insight
“Are you in control?” is a question I’ve seen posed by boards to executive sponsors of over-running, over-spending, slippage-laden transformation programmes dozens of times over the past three decades: Four simple, yet hugely challenging words. This article examines the good, the bad and the ugly answers.
3 Minutes
“Are you in control?” is a question I’ve seen posed by boards to executive sponsors of over-running, over-spending, slippage-laden transformation programmes dozens of times over the past three decades: Four simple, yet hugely challenging words. This article examines the good the bad and the ugly answers.
3 MIN
How is the executive sponsor supposed to control the complex, fast-moving and sometimes opaque world of programme delivery and still do their day-job?
Programme assurance does the heavy lifting for the executive sponsor. Oxford8 provide the line of sight, the insight, the foresight, and crucially, the options that enable them to exercise effective oversight.
How are you supposed to control the complex, fast-moving and sometimes opaque world of programme delivery and still do your day-job?
Programme assurance does the heavy lifting for you. We provide the line of sight, the insight, the foresight, and crucially, the options that enable you to exercise effective oversight.
insight
The executive sponsor is often the meat-in-the-sandwich between the high-stakes programme and the board, or in extreme circumstances wider, regulatory scrutiny. Is the expectation placed on executive sponsors reasonable, and how does it relate the role played by programme assurance?
3 Minutes
Programme assurance - not to be confused with accounting assurance - is the delivery of expert support to a programme, with the full authority of the executive sponsor; a combination of advisory, training, coaching and challenging, specifically designed to alter the odds of a successful programme outcome. And the beauty of it is that it's entirely self-funding, with a very short ROI.
insight
If a programme goes wrong, it is typically treated like a sudden change in the weather - unexpected, unforeseeable and not really anyone’s fault. The only exception to that treatment is the executive sponsor...
5 Minutes
First contact between a client and Oxford8 typically happens at one of three moments in a programme’s lifecycle. We term these moments the outset, the onset and the reset.
A clean delivery needs a clean start.
The outset – the beginning of a new programme - may look superficially like a greenfield experience, but it rarely is. It typically follows rapidly on the heels of the previous programme, which often means that the organisation is freshly scarred by whatever transpired before - the overspend, the organisational burnout, and above all, the belief that “we’re just not very good at change.”
4 Minutes
Interception, without the drama.
The onset is the point in a programme where initial symptoms of potential failure start to emerge. Anyone who has ever experienced this situation will tell you that it is almost impossible to identify the specific moment at which the situation crystalised.
3 Minutes
The reset typically occurs when a programme that has been struggling to meet its milestones and control its spending finally exceeds the elastic limit of optimism and cannot proceed any further without major revisions to timeframe and budget. For the executive sponsor, it’s the biggest single test of programme leadership.
4 Minutes
stage 1
discovery
stage 2
action plan
Duration: 20 days
stage 3
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
stage 1
discovery
Duration: 5 days
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
stage 2
action plan
Duration: 20 days
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
stage 3
Assurance delivery
Duration: fractional, and to the finish line
Objective:
Method:
Outcomes:
We’re exclusively former hot-seat practitioners; people who have delivered some of the most challenging programmes in the field of change. We originated from the first-ever Master’s degree in Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford back in 2009, so we’re research-informed, but make no mistake: We learned our craft in the field.
The flip answer? Because we're the only provider in the market who does purely programme assurance for a living. There are about 200 companies in the UK who purport to provide programme assurance. They do so for a variety of reasons - everything from optimising their resource utilisation, through to account presence for cross-selling opportunities and even the displacement of competitors – none of which is for the benefit of the client. We provide assurance, free from conflicts of interest, for one reason and one reason only; because we know that it is the effective route to controlled programme delivery.
There’s an old adage that programme slippage is a bit like carbon monoxide poisoning: It’s cumulative, often invisible and there are few warning signs prior to the unconscious drift into the fatal moment.
4 Minutes
If you’re looking for passive fence-sitters with a risk and controls background, that’s not us. Effective assurance has to be multi-dimensional and actively involved: Oxford8’s version of assurance blends advisory, training, case-studies, worked examples, pressure-testing and a variety of other approaches and techniques to support the programme. Below are some examples of exactly how we get our hands dirty:
Stable, predictable, drama-free programme delivery enabled by expert inputs designed specifically for ease of consumption.
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Controversial statement: Programmes should be fun. If you’re on a programme, you get to play a front-line role in removing all of the frustrations of your working life; the clunky applications with their long wait times and counter-intuitive interfaces, the arcane processes layered with workaround band-aids, the non-sensical org structures that mean everything takes three times as long.
5 Minutes