My friend Peter*, a senior executive in a tech company, recently lamented the lack of a visible, understandable, coherent strategy coming from the highest levels in his company. The company had in the past depended on the all too familiar silo structure to manage portfolios, programs and projects in each major division across the organization, but in recent times, had struggled to formulate a cross-company, product & service strategy. This was compounded by difficulties in the coordination of efforts across the entire organization to formulate product and service strategies, then develop and deliver.

The company was getting by through the strenuous efforts of individual star performers in Operations, Engineering, Program Management, Service Delivery and Service Management. However, the acquisition of another company, with a different but equally silo driven organizational model, and the resulting confusion, almost destroyed the company. To survive it had to divest itself of the acquisition, an additional division of the business, layoff a large part of the workforce, and reorganize to eliminate two of the original divisions merging them into one. Even after that effort there is no guarantee the company can survive.

This story is not unique, we hear of similar tales weekly if not more often. Today’s Business and Tech landscape is in a state of continual flux. We are in the early days of the 4th Industrial Revolution – after Manufacturing, Personal Computing, and the Internet, it is now the Age of AI, Cloud, Analytics, and the Internet of Things, all interrelated facets of this sea change in business, culture, networking, social life, and the world around us.

Our ways of working are changing, our non-working lives are changing. Even the tools we use to relate to each other, our community, and the world, continue to change dramatically. We use smart phones and devices to do business, to shop, to inform and entertain ourselves, to get from place to place – in short computing and communications are ubiquitous and woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

This trend will not stop – it will intensify as communications become ever more powerful with the advent of 5G and beyond. We as consumers and users see no split between business, applications, devices, platforms, and infrastructure. The businesses riding the crest of the 4th wave agree and have organized themselves to be flatter and more agile in strategy, process, and delivery of an experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

Yet many organizations still operate as though nothing has changed. We still have organizations that silo the IT Operations division away from Engineering, Research and Development divisions and again silo Strategy, Marketing, and Sales divisions as though they are separate worlds. They only interact when one of them throws whatever is new on their side of the wall over to the other organizations and say “Voila! Here you go – now deal with it!”

If you know, or work for, an organization like this, you are familiar with the multiplication of effort in each silo and across silos to try to pull together disparate divisions, portfolios, programs, and projects into one streamlined delivery model. The most recent attempt to address this has been the trend to create PMOs. However, PMOs can fall into the old trap of being part of the divisional silo culture and we end up with multiple PMOs – one for each division. This compounds confusion and intensifies divisive politics as the PMO becomes the instrument of empire building or, even worse, political subversion.

How can we remove division-al culture with its drawbacks and reinforce unity throughout the company? How do we rally the entire organization around a clear unified strategy that empowers everyone to act and execute at full throttle?

Enter C3PO! No – not the wonderfully effete, grumpy and funny robot from Star Wars, sorry if you are disappointed! 3P represents Portfolio, Program, and Project, management.

The C3PO represents the Chief 3P Officer (and Office). This is the C-level function responsible for clarifying a unified, company-wide, strategy with the Board, CEO, and CFO, creating the resulting Strategic Portfolio, Governance Process, and Risk Mitigation, for all components of the company. The C3PO decides which projects belong in which programs based on the Strategic Portfolio, defines the goals and the processes required to deliver against them, managing the pipeline from design, through development, quality, delivery, and into operational service management.

The C3PO unifies the entire cycle from beginning to end including the feedback loop that determines the priorities for new releases, new products and new services. The C3PO removes the need for separate CIO and CTO functions and can transform the COO function. The C3PO remit covers the execution of strategy across the entire set of product and service cycles and is the partner of the Board and CEO in the daily implementation and monitoring of effective corporate governance.

The C3PO eliminates PMO duplication across the company, streamlining the delivery and management of products and services while saving the money wasted on duplication and providing efficiencies through the unification of company strategy, resources, process, research, product & service development, operations and service management.

The companies who embrace the C3PO approach with a flat hierarchical model will experience the thrill of knowing where they are going together, accelerated delivery, soaring CX, profits, and team cohesion.

 

*names have been changed to protect the innocent!

 

Tom Halton is a senior executive, independent advisor on Digital Innovation & Transformation, specialist in AI & Cloud strategy, security & sustainability, and self-styled C3PO (see the article titled “CIO? CTO? No, All Hail C3PO!”). With over 30 years experience at the cutting edge of technology innovation, and working with some of the most successful Tech companies in history, he now owns and runs the digital platform HMHmmmmm Ltd. (www.hmhmmmmm.com & www.tomhalton.com), where he advises, animates, makes movies, muses, writes blogs & articles, illustrates, and continues his adventures on the frontiers of a life bridging the Arts, Humanities, Science & Tech. 

Look out for his book, “C3PO, The Revolution At C-level” and HMHmmmmm’s animation series about a kitten with special talents – both coming soon!

© 2019 Tom Halton. All Rights Reserved.