS RIGHT?
Strategic Alignment | Are projects aligned to organization’s strategy?
Resource Management | Are resources deployed on projects with optimum high strategic value?
Portfolio Optimization | Are projects prioritized for capital allocation in a way that will allow the organization to handle events such as budget cuts?
Financial Performance | Do we understand the key drivers of profitability?
Fiscal Responsibility | Will the organization achieve fiscal year targets?
The consequences of failed projects can be grim. According to findings from the Center for Business Practices (CBP), nearly half of an organization’s projects are at risk at any given time, no matter the size of the organization. With so much at stake, early detection and action is key to avoiding the substantial losses associated with troubled project failures.
Pyramid addresses project recovery at both the organizational and individual project levels, depending on your specific needs. We provide two distinct service offerings to help your organization turn troubled projects around quickly.
Troubled Project Identification
For the organization, we help you and your PMO implement a standard Project Review & Recovery Process to monitor your portfolio of programs and projects and identify candidates for review and possible intervention.
Project Recovery and Turnaround
At the project level, our project turnaround experts work with you to develop and implement a Project Recovery Plan, to quickly determine how to best proceed with the project. We can then lead and/or coach your project team throughout the entire recovery process.
Performance Improvement: Institutionalizing Lessons Learned
As a project concludes, valuable lessons learned are only sometimes captured and rarely acted upon. Longer term, these lessons learned could have significant impact on the outcomes of future projects if they are filtered back into the organization’s standard processes. Pyramid helps you establish and maintain the processes for capturing, evaluating, and institutionalizing lessons learned that will improve performance across all projects.
Project Cost and Risk Control
Pyramid’s project, cost, and risk control services assist you in keeping your jobs on time and within budget. Throughout the life cycle of a project, our managers act as our agent, controlling costs, schedules and scope of work while ensuring the highest quality deliverable.
Our specific project/cost control services include:
Scheduling
Cost Management
Cost Estimating
Value Engineering
Design Review
Change Order Administration
Project Delivery Analysis
Productivity Analysis
Risk Analysis & Mitigation