What should we be looking at in our progress reviews ?
You’ve successfully launched the Transformation. The overall goal is defined, the main measures of success have been set. Resources have been agreed. And now you’ve set-up weekly progress reviews with all the key stakeholders for your Transformation program – one hour has been set aside which seems reasonable.
But what exactly, should you be looking at each week ? What’s the agenda ?
You may have hundreds of initiatives being planned – you can’t look at all of them one-by-one. And what about the people side ? How will you cover everything in one hour ?
Lets walk through how to this efficiently and effectively and we’ll start with the fundamental issue that the review team needs to solve for. During the progress review, the major, all important question the review team need to ask themselves is:
Are we on track overall to deliver our goals? And if not, what can we do to get on track ?
This guides the entire agenda of the progress review, what needs to be looked at and why. To answer the question of if we’re on track to deliver our goads, a good, tried and tested approach to follow is:
- Review overall progress of the transformation KPIs against target KPIs
- Check that the largest initiatives are on track
- Review the rest of the initiatives to see if any need of them need support
- Check the people side and if any issues that need addressing
- Check our actions (from this review + previous reviews)
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
1. Overall progress against target
The first part of the progress review should look to understand if the team is delivering on the expected target. This is the key objective of the Improvement program.
The review team needs to be satisfied that the team is on track to deliver on it’s goals – and, if not, spend time reviewing the results and asking:
- How are we doing against program target ?
- Is the trend up of down ?
- If we are behind target, do we know the reasons behind this ? and what can be done to get to get back on track ?
- Are we still OK on our risk KPIs ?
How are we doing against target ?
Whatever level of progress review, whether the organization’s executive leadership or a department’s management team, a key question to open the review is ‘How are we doing against plan ?’
Reports need to show current status against target.
The metric being measured will vary depending on the strategic goals of the improvement program – it could be cost or churn or volume – but the program will have a target against that metric.
In the early days of a transformation, the target will be a top-down target set by leadership, based on high level requirements and what they believe is likely achievable.
Later, as the improvement program progresses and more detail is available, the targets might be bottom-up; that is to say, the target will be detailed and cascaded down to each department or area.
Either way, whether top-down or bottom-up, the leadership team needs to know if they are ahead or behind target.
Is the trend up or down ?
If actions have already been taken to get back to target, but the team isn’t there yet, then they need to know if are progressing in the right direction. Is the trend up or down ?
Reports need to show not only if ahead or behind target on key metrics, but also trend over time. If reviews are weekly, then the trend needs to be shown weekly and ideally since the start of the improvement program.
Do we know the reasons for this ?
If the team is significantly behind target, they need to understand the reasons behind this and the potential corrective actions they can take:
- More resources ?
- More focus on some area of the business to deliver more ?
- Was the target unrealistic and needs to be revised ?
The team needs to be able to deep dive as needed by area to understand if all areas are behind or just some areas or significant initiatives.
Are we still OK on our risk KPIs ?
If we have risk (=adverse) KPIs, are we still in control and not adversely impacted anything ?
We need to constantly check these as these KPIs are early red-flags that whilst the improvement program may be successful its also having an adverse impact we need to be concerned about.
And if risk KPIs are moving the wrong way, then we need to look into, understand why they are changing and if we have actually impacted them because of the improvement program and take appropriate action – the hope being that it may be just one or two initiatives that are causing problems and that we can adjust those initiatives to reduce concerns.
2. Check that the largest initiatives are on track
Teams will inevitably find, due to the pareto rule, that 80% of the value of the improvement program will come from 20% of the initiatives. In other words, not all initiatives are equal and that some initiatives not surprisingly are more important than others.
The team needs to review each week, in detail, the top 3 (or top 10…) initiatives to establish that they are safely on track in terms of both value and timing and not seeing any major issues. If these top 10 initiatives are on track, then it’s likely that the improvement program is overall mostly on track. Conversely, if any of these critical initiatives are not on track then the whole program is likely to be behind target.
The team needs to be able to review detailed progress for these top initiatives including progress on:
- Current actions (is the initiative owner comfortable with current outstanding actions ? any roadblocks ? or help needed ?)
- Issues/Risks (what’s happening with current issues ? are new risks/issues being identified ?)
- KPIs (is initiative delivering expected performance for both process and impact KPIs)
- Workplan (how are we doing against plan ? what’s happening next ?)
This information gives the review team both a look at current progress but also a forward look against the plan to understand if they can support the initiative owner going forwards.
A great way for the leadership team in any improvement program to stay connected with their people is to bring the initiative owners into the progress reviews to talk about their initiatives – about the progress they’re making, the issues they’re facing and where they need help. This provides a great two-way connection; the initiative owner gets to see the leadership team and see first-hand the interest the leadership team has in progress and the leadership team get to see the issues that the initiative owners are struggling with.
Naturally, this does depend entirely on the approach and maturity of the leadership team – this will be counter-productive if the leadership team simply ‘grills’ the initiative owner! If the initiative is on track then take time to celebrate the success with the initiative owner – and if behind track then understand and problem-solve the issues with the initiative owner.
3. Check and support the rest of the initiatives
Whilst the team completes a deep dive on the critical top initiatives, the team also needs to respond to any emerging issues on the rest of the initiatives.
These initiatives, by their nature, will comparatively small and form a long tail. These can be covered by exception.
The information needed for the remaining initiatives should show:
- Any escalations raised by initiative owners (where support is being requested)
- If the workplan is on track for both milestones
- If KPIs are ahead/behind target for both process and impact KPIs
This information will allow the review team to deep dive on the ‘reds’ only – as needed. So rather an exhaustive deep dive on each initiative, the team can focus their time and attention appropriately, spending significant time on the top critical initiatives whilst also ensuring they can support initiatives in the rest of the improvement program.
4. Check there are no people issues
In addition to reviewing progress against the ‘hard’ targets, we need to take time to consider the people side. At the foundation of every Improvement Program are people. Without addressing the people side, there is no Improvement Program.
Specific items to cover are:
- Employee engagement: How is employee engagement ? Do they understand and believe in the program goals ? Are they contributing ? Should we recognize a team or anyone specifically for their contribution ? What were the results of the last survey ?
- Comms & messaging: What comms are going out in the next week ? Who needs to be involved ? Can we celebrate success anywhere ? How do we maintain momentum ?
- Resourcing: Do we have sufficient resourcing in all areas ? Which areas are short ? Do we need to support Program resources with backfills ?
- Capability building: What activities are planned ? Who is delivering ?
The review team needs to ensure that each of these areas are covered and get the air time needed.
5. Review actions
Lastly, what actions did we commit to in our last review ? Have they been completed ?
Reporting also needs to track all actions being generated in the review.
The team should review the status of currently open actions either at the start or end of the review meeting. This should be a quick run through of open actions that are currently due (and not yet done) i.e., ‘red’ actions. This ensures team accountability.
Ideally, the status information should be color formatted, highlighting in red the overdue actions.
At the end of the progress review, the team should review all the new actions taken during the review meeting to ensure everyone understands the agreed actions, who is doing them and when.
Conclusion: Ensuring the improvement program delivers its goals
Structured progress reviews are the engine that powers meaningful change.
Good review meetings will enable your Improvement program to problem solve on-going issues, manage roadblocks and steer the team towards success – and ultimately deliver on its goals!
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