"Humans are idea generating factories. It's not the idea that matters - it's what you're prepared to do to make it happen - and that's execution." EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING Gareth Williams, CEO and Co-Founder of Skyscanner “Ideas are pretty much free.  Execution is worth everything.” We help our clients to execute change by delivering Capability to the Organisation, Advisory to the Programme and Assurance to the Exec.

What We Do and How We Do It - and Why

Conventional consulting is modelled on offering a very broad range of services and achieving very high utilisation of staff. Neither of those things is necessarily always in the client’s best interests, so we’ve adopted a very different model. Instead we’ve focused in on the three things in the change space that you need done really well – and then devised a more effective, sustainable, cost-efficient way to deliver those services.

Org. Prog. Exec.

Oxford8 has a very clear focus on the three specific services that really matter within the change space: We build Capability for the Organisation through The How. We deliver Advisory directly into live programmes bringing our experience and expertise to bear to pre-empt problems and help smooth the delivery path. And we deliver Assurance to the Executive; direct line-of-sight to programmes, and positive confirmation that the elements necessary for successful delivery are in place and will support the organisation’s strategic objectives.

We're Fractional.

Our real USP lies not in what we do, but how we do it, and why we do it.  We’re not the kind of consultancy that camps out on your doorstep and multiplies like rabbits.  All three of our services are delivered on a fractional model, which ensures that the outlay for the client is low, the costs are sustainable, the internal team are properly engaged, and it also means that we bring the experience of working with a greater breadth of clients to the table in everything we do.

Capability

Programmes are like bank robberies – best executed as an inside job. The How is a unique offering that ensures your teams and your organisation are properly equipped for the job.

The How

Conventional training in change delivery tends to be very focused on methodology but isn’t always very executable; the techniques, the tools, the tips and tricks are something that most practitioners only acquire very slowly over time – which in turn means that the organisation only evolves its change muscle at an incremental pace.  The How was designed specifically to address that problem.

The How is made up of a series of learning modules for change delivery teams, covering practical aspects of programme delivery, from planning and risk management to stakeholder management and effective governance. The modular nature of The How makes for an extremely flexible training system, and delivery is via Oxford8’s fractional model, so that the learnings can be applied in the live programme without disrupting the programme’s schedule. The How evolves the capability of your people and your change delivery organisation in a way that directly impacts change delivery in real time, based on these key attributes:

    1. Executable: All content within The How is of direct, practical application and is supported with tools and templates that enable the learnings to put into action immediately.
    2. Flexible: Each module within The How covers a discrete discipline (for example risk management, planning, finance, etc) so that the sequence of modules can be geared to the priorities of the programme or organisation at any given point in time.
    3. Integrated: Multiple functions, multiple levels; designed to draw together teams catering for experienced professionals just as much as relative newcomers, and the wider supporting functions such as the PMO, Procurement and HR which are typically essential to change delivery.
    4. Experience-led: Experience is a great teacher, so our teachers have great experience – which they bring to bear in the sessions.
    5. Sustainable: The How is delivered on Oxford8’s fractional model, so learning happens on a little-and-often basis without disrupting delivery.

The ultimate outcome of The How is a cohesive team of cross-functional change professionals with a fresh perspective on delivery and a common grounding that binds the team, supported by a practical set of tools and techniques that give execution a sharp edge. That outcome is achieved incrementally, at a rate the team can easily absorb, and in a way that enables the programme and the wider organisation to feel the benefits in real time.

Advisory

Change programmes are a bit like Microsoft Windows: There’s always more than one way to do things. Effective advisory is about ensuring that the programme understands its range of options and the relative merits of each. Really making it work though, depends on two elements; timing and continuity.

Timing

What do effective advisory and great comedy have in common?  Great timing.  There’s nothing more counter-productive than retrospective wisdom.  All of the experience and expertise in the world won’t make the difference to the delivery of a programme unless it’s drawn down at the right time.  So we have two golden rules to ensure that the timing is always right.

The first is that we tie our approach into the planning and execution of the programme, so our advisory input isn’t purely geared to what is happening, but rather what will be happening in three, six, even thirty-six months.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t also help with here-and-now issues, but, a bit like Marty Feldman, we’ve always got one eye on the horizon.  That’s the secret to helping clients to avoid slipping into reactive mode.

The second golden rule is that we don’t do retrospective.  The use of the term ‘what should have happened’ is immediate grounds for the Oxford8 swear-box.  Even if it’s a current issue, our input is a forward steer on what needs to be done to address it; never reactive or remedial, always proactive and pre-emptive.

