Mastery Point
The Probability of Success is NOT Random
Often, I hear someone talk about successful people, by saying “that person is SO lucky.” As if this person became wealthy and famous without any work or dedication. Even if you are referring to lottery winners, if you consider the disastrous track record of financial decisions they subsequently make, it hardly seems 'lucky' in the long run. The vast majority of seemingly ‘lucky’ people have worked for many years to become so lucky. Most of the time, when someone seems ‘lucky’ in true, actual overnight fashion, the situation ultimately ends in a tragic failure. Likely, because they didn’t have the understanding of what happened the first time around, in order to repeat it.
Have you ever seen a project delivery system that had very low repeatability from project to project? Or maybe from project manager to project manager? Do your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) actually warn you when the project is not going well in advance of seeing the profit below expectations?
As with anything, we would love to see both accuracy and repeatability in the project delivery process. There are myriad ways to adjust the variables in this algorithm. A robust pre-sales partnership between the sales team and the project delivery team is a great start. A well-managed reporting system showing leading KPIs as well as the lagging ones is also a must.
The processes that include improving repeatability of success from project to project and person to person are also widely varied. A quality training system tied to a subjective rating system of individual performance, reviewed regularly, is a key part of developing skills. The entire “Monitoring & Controlling” function of project management is focused on comparing performance to expectations and should include reviewing the on-going performance of the entire portfolio.
Long story short, successful project delivery is a matter of expertise, not dumb luck. The probability of being successful once is based solely on the variables within this project. But, thriving, or even surviving, as a business is dependent on building a system of project delivery that is based on best practices and understanding WHY we need to do these things. This comes from seeing the broader understanding of project management and control.
If you are in your first months or years of business and you have had total success in project delivery, but it seems like “being lucky” has been the predominant character of how you got there, great! Thank your ‘lucky stars’ and get started figuring where you got lucky and where you barely escaped tragedy. Start building the formula of success for your project delivery process. Everyone knows the saying, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” If leaving the success of your business or project up to chance seems like pure lunacy, then start where you are and build a foundational project delivery process.
Ideally, you know what must happen and what must NOT happen to be successful. Hopefully, you can also describe:
1. What should happen
2. What would be NICE if it did happen
3. What would be really nice if it DIDN’T happen.
Giving your project delivery team an understanding of the line for success is good, but giving them an understanding of where there can be give and take is even better.
The algorithm of successful project delivery has a multitude of variables. If trying to understand all these variables is giving you a head-ache, let Mastery Point help you wrap your mind around them.
