Delivering Successful Programmes in Response to Covid

Venbridge consultants help organisations mobilise complex and time pressured Programmes, from the initial first steps, understanding the change that is needed and prioritising actions, through to bringing process rigour, implementation across different stakeholder groups, and scaling up. One of its practitioners is Kate Geick. She was brought in to work as a project manager, along with several other members of the Venbridge community, for the Diagnostics Innovation Team, part of the Covid-19 National Testing Programme. Here she shares her insights and suggestions for successful Programme mobilisation and delivery.

Identifying objectives key to good programme management

A key aspect of the Venbridge approach to project management is bringing discipline around processes through organisation, structure, and rigor. Its consultants believe that with any size and scale of programme, it is important to have a clearly documented and agreed process, and this is particularly true for programmes where there are a lot of moving pieces and parties involved as has been the case in much of the Covid response work the team has done over the last 12 months.

A clear and agreed process makes it easier to pinpoint where things may be going wrong. It also helps to ensure efficiency across teams. Kate says: “When you assume something without talking it through or documenting it, this is where duplication of work can happen, which is not an efficient use of people’s valuable time and effort. Having a process forces you to think about why you are doing something, who is doing it, when and how.”

However, a key point to remember is that processes are likely to change (according to specific tasks, ownership, timing, dependencies, and so on) so it is important to keep everything documented. This is also helpful when someone outside of the team has questions about what is going on and if you are onboarding a new team member.

At Venbridge, a sense of purpose underpins every step of the process – taking a step back to evaluate why you are doing something is crucial to success. Kate says she starts out by observing, interviewing, and collecting data. “I’ve worked on more than 60 projects and they’ve all been varied, but I always start by trying to understand what the need is and what the goals are. I shape the vision – helping them to understand the problems and how to prioritise, and what is realistic to achieve within the timeframe.”

Processes should always evolve and continually improve, but people are often comfortable with their way of doing things and can be resistant to change. This is why, for Venbridge, creating trust is important. This means investing time getting to know people and understanding their motivations.

Kate explains how she does this: “I try to assimilate myself into their organisation and create a shared need. They have to feel that we are in it together. In order to mobilise commitment, I empower people, so they feel ownership and are willing to collaborate with me. This is about working with them, not doing to them”

There are many different tools and methodologies used in change management and process improvement. Venbridge combines the experience and knowledge of its practitioners with project templates, ensuring the approach is tailored to each project. Kate says she sometimes takes an unusual route: “I think about what our communication plan is, and what the deliverables are, and then formulate a plan by working backwards. This means we stay focused on what we need to achieve”

Standardisation brings structure to a complex team

Political pressure and timelines made the Covid-19 Testing Programme a challenging project to work on for the Venbridge consultants. Kate says: “It would even have been difficult for teams who have worked together for a long time, but this team was assembled quickly and brought together different backgrounds and experience, and there was no opportunity for a kick-off meeting.”

Working closely with the cabinet office, the AHSN network, and many other consulting companies, the aim was to assess different technologies and innovations and identify promising products to enable and guide the government to develop test capacity and meet strategy targets. There were many different companies involved and the objectives were complex. The Venbridge approach was vital to bringing all this together, ensuring there was a project charter and an action plan for each of the main projects within the Programme.

“We initially had meetings where everybody joined. We then worked out that we could be more effective with smaller groups which had very specific purpose and goals.”

Having standardised processes and templates across all the different workstreams was vital, says Kate. “Every week we filled out the same templates – this routine helped the team to be efficient, share information, and manage stakeholders effectively. It gave us consistency in an environment where things were constantly changing.”

This high level of communication enabled the large team to remain closely aligned. Kate says: “We were constantly redefining what we were doing because it was constantly changing, but we always came together to encourage and support each other. None of us had done anything like it before, but my previous experience meant I could be put in that environment and be clear about what I was working on and what my responsibilities were.”

Recommendations for success

For Venbridge practitioners being able to take a step back is crucial. “When you are faced with tight timelines and pressure from the top, it is natural to just start doing ‘stuff.’ But that actually can lead to wasting your time and working on the wrong things,” says Kate.

Three rules for success are first to talk about purpose, why are we doing this, second is to ask what we are doing to meet our objectives and third, to ascertain who is going to do what, how often and when.

Underpinning these rules for success is the need for good communication. When you have a large team and many different workstreams, this can create silos. It is important to pivot together as a team and be always aligned. Kate says: “Not everything needs to be a meeting – we thought about different ways of communicating – some things are better as an email, or as one to one conversation and do not need to involve the entire team.”

Finally, ensure a focus on standardisation. When every workstream, or group has its own way of doing things with a completely different process, this is a route to disaster. Teams that operate more efficiently tend to share information in a consistent way and are better at effectively managing stakeholders.

For Jess Lancashire, Founder of Venbridge ‘the opportunity to mobilise and deliver the programme was an enormous privilege. Establishing a new programme in an emerging organisation presented some specific challenges to the team. By blending the right tools, focusing on communication and being committed to the outcomes of the programme ensured we were able to successfully deliver this complex and challenging Programme’