Continuity

Continuity is critical to the delivery of effective advisory.  There is nothing more dangerous for a programme than an advisor who does not understand the history of a programme and is therefore operating without any contextual grasp. So, as with Timing, we have golden rules for Continuity.  The first is continuity of engagement.  We achieve that via the fractional model; our solution for being readily to hand without being camped out on the doorstep with the meter running.  We even maintain what we call ‘surgery time’ – daily slots in the diary where we can be reached for any urgent issues that might crop up.

The second rule is continuity of personnel.  Fractional engagement enables us greater flexibility to ensure that we don’t have to swap people out, so the likelihood is that your advisor will be there all the way to the finish line.

The combined effect of these rules is that we operate our advisory very differently: Problems can be addressed without the drama of the big interventions that external advisory often creates. It also avoids the protracted, often costly process of discovery associated with stop-start engagement of advisors. The familiarity and understanding is already there, which means that the speed of resolution is exponentially quicker: Less time spent getting to know you, and more time spent working – and solving – the problem.

One final point about our style of advisory: We like our recycling. No, we’re not talking about the environment. We mean that if we already have an artefact such as a model, a policy, a presentation, etc, we share it with our clients, and we don’t charge for it. We just provide it straight from the library, and help your people implement it as quickly as possible. It’s all part of our strategy for ensuring that advisory executes at programme pace.

Assurance

Real assurance comes from credible external validation that plans, budgets and outcomes actually align with the expectations that are being set.

Conceptually assurance is not difficult and simply requires direct answers to a number of key questions such as:

    • Is the proposed outcome what the organisation needs?
    • Is there a deliverable plan and budget to realise that outcome?
    • Is the programme’s risk and issue management sufficiently robust to deal with the unexpected?
    • Will the organisation’s underlying processes such as recruitment and procurement execute in a way and at the pace necessary to support the programme?
    • What are the decisions that we, as the Exec, need to make?

In practice, making that process happen effectively for the Exec relies on two key elements; line-of-sight, and translation.

Line-of-sight

Programmes can often be somewhat ‘opaque’ for the Exec: Unlike financials, which operate to clearly articulated rules, programmes can be challenging to understand – which makes it rather difficult to even know what questions to ask.

Assurance is largely about validation and interpretation, and for that to happen, you have to go to source: Figuratively, you have to get up from your chair in the boardroom and head to the engine-room of the programme so that so can see the machinery turning and talk to the engineers.

Of course, most Exec committees do not have the bandwidth to do that, so we do it for them to provide ongoing validation of the programme’s vital signs based on direct observation and native discussions with the programme team. 

Translation

Change professionals are linguists: They have to be able to talk numbers with Finance, contracts with Procurement, regulation with lawyers, code with developers… the list is endless.

Change is a challenging business that has developed a culture and language of its own. That language is great for delivering programmes, but not always great for communicating – especially with your most senior business stakeholders.

Look at any language dictionary and it works both ways: It will have a section that is ‘English→French’ and a section that is ‘French→English.’ In assurance we start with ‘Boardroom→Programme’ for the questions, go find the answers and once we’ve got them, work ‘Programme→Boardroom’ to deliver the answers.

So, the secret of effective assurance is direct line-of-sight and accuracy of translation. We provide that via a structured process, delivered fractionally which enables the Exec to keep a close, informed, cost-efficient weather eye on their strategic programmes.

About Oxford8

Oxford8 was born one night during the fifth module (Risk Management) for the first-ever cohort of the MSc in Major Programme Management at Oxford University’s Said Business School back in 2010. Faced with ‘a quiet night in’ at Egrove Park, away from the bustling night-life of Oxford, eight cohort members sat down to consider how to apply the fresh insights, concepts and techniques of the MSc practically to the hands-on world of major programme delivery. The grouping of ‘eight’ lent itself to a nice analogy with a rowing eight and the associated ethos of teamwork and performance – and ‘Oxford8’ was born.

The Oxford8 ‘crew’ is made up of former hot-seat practitioners with hands-on experience across various sectors, bringing practical, real-world insights to every programme. We are sector-agnostic: Irrespective of whether the subject-matter is an aircraft carrier, a nuclear power station or a custody and settlement system in financial services, programmes are programmes: They all share the same basic anatomy and challenges, and we’ve handled them all, from inception to birth; from business case to benefits realisation.

Engage With Us

We try to keep things pretty simple at Oxford8, both for our clients and for ourselves, and that includes initial engagement. So the simple way to engage is just to contact us via the form below. We’ll get back to you to arrange a meeting and turn up with our industrial-strength ears on, and take it from there. No pitches, no land-and-expand agendas; just a straightforward conversation about how we might be able to help.






