CFO 4.0 - The Future of Finance

257. The Readiness Challenge: What Project Readiness really looks like with Hannah Munro and Neil Lynchehaun

• Hannah Munro

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As a follow-up to their Financial Transformation Live discussions, Hannah Munro is joined by Neil Lynchehaun, Transformation and Delivery Manager at itas, to launch The Readiness Challenge series.

In part one, they take an honest look at what project readiness really means and why so many finance transformations struggle before they even begin. Drawing on real delivery experience, this episode focuses on the most common and underestimated blocker to success team capacity and capability.

 This episode covers: 

  • What project readiness really means before starting a finance transformation
  • Why team capacity is the number one cause of delays and failed projects
  • How to assess whether your finance team genuinely has the availability to deliver change
  • Practical ways to create capacity without defaulting to hiring more people
  • The importance of having the right mix of skills influence and experience in project teams
  • How to reduce delivery risk through backfilling strategy retention planning and phased delivery

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SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly. Moving from cost controller to strategic visionary. And with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition. To win at work, drive your career forward and lead with confidence. Join Hannah Monroe, Managing Director of iTest, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

SPEAKER_04:

So hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. So Ted, today is another exciting new one for the CFO 4.0 podcast. I've actually invited Neil, who looks who's our head of transformation and delivery, for us to come on and have an open and honest conversation about what project readiness actually means. So the idea behind this is we have a lot of these conversations with customers before and sometimes after they've decided to crack on with the project about, you know, how do you make sure that you are ready to start a transformation? And sometimes it's okay to not be ready before you start, let's be honest, right? There are some circumstances. But if we had like a magic wand, what would we want? And what and what are the the key things that are critical to success? So um I want to say a big thank you to Neil for joining me on the podcast. And and hello, welcome back on.

SPEAKER_02:

Hi, Hannah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here.

SPEAKER_04:

Pleased to meet you. Oh my gosh. I think we've been working long enough that if we haven't met before, we're doing something very wrong. But um really great to have you on. And um I know this is a step away from the day job, so I do appreciate it. So let's just talk about, I guess what you know, when we're having conversations, when you're having conversations with customers, and based obviously on your extensive prior experience, what are the sorts of things that you think about when it comes to are you ready to start a project? Are you ready to start a transformation?

SPEAKER_02:

So the there's a there's a checklist that's going through my head, to be honest, Hannah. And it's it's kind of are these guys expecting what to expect? Or that you know, have they understood what this means in terms of the availability of their people and making their people available? If we look at all of the projects, the reason we have this checklist in our heads is that the the number of projects that have slippage in them, the greatest proportion of any slippage by far, well into the 90%, is challenges that the customers experience in their team's availability. And that availability can be affected by this is a new experience to the to the customer's team. It's completely outside of their skill set, outside of their comfort zone. Um, they didn't anticipate the hours when they'd be required in the project, or what it meant in practicality, or just didn't absorb that information. Um key people leave during the project. They suddenly get a little bit of project on their CV, boom, and they're out the door.

unknown:

Uh you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, there are times when projects coincide with other conflicting projects going on in the business, and quite frankly, our customers sometimes try to bite off too much at the same time. And there's a classic that always seems to strike auditors arriving on site at the same time as the project is just about to go live, and all hell breaks loose with auditors pulling customers' resources in several different directions. So, kind of when we're speaking with customers, we're really talking about these are the time commitments uh that you'll be needing during this project. Um, these are the types of people profiles that you'll need to bring to the party. So when you're going through data migration and data cleansing, it's not temporary stuff that you'll bring to that party, it's your your skilled, knowledgeable people within your team. Have you got a plan to release them from their day jobs? Are they key person dependencies in their day jobs? Have you got a backfill strategy? Have you have you checked the holidays a number of times where you see customers' teams disappearing off on holiday at critical periods? Have you got the right people identified to be participating in this project? How do they feel about it? Are they comfortable with it? Have they done this kind of thing before? Is this new territory for them? Um, and what other pieces of activity do you have going on at the same time? Are you about to make an acquisition that's going to conflict with this? Or are you expecting another piece of work to be coming to completion that's going to put a demand on the same people or people that have work that affects those those key people in the team? So it's really uh that first piece is do you have the team that has the availability and is able to deliver on this project?

