Castles in the Air, Implementation Leakage

Leadership start envisage a change, allocate budget, plan and hands over the reigns to the program/ project team to take up the implementation. This part of implementation or execution is like the porous bag, and such leakage could be costly and cause delay. Imagine an engine pulling the bogies of a train and there are linkage issues or the boggies are unwilling to follow the engine or there is a second engine pulling the boggies from the reverse side. Possible?

Basis the experiences gathered from leaders and experts, following are some of the reasons for the execution mishap, the areas where generally the "Oil" goes dry-

1. Myopic & flawed execution plan
2. Faulty process to back up the plan.
3. Lack of governance, check and risk mitigation mechanism.
4. Missing the environment conditions of execution
5. Lack of plan B or C, depending upon the value, complexity and criticality of the project
6. Missing out on selection of the right Project leader & the Project team
7. Unreasonable expectation setting from the execution team. Seeing "Hallow" around certain project members or certifications.
8. Poor work distribution between the routine task and the project task for a project team member
9. Failure to create system to support the project team. Missing to check team's clear understanding of the big picture. (The "Why" and the "How" of the execution)
10.  Inability on part of the Project Sponsors and Project leaders to kill the fear of "viability" amongst the team. Lack of leadership to boost moral and spirit of the team.
11. Missing on accountability setting from the project team.
12. Improper mechanism to check performance of team, inability to weed out those lacking the attitude and drive for the project execution. Can't have weeds in the vegetable garden.
13.  Misalignment between the functional and project leaders.
14. Inability to recognize the team upon successful completion of the project, but don't let the "basking in the glory" phase continue for long.
15. Going loose with the follow-through process post execution phase.

Execution stage if not more but deserves equal respect, treatment and care as that of a project idea/ analysis stage. Or you end up creating castles.

No matter how bright your Project idea may be, a faulty hand on execution could put it into dust. Contact Exxoptimus Partners for implementation advisory, control  & program management.