WIREDGOV

How many times have you looked at the project that has been assigned to you and think “this should have been stifled at birth”? The projects that don’t help an organisation on towards its objectives, that only serve to increase the budget of the manager in charge, or that pull in the opposite direction to everyone else causing disruption?

Claire Dellar tackles this with aplomb, in her webinar presented on Monday 15 June 2020. She recognises that the people who shout loudest, the people who can get a pet project (or as I call them, “ego projects”) through are often people with a lot of influence, so she doesn’t go head on. To quote her own words:

“Are you running a kennels for pet projects? Use benefits management to keep your senior managers on a leash, walking to heel and even jumping through hoops!"

If investment decisions are made based on who does the best ‘puppy dog eyes’ (or barks the loudest) how do you keep the pet projects out of your portfolio and concentrate on your most valuable initiatives?”

Claire highlighted that a key job for the benefits manager is to keep everyone’s eyes on the organisation’s (and other stakeholders’) objectives. If projects aren’t helping to achieve the objectives, then why are we investing in them, in whatever form that investment takes?

Claire then introduced us to a scoring tool that will help benefits managers to compare options, facilitating the stakeholders so that they believe it was their idea all along. As well as the standard components for scoring that need to be on any scoring sheet (availability of resources, likelihood of success, cost), She showed us how to add the important “alignment to organisation objectives” using a motivated workforce, impact on the operating budget, and environmental considerations.

She used Mentimeter to get the 100 or so voters on the call to decide how much to weight each factor – before the options were revealed. This ensured that the weighting won’t be influenced to favour the “pet” option.

Click here for the full press release