Chapter 5

Creating Your Programme's Vision

In This Chapter

Understanding why a Vision is vital for your programme

Incorporating all the key elements in a Vision

Striking the appropriate tone in a Vision

Getting the right people involved in your Vision

Most programmes are long – three to five years is typical. Some may be substantially longer; I've worked on one that's planned to last for a century! Their length or the fact that they're being carried out in an uncertain environment means that most programmes can't be planned from start to finish. Therefore, all you can say about a conventional plan for a programme – in other words, a schedule showing activities and timescales – is that it won't happen. The difficulty is working out what will happen.

You and the other stakeholders in your programme can't know the nature of the entire journey. You know only a portion of it: perhaps what's going to happen in the next year. So in order to keep on track, you need to have a clear picture of the destination. In MSP, this picture is called the Vision.

The Vision is the destination, not the journey.

As well as describing the characteristics of a good Vision in this chapter, I talk about developing and maintaining a Vision Statement and where the Vision sits within the life-cycle of your programme – what MSP calls the transformational flow. (You can find out more about the transformational flow in Chapter 1.) You can refer to the ‘Vision’ or the ‘Vision Statement’, they're the same thing.

Picturing your Vision

The Vision is a picture of a better future; its focus is on outcomes and benefits. If the future isn't going to be better than today, you don't need to do the programme.

The Vision isn't the same as a plan – it doesn't describe the route to a destination, it describes the destination itself. When you first try to write a Vision, you may well get that aspect wrong. Perhaps you talk about building a new hospital instead of a hospital that will serve the community. Don't worry: everyone takes a little while to adjust to the language of a Vision.

Defining a Vision

Instead of being a plan, the purpose of the Vision is to be a way of encouraging and maintaining the commitment and enthusiasm of all those involved and ensuring everyone is on the same page. The Vision is a summarised expression of the desired future state.

If you need to sacrifice detail in your Vision in order to achieve impact, that's absolutely fine. You can include the necessary detail in the Blueprint (which I describe in Chapter 6). Many things in a programme are going to be unstable and volatile, but your aim is to keep the Vision itself as stable as possible to help maintain stakeholder credibility and to signal strategic alignment. Indeed, some people go further and say that if the Vision has to change, you have to question whether the programme has remained the same.

The Vision needs to be compelling, so it can simply be one side of a piece of paper with a lot of white space on it, or a couple of slides from a presentation. Don't make it a dense 400-page technical report.

If the Vision is a compelling, high-level description of the future state, it can act as an effective focal point for the programme.

Understanding why your programme needs a Vision

A programme without a Vision is like a country singer without a sob story. Your programme needs a Vision for two reasons:

• The detailed description of the future state, the Blueprint, is based on the Vision. Just as important aspects of the programme such as the Benefits Model and the Project Dossier evolve from the Blueprint, so everything hangs off the Vision.
• The Vision is the rallying point for your team. In the same way that team members in sport gather around a flag or mascot, and military units have an emblem, when things get complex and confusing with the programme – when you and other members of the programme team can't understand what's happening – you can rally to the Vision.

The Vision is one of the key concepts within programme management, as well as one of the governance themes in MSP.

Dreaming Up Your Vision

The composition of the Vision is pretty straightforward and very brief. It's a clear statement of the end goal of the programme, something short and memorable. It may well need to include any imposed constraints on the programme – the situation in which the programme is being undertaken.

You can expand on this external view by setting the context for the programme, perhaps including relevant information to help set expectations. Your aim is to put the context of the programme into the broader business context.

Consider including information to support the justification for change, for example, a clear description of the current reality. I often use the phrase a burning platform: if you describe the current reality as unsustainable, people are prepared to move on to a future state.

Here are three vital aspects to include in your Vision:

• End goal: Describe briefly what the world will be like when the programme has finished.
• Constraints: Summarise the constraints on achieving that end goal.
• Context to set expectations: Explain a little about the current wider situation so that stakeholders realise why changing is a good idea.

Creating a great Vision

Here are a few pointers on making your Vision effective:

• Write the Vision as if you're already in the future state: say ‘The world is like this,’ rather than ‘In the future the world will be like this’.
• Think carefully about the stakeholders and write the Vision in a language that they can understand. Some stakeholders may think that it's too simple and doesn't contain enough technical language. That's a good thing. The Vision needs to be written for the broadest possible target audience, because you're trying to build a consensus around the programme.
• Describe a compelling future. The future must be one that's necessary, in contrast to a current reality that's less than compelling. Don't say that the future must be a good future (that's a bit simplistic).
• If possible, paint a picture of a desirable future and not just of a compelling future.
• Match the nature of the Vision to the nature of the transformation: modest if the transformation is modest, but bold if the change is bold. If possible, try to avoid future dates. If you say that your Vision is going to be the 2050 Vision, the year 2050 will arrive just after New Year's Eve in 2049. But that may not mean you've achieved your Vision.
• Make sure to say how people will know whether the Vision has been achieved. You want the Vision to be verifiable, but without putting in detailed performance targets. The Vision has to be sufficiently flexible so that it can remain unchanged over the course of the programme. For example: if you're going to move to 12 new office blocks, don't say 12. Just say ‘a set of new office blocks’. In that case, if you end up in 11 blocks, the Vision is still stable.
• Remember that the Vision complements the Blueprint, which contains the detail. Therefore the Vision has only to give sufficient context for the Blueprint to make sense. Make your Vision short, memorable and relevant.

As always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating (ahhh, pudding!). Ultimately a Vision is good if the key stakeholders think that it's good.

Communicating your programme's goal

The purpose of the Vision Statement is to communicate the end goal to all stakeholders, so write it in language and terms that customers can understand.

