Strategy Execution – not all about projects

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Most work on why strategies don’t get done focus on culture, but a new book [1] blames poor project management. It explains how the process should work, and tools to assess a firm’s capability to do it, but it needs a worked example to show the process actually happening.

“Projects” are certainly vital – a big part of Cisco’s past success came from its power as a ‘serial-acquirer’ of new technologies, each of which was a project. And a white-goods manufacturer recently ...

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Strategic project mgmt worth $1.3bn

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For construction contractors like Fluor Corp running major projects well is of strategic importance. So good to hear they saved over $1.3 in less than 3 years with intensive use of system dynamics by their project managers. The leaders of this transforming effort, Greg Lee and Ken Cooper, have been justly awarded for their success.  

It was not at all trivial to get these benefits – heavy input by their project mgmt experts, detailed modeling of how  projects actually work and ...

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Corporate Portolio Management

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Just been made aware of CPM – may be useful to strategic management. It seems to have come from the challenge of deciding and managing multiple, large-scale projects in sectors such as defence, IT and construction. Curiously, although there is what looks like a substantial professional body – the CPM Association  – I could find little else on it, not even a Wikipedia entry.

The terminology may be a bit confusing, because ‘portfolio’ in strategic management usually refers to ...

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