“The Shift” is Coming…

CBPM is on the leading edge of a shift in leadership perspectives.  As companies began examining their corporate values in the 1980′s, leaders gave lip service to the notion of employees as their most valuable assets.  But increased competitiveness and the “agile” imperative are now causing leaders and organizations to truly believe that people, and the extent to which they engage with the goals and work at hand, are the key to sustainable success.  This “shift” is evidenced by the increasing focus on employee engagement and innovation and the realization that people respond to more than carrots and sticks.

A recent article in the Gallup Management Journal* sums it up nicely for project work:

“Projects often fail because organizations put more emphasis on rational factors than on employees’ psychological engagement — and the cost to organizations is enormous.”

The rational factors are important of course.  And projects will continue to start with sound planning practices.  But what leaders are now starting to understand is that effective group planning is about moving the team towards a shared set of assumptions about how we (this team) get from here to there.  Out of this process comes a rational plan, but without the shared assumptions of the team members, a rational plan falls far short of ensuring success.

We at Ensemble have been helping teams achieve a shared set of assumptions through the Map Day planning technique since the mid-1990′s.  It is the first step in the practice of Commitment-Based Project Management (CBPM).  It is about rational planning and enrollment at the same time.  As the pressure to be agile increases, the need for teams to engage – to share and test assumptions and then do what they say they will do – will continue to drive this shift towards valuing and engaging all the interconnected individuals required to create value.

The Complete CBPM Course (which includes the Map Day technique) will be running in Scottsdale Arizona on February 28 and 29.  There are still some seats available.  Contact us if you are interested or go directly to our course description and registration page – ensemble.eventbrite.com.

We also will be offering our one day workshop: 

Accelerating Project with Commitment-Based Project Management (also known as CBPM for Project Leaders)

April 20th in Toronto, Canada as a pre-Conference workshop for the 50th Annual International Society of Performance Improvement Conference.  Click here^ (and scroll to the bottom) for detail.