Deliverology is fast becoming a buzzword in the Canadian government scene.
The Liberals have recently embraced the management method developed by British political adviser Michael Barber, however, while deliverology has gained some adherents on this side of the pond, it also has its fair share of critics.
For instance, deliverology places an high value on metrics and measuring goals and outcomes. There are project management practitioners that some organization simply have to many goals that cannot be quantified because there is minimal access to real-time data to monitor the progress towards those goals.
Craig Szelestowski, a Lean government and transformation specialist and president of Lean Agility Inc., has compiled a list of five difficulties that implementers of deliverolgy are most likely to encounter.
Szelestowski not only listed the deliverology challenges in the blog he posted on LinkedIn, he also provided five Lean solutions to overcome them.
Topping his list is low buy-in.
“With its top-down approach, Deliverology implementations frequently do not engage front-line staff sufficiently in the planning process,” Szelestowski noted. “Without front-line input and ownership of the strategy to meet the target, new initiatives often meet staff resistance and are not sustained.”
His solution is to employ the Lean Strategy Deployment structured approach called Catchball.
With this approach, senior leaders identify and share with managers or staff a measurable “must-do, can’t fail, A to B goal and why the leaders think this goal is important as well as the perceived root causes of problems that need to be solved.
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“Back and forth, like tossing a ball,” said Szelestowski, the leaders and staff tackle items such as “Here’s what we have to achieve and why. What are your thoughts about how to get there?” “What obstacles do you foresee?” Did we get it right?” and more – until a better understanding of the issue is achieved and better quality solutions are developed.
Szelestowski tackled several mote deliverology challenges such as: Too many priorities; the carrot and the stick; change the target, but not the underlying business process to achieve it; and incentives to meet the measure, but not the intent.
If you want find out just what these challenges are and the Lean solutions to them, click n this link to Szelestowski’s blog, Overcome the 5 challenges of Deliverology (or Results & Delivery) with Lean.
If you want to meet Szelestowski and ask him more about deliverology or discuss with him some of your organization’s own management challenges, your best bet is to attend the Canadian Government Executive Leadership Summit 2016 on Deliverology in Practice, on October 5th, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the Sheraton Hotel on 150 Albert Street, in Ottawa.
Szelestowski is part of a panel of experts that will be discussing the ins and outs and pros and cons of deliverology.
The panel being moderated by Patrice Dutil, editor-in-chief of CGE, and professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University, the panel also includes:
- Tony Dean, professor at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto, and adviser in public administration and public reforms to various governments in Canada and around the world
- Murray Kronick, national service lead for performance management for Interis BDO
- Tom Rosser, senior deputy minister for strategic policy at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada
- Ian Williams, business intelligence and analytics unit manager for the Toronto Police Service
- Lou Di Gironimo, general manager of Toronto Water, for the City of Toronto
You have to act fast, because this event is really popular.
If you want to update your management skills, learn about new tools, and boost your delivery capacity, click on the link below to register for the: CGE Leadership Summit 2016 Performing, Measuring, Reporting: Deliverology in Practice event