    How We Use Your Information

    It’s simple.

    You’ve given us the information to enable us to make initial contact with you, so that’s what we’ll use it for.

    In fact, that’s all we’ll use it for.

    We will not:

    • sell or disclose it to any third party
    • automatically subscribe you to any newsletters, forums or target you in sales campaigns, etc. If you want to be subscribed to anything, we figure you’ll tell us so directly.

    Articles

    Damian Fessey

    Stakeholder Management: Challenge or Opportunity – LinkedIn

    In a previous article I recounted how my colleague Nick recently conducted a straw poll of Government project delivery professionals, exploring which aspect of project delivery they found most challenging. The clear winner was ‘stakeholder management.’ So, as previously promised, now comes the interesting bit: Why is it so challenging?

    Communication is probably the single most complex aspect of humanity: We all have our different ways of understanding and of being understood: There is no single right way of communicating, and stakeholder management is no exception. And yet, delving into the detail of the survey responses revealed one striking consistency: Where the respondent selected ‘stakeholder management’, the explanation actually pointed to a different aspect of project delivery. One example:

    “Too many [Stakeholders]!!!! Lack of clarity around governance and who’s got decision making power.”

    …and another response:

    “Teamwork remains the last truly untapped productivity advantage. It’s still the biggest challenge, biggest opportunity and biggest risk.”

    Continue reading on LinkedIn 

    Damian Fessey

    The Two Most Challenging Things in Project Management – LinkedIn

    My colleague Nick recently carried out a little experiment. Before chairing a session at the Government Project Delivery Conference, he conducted a straw poll online. “Which aspect of project delivery do you find most challenging?”  Choices included the usual suspects; risk management, planning, benefits realisation, etc.

    Nick and I speculated as to which aspect would poll highest.  He plumped for stakeholder management, so from the remainder I picked risk management.

    I would have lost my shirt on that one.  The winner, by a country mile, was stakeholder management.  I’ll come back to the reasons why so many people chose stakeholder management in my next article, but what was most striking about the full spread of responses (other than stakeholder management) was the relatively even distribution: Just as many people selected benefits management as risk management, or planning, or vendor management. In addition to the eight options, ‘Other’ generated another 12 categories, which brings me to the big conclusion from the survey.  Stakeholder management is really the second biggest challenge in project delivery.  The biggest is actually ‘everything else’ – the sheer breadth of disciplines involved in being able to manage a project successfully.

    Continue reading on LinkedIn 

    Damian Fessey

    The Power of Culture – LinkedIn

    I’ve worked and lived in London for most of the past thirty years. It hasn’t been a ‘static’ experience: One of the great things about being in London is the ricocheting around town to meet with clients, suppliers and colleagues, intersecting along the way with the many other people that make up the whole London experience.

    Often the bounce from A to B to C has been by London cab. If I do the maths, that’s approximately 12,000 cab rides in three decades. And, over that time, I’ve had four trips that weren’t 5-star; the driver was rude, lost or fed up, or on one particularly memorable occasion appeared to be a fully paid-up member of the Ku Klux Klan; not what I needed on the way to a funeral.

    That’s just four bad journeys out of 12,000…

    Continue reading on LinkedIn 

    Damian Fessey

    Help! Can Anyone Fly a Plane? – LinkedIn

    What started life as a joke from the movie ‘Airplane!’ created some great insights into management behaviours in a crisis.

    For those who’ve never seen the aviation comedy classic ‘Airplane!’, there’s a scene where, faced with improbably incapacitated pilots at 40,000 feet, the flight attendant keys the microphone and ‘gentilely’ asks the passengers if any of them can fly a plane. Cue comedic panic…

    A mate of mine used to be a simulator instructor on the Airbus A320 – the holiday wagon that carts you off on your annual pilgrimage to Berlin/Nice/Barcelona (delete as appropriate). When he wasn’t training real pilots in the simulator, he used to do corporate days so that execs could experience what it was like to fly an airliner. Nothing too dramatic; just a bit of stick, rudder and throttles, so that the execs could awe their children with tales of airborne derring-do over supper.

    One day my mate decided to spice it up a bit. Faking a stomach cramp, he excused himself from the simulator cockpit ‘for a moment’, leaving the two execs in the pilot seats. As he left the flight deck, he handed the execs a folded piece of paper. Inside it read ‘The pilots have been incapacitated. It’s up to you to land the plane.’

    Continue reading on LinkedIn