The Best Way to Staff an IT Change Programme: Introducing Robin and the Sheriff

    LONDON, ENGLAND, October 28, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Scrape under the surface of most failed large scale IT delivery programmes and you will find the Sheriff of Nottingham lurking in the shadows. Hunched over his (sliding) delivery timetable, charcoal suit colour coordinating with black bags under the eyes and blacker mood, he wonders where it all went wrong. Piled in one corner are the bodies of the mercenaries he had trusted to advise him and in the other those of the henchmen he had bought in to deliver for him.

Meanwhile the regal CIO is sitting in his (ivory?) tower briefing the chief executioner/HR director.

Most programme directors don't start out wanting to be the Sheriff of Nottingham. Most of them don't even look like Alan Rickman. They want to be brave. They want to be popular. They want to take the company's precious resources and use them to benefits of the many. High ideals indeed.

However, when it comes to populating their programme office and their project teams, they make fundamental errors which turn them from matinee idol to pantomime villain. And then they get the chop.

Robin Hood is a good example of a bloke who knows how to hire programme and project teams and, in spite of his penchant for silk hosiery and over fondness for carousing, makes the ideal role model for all programme directors looking to staff a project. Here's why...

Clear leadership

Robin is the undisputed leader of the merry men. He has a clarity of vision and purpose which mirrors that required by the skilled programme director. Large projects often get bogged down, messages become confused and people lose their way, and the person in charge needs to be there to pull all the project's resources into line and push on.

To an extent, the sheriff shares some of Robin's leadership traits - decisive, yes. Unambiguously in charge, yes. However, he does lack the ability to create, articulate and follow a clear vision. Hence his project plan such as it is (kill the poor, acquire wealth, indulge in sadistic torture) lacks any coherence and buy in from his henchman. He is the absolute leader, but with no mandate to lead.

Worse even than the sheriff, is programme management by committee. Everyone in charge when deadlines are being hit, and everyone going missing when the battering ram hits the drawbridge. Even the Sheriff's capricious and arbitrary man management skills beat the inconsistent mutterings of a management committee.

Recognising the skills required

The Sheriff hired mindless functionaries whose only value is to perform functional tasks (bowing, scraping, dying to order) for overinflated wages.

In the real world of failing IT programmes these people proliferate. Notionally loyal to the leader and his project, they are actually entirely working on their own account and will get paid whether the project is an unmitigated disaster or total triumph. The sheriff will hire and fire these types of people at will, and it is their corpses that are stacked high in the corner of the PMO.

The Sheriff has hired the wrong kind of people. He has a war to fight, and hence he needs an army, is the logic. Flawed logic.

Robin, on the other hand, hired generals. Better calibre, more senior and with ideas and personalities of their own, each of them can be more than the orders they receive and the tasks they carry out. While some of his recruitment methodologies are unusual (sparring on a log over a river isn't in my 'Big Book of Recruitment Tips'), his underlying reasoning when assembling his top tier team is without reproach.

Calibre and seniority is part of it, but a lot of it is about fitness for purpose and having key skills to carry out specific tasks which are integral to the overall programme. This might be cutting a hangman's noose with a single arrow or heading up UAT, but what is important is that the person is a genuine expert, can lead other members of the team and the team benefit from the knowledge transfer. One Little John or Friar Tuck is worth more than an army of cannon fodder.

Rolling with the punches

Irrespective of how well a peasant uprising or SAP CRM upgrade is planned, things will go wrong. A lot of what makes Robin Hood a better role model than the Sheriff of Nottingham is how he reacts to setbacks to his plan.

The Sheriff acts predictably. Hurl some more cash at it, hire a load more henchmen and spend your days intriguing in dark corridors to make sure no-one thinks he's to blame for the mess. Predictable and familiar to anyone who's ever purchased, run or worked in a failing IT project.