SPEAKER_04:

So we talked about, so we'll come back and we'll drill more into team availability, but what are the other areas that customers should be or you know people should be assessing prior to them starting the project? So team availability obviously number one.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So then there's the piece about are we going to get the value out of this project that you really, really want? So have you really thought about what you're trying to achieve? What does that look like? Are the processes that you really need to re-engineer? Are there gonna be opportunities that you're missing by replacing what you have today with a new system? Or is this an opportunity to do something new and a more effective, adding higher value in your organization? Are you ready in terms of being in a good, clean state to move over to a new solution? Or are you going to introduce problems for yourself as soon as you hit that new platform going because you you've got untidy data, data that should have been de-duplicated, archived, following clean conventions? There's a lot of opportunities that are uh are not thought about in terms of preparatory work. Um have you got a contingency for a time that you might be transitioning from your old system to your new system? Um have you thought about the outage window, how you might want to communicate that with your customers and how you go around the business? What expectations are you setting to the broad business around what's going to be happening and how it might affect them as you go forward into taking this new project live? Do you actually actually something that we'll touch on in greater detail in another podcast? What effects are going to happen around this project that affect how your customers interact with you, how your suppliers might interact with you, and how the part of your business that are outside of the scope of a new system might change what they need to do. So there's a whole piece of readiness about really thinking through what's the impact that we want to have with this, and what steps do we need to take before we even start putting a system in place that get us to a better place in terms of value created and from that investment.

SPEAKER_04:

So if I maybe sum those up. So then we've got so key things for our listeners to consider is like team availability. Have you got the skills and have they got the capacity to get involved? And I think there's a second really good piece about almost what's the scale of change we're expecting and have we understood that? Like, are we expecting to replicate, replace, or somewhere in the middle? Yeah. So, um, and being clear on, I guess, the scope around that and what that means and how we're going to approach that. Data readiness, like this comes up again and again. I think there is something about people, once they actually start looking at that data, getting it ready for a new system, they suddenly realize the quality. So getting ahead of that, right? Doing an initial wave, and we'll jump into what you can do to get on top of that nice and early. And then it's almost like contingency outages, communication, I think is another piece. It's like, have you got a comms plan around how you're approaching this system change? So let's just go into that first one, right? Because there's so much to unpicked team availability. And I I will add to I think this is some really great concept, is that I think you need to understand where you're at in terms of your capacity. And I think one of the greatest shames with what we do is we're very often just supporting finance teams who are already at capacity before they look to change. And I I think that's the mindset, is the first thing we need to address is that if you're at capacity, you are behind the curve. So if you're sitting here listening to this now and you know that the business is going on a growth journey, right? And you are gonna, and if you and you are planning on going on that growth journey, you know what that looks like, you know what that means if you change nothing, you need to start now preparing for that. So your systems and if in my opinion, your systems and your processes need to be fit to scale before the business starts scaling, because otherwise finance is always trying to catch up, and it can never catch up because the business always grows faster than the systems and processes can deal with. So I think that's my first thing is that where are your team at in terms of capacity for the day job? What does that look like? And if you are, I guess, at capacity, you seriously need to consider bringing in additional supporting resources would be something that I think we need to think about. So, but it's let's talk about capacity first then. So, you know, let's talk about some of the strategies we have to deal with that. And what's your thoughts on what I just said there, Neil?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely spot on, Hannah. And it sounds quite daunting for our customers to be thinking about that, and it might be kind of, oh no, that's gonna cost mega bucks. But there are multiple strategies which uh that have used over the years, um, which actually leave a a business in a much better place. The first and most sensible thing is if if we're really running at capacity, um there's probably opportunities for relieving some of the the workload on the people that we'd want to be available for the project through internal backfill. So people might be seconded from other areas who have got an ambition to to develop themselves and their careers. There could be a degree of cross-training across functions within a team. And that we all know the patterns of business are never flat. They're always there's there's waves and ups and downs and all sorts, and we've all done our our contingency planning for things like when we had swine flu and bird flu. We all figured out how can how can Bob help Jill and Shane help Michael, you know, when that when they've got a peak and there's a slack of work over there. Same kind of thing. Let's look at where there's opportunity for maybe a team that is is not pushed as much to maybe provide that element of backfill through cross-training and reorganising how the work is delivered. There is ultimately the opportunity to maybe brain gid somebody on a short term, but maybe align that with a future recruitment policy or plan such that you might be looking for new talent as part of a growth plan, that their first engagement in the business could be to backfill somebody to release them for a project. There's there's any number of ways of kind of giving yourself more capacity through moving people around within an organization or bringing people in in a way that suits your overall strategy within the business. And of course, the other um approach is to let's take some work out. Again, a topic we'll come on to in a in a later podcast is all businesses kind of they don't do what the leaders think they do. You can attest you can testify to that, you know? As businesses work day to day, they encounter new challenges day to day, a new problem here, a new way of working there. And teams kind of do things to accommodate them. And part of the reason that you're going for a new system might be that the accommodating of these has become quite really quite heavy. There might be quite a simple little bit of problem solving that can eliminate a few of these problems. So where folks are maybe doing duplicate processing or workarounds or have something really difficult that they handle, maybe that could be the cut the release of five, ten, fifteen percent of resource capacity if you go through a little problem solving session with them and take some of that work out. And it's it's a good step to put in place for future habits. So we'll come to that in a later podcast, though.