Don't get lost in the language of customers, however. Imagine a person in each of your stakeholder groups. Think of them as someone you're providing a service to – a customer. The Vision needs to describe the service you'll eventually be providing to them.

As an example, think about how you'd write a Vision about reducing the number of staff in the company in a way that's acceptable to those staff. That's the type of challenge you face. The answer's probably something like ‘achieving industry standards of productivity’.

The Vision needs to communicate the programme's end goal effectively: see it as an artist's impression of a future state.

Now it's your turn. Write a Vision for your own programme or for a programme that's in the public eye that you're familiar with. Then check it using the tests I give of what makes a good Vision.

Don't worry if you find that you write something more like a plan than a Vision and with too much detail. That's quite normal, and practice makes perfect.

Watching Your Vision Evolve

To start, the Vision is drafted during the Identifying a Programme process by the Senior Responsible Owner (see the later section ‘Taking overall responsibility: Senior Responsible Owner’) and key stakeholders. You can refine it in the Defining a Programme process, but after that it is kept as stable as possible. If it's changed you run the risk of confusing stakeholders or even undermining the credibility of the programme, as well as of indicating that the current programme is no longer strategically aligned (in other words, it isn't helping achieve the longer term direction of the organization) and so a different programme is required.

In this section I also convey what it feels like when you get the right people contributing in the right way. I use the formal terms for the different roles in programmes, which I describe in Chapter 9.

Identifying that you have a programme

In the Identifying a Programme process, you want to have a brief session with the Sponsoring Group to flesh out the Programme Brief. The Brief contains an outline Business Case and outline Vision. All you need to do at this point is get them describing the future – the destination – not the plan for getting there.

Defining the programme in more detail

In Defining the Programme, one of your first actions is to carry out stakeholder analysis. (I talk more about this subject in Chapter 14.) In an ideal world you want to have someone from each of the main stakeholder groups present while you do more work on the Vision. At the beginning of a programme, people are usually nervous about engaging with stakeholders.

I was recently in the IT department of a very large bank. The programme manager said to me that he didn't want to do stakeholder analysis because he wouldn't be able to influence all his stakeholders.

I talk more about how to deal with this attitude in Chapter 14, but as far as the Vision is concerned, your aim is to get as many stakeholder groups as possible present when working on the Vision. If a stakeholder group is so sensitive that you feel you can't invite them, ask someone who you're more comfortable with and who knows this tricky stakeholder group to represent the views of that group.

Get together a small team of probably very senior people who'll do some work on the Vision. When they understand that the Vision is, in terms of process, the document from which the rest of the plans are created and the cultural rallying point for the programme, you usually find that they get pretty interested in the Vision. No, they get very interested in the Vision. No, strike that: they get absolutely obsessive about the Vision.

Don't worry if your little working group spends hours trying to get the wording of the Vision absolutely right: that's a great thing. It means that they're engaged and that your stakeholder engagement with them is working! The one thing you have to guard against is the Vision becoming a camel: in other words, a clumsy compromise. A camel is a horse designed by a committee, remember?

The Vision needs an inner voice and passion about it to make it compelling. If the Senior Responsible Owner takes hold of the Vision and expresses it in his own words, that's great. It means that when he stands up to champion the programme, he can read the Vision and speak from the heart.

As you go through Defining a Programme and more detail is put onto the programme, expect to have to go back to your Vision working group several times. However, by the end of Defining a Programme, you should have a very stable Vision.

All you need now is to give the Vision to the PR people and get them to put together the mugs, mouse mats, T-shirts and biscuits. No, I'm not joking (well, only partly). The Vision is a marketing tool, and you want to see it on as much merchandise as possible.

Managing the tranches

Throughout the rest of the programme, look back at the Vision at each tranche boundary to check that it hasn't altered. If it has changed, you have a big problem and should think seriously about terminating the programme. The Vision is that important.

I look at tranche boundaries in Chapters 10 and 18.

Allocating Responsibilities to Your Vision

In this section I describe what each of the members of the programme management team may do to contribute to the Vision or how they may use it. To discover more about each of these roles, have a look in Chapter 9.

Taking overall responsibility: Senior Responsible Owner

The Senior Responsible Owner is the senior individual who's accountable for the success of the programme: the head honcho, the big Kahuna. This person is responsible for the following:

• Engaging the Sponsoring Group in the development of the Vision.
• Producing the Vision Statement.
• Gaining the endorsement of the Sponsoring Group and senior support and commitment for the Vision.
• Ensuring that the organization is capable of achieving the transformation described.
• Maintaining focus on the Vision Statement.
• Authorising any changes of formal interpretations to the Vision Statement.

Running day-to-day: Programme Manager

The Programme Manager operates the programme on a daily basis and is responsible for:

• Developing programme documentation aligned to the Vision Statement.
• Ensuring that the Vision Statement underpins the Programme Communications Plan.
• Co-ordinating the development of the Blueprint based on the Vision Statement.
• Designing the delivery of capability to align with the Vision Statement commitments.
• Processing any changes or updates to the Vision Statement.

Implementing in the business: Business Change Manager

Business Change Managers bed down the changes in their particular part of the business. They're responsible for:

• Supporting the Senior Responsible Owner in the development of the content relating to the business areas to be changed and contributing to the content of the Vision Statement.
• Interpreting the Vision Statement in the context of their business operations.
• Assessing the impact of the Vision Statement on business operations.
• Communicating the Vision Statement to their particular areas of the business.
• Delivering the operational changes needed to achieve the desired end goal.

Administering: Programme Office

The Programme Office looks after the administration of the programme and is responsible for the configuration management of the Vision Statement. (I explain configuration management in Chapter 12. For now, think of it as being good version control.)