Robin's approach is more flexible. This doesn't mean he's all agile and not very Prince 2. It's more that he expects things to occasionally go wrong, goes with the flow to an extent, but maintains his overall vision of what's needed. This skill has never been more important than right now, where rapid advancements in technology, an uncertain financial and political landscape and the innate scepticism of C-level execs, mean that what is originally agreed and what is delivered will change.

This is both necessary and desirable. A programme director who sticks too rigidly to the plan is as pointless as one with no plan at all. From a staffing perspective this will involve hiring and firing, but this will be necessary to fit the project to current reality and maintain sight of the overall desired outcome.

Utilising internal and external resource

Robin's merry men have the right blend of 'external and internal' resources. The Sheriff would be well advised to learn some lessons from him. He will not.

The Sheriff is both paranoid and dismissive of the capabilities of his own people, and hence he does what many programme directors do and buys all his team in from outside. While it might appear reassuring that you've hired a big team from the best software company, offshore outsourcer or management consultancy, you have to realise you've just hired mercenaries there to do the job, only interested in the money. No interest in you and your business.

Robin's merry men are recruited in a more labour intensive way, but have a huge advantage over an entirely bought in crew of Spanish archers. Robin recognises the value of those brought in from the outside and he wouldn't have succeeded without the likes of Friar Tuck to knock up a wild boar stew or hit assorted baddies over the head with his crucifix. However, his merry men are mainly composed of those who will benefit most from a change in the order of things. In Robin's case these are the overtaxed, downtrodden village folk, but for the programme director they are the IT function's current staff - overworked, underpaid, running rubbish legacy systems, dreaming of learning something new and working with better kit.

The Sheriff's model might, in some circumstances, fulfil this latter criterion, but in every other respect it is a weak staffing strategy. Bringing internal people into the programme ensures that the individual projects have people working on them who really care about the project, will benefit tangibly from its successful delivery and will work in partnership with external resource to overcome inevitable setbacks.

The outcome of a programme run by Robin will not only result in an improvement to the order of things, but also in a workforce of loyal subjects, who believe in and understand the new system. Even the best run programme led by the sheriff will only deliver the system, but there will be no winning of hearts and minds, no knowledge transfer and no lasting legacy.

Outcome oriented remuneration

The poor old Sheriff was always going to struggle to deliver when opposed by Robin's elite project team, but his remuneration strategy was weak in the extreme. Highly paid henchmen, who would get their farthings irrespective of whether their master succeeds or fails, do not make for a healthy team and are always vulnerable to being poached by a higher bidder.

Robin's merry men were remunerated differently. Utilising his oft quoted strategy of 'robbing the rich to feed the poor' he ensured that his people had full bellies, foaming tankards and unlimited access to hessian undergarments. A living wage. However, the real money comes at the end of the project when it's booty and knighthoods all round - a big bonus for a project well done.

It's important to note that the big pay off was just that. What the team had been paid all along was fair, and hence there wasn't an element of the merry men having had their wages docked up front and then getting the money back at the end. A bonus shouldn't feel like a tax rebate - just getting back what was rightfully yours in the first place.

The other thing that Robin's happy ending demonstrates is that, for high performing project staff, it isn't all about the money anyway. King Richard returned Robin, Earl of Loxley's title and good name to him, which is as important as the money, and a programme director worth his salt will remember to thank the team, provide them with testimonials (NOT just three lines on LinkedIn) and remember them next time they embark on an adventure in IT upgrading.

Conclusion

So to end up titled, loaded and riding into the sunset with Maid Marion, the programme director needs to learn five key project staffing lessons from Robin Hood.

One boss and one coherent plan.

Hire leaders not flunkies externally and don't take comfort in strength in numbers.

Expect the unexpected and don't 'panic hire' when inevitable difficulties arise.

Blend the best people from the in house team with the best people from the external market.

Pay fair day rates, but exceptional bonuses for delivering business critical outcomes.

Stephen Rutherford is managing director of Michael Page Technology. To find out more about our technology jobs and project staffing capabilities call him in confidence on 020 7269 2299 or email [email protected].

Website: http://www.michaelpage.co.uk

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