SPEAKER_04:

I think that's a really good share, right? Is because when everyone leaps to how can we add more people into the team to create capacity. And actually, sometimes you're 100% right. It's the it's having a brutal conversation about what we could stop doing without having a major impact on the business that would free up enough capacity, you know, or could we structure how we do things in a different way in order to support that? So a classic example is if you think about your process sort of from sales up to finance, right? If if that process was maybe less reliant on finance, so either you're handing over more of the process to your sales admins, potentially, bringing it further upstream to finance really releases some finance capacity, or if you had less, let's just say, variations in the information and stuff you get fed from sales. So if you had some restrictions around and you limited the use cases that finance works to, or the payment terms and you know, interesting things like that might, you know, free up some capacity in order to enable your system changes. So that's that's always an interesting piece, isn't it? What upstream actions and decisions are happening that are creating capacity challenges? And could there be a stop on those variations that's agreed by an entire business for the period of time it takes you in finance to scale?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Now that's a hard thing for finance to have as a conversation, because let's be honest, finance always tends to react to what the business asks of it, you know. It doesn't want to be seen as a blocker, but sometimes it's a necessary conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

There's there's um I think there's a good ex a good area of focus could be where I hate using the phrase, but you know, there's a lack of compliance to a process. For example, a classic purchase early purchase ordering. So there's I think many businesses will know the problems of purchase orders that are created after the invoice has been received. So kind of not really purchase orders at all tends to create processing volume for finance. Um, so there's an easy system, easy thing there is to start putting in place the discipline of following design process, and actually it helps to surface out where you might have the needs of some business process improvement again ahead of going into the project. So adherence to defined process, take a little bit of the exception handling away, exactly as you said, take away that variation, Hannah, and and go uh go for it, get some quick wins. I used to make a commitment when I was doing uh the transformational programs in a previous life that I would ask people to do new things as part of the program, but my commitment to them was within the first two weeks I'd find that time in terms of a quick win to enable them to be released. And I think the same principle can be found in pretty much any business. Out there, your team will know the things that they hate doing because it takes up a lot of their time and they think it's unnecessary, and they'll be absolutely bang on that being being a good target to go after.

SPEAKER_04:

And also there's there is some genuine questions about phasing, isn't there? Because, like you say, right, what we see is that people's ambition around change in technology for the organization as a whole, almost their vision and their time frame sometimes outweighs the business's capacity to change. You know, and I think there is a bit about are there things that you can pull forward slash push back to minimize the capacity requirement? So, you know, it could be that you decide to implement an AP solution before changing your core finance system so that you have the automation around AP, you know, it might mean a little bit of rework once you get on the other side, or vice versa, you know, change one thing versus changing everything at the same time so that you don't like I I personally, if I haven't changed my if I'm having changed my core, I wouldn't implement a PO system until my core is in and solid, and then I'd go external. That's one of my my personal views because I want to change the finance teams of parundi and their capacity first before I go out and get the rest of the organization to buy into actually doing a PO process. So thinking about almost can you minimize the number of teams affected as well? Because then that minimizes the change capacity conversation and all you have to control is finances availability, not the rest of the organization as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Indeed. Indeed.

SPEAKER_04:

So we've talked so so you know what's your thoughts on backfill hire or hiring in resource and capacity. What's your perspective on that, Neil?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I would generally hire in backfill. It's an approach. For many, it's it's the last resort because it's it's money out the door. Ideally, combine it with the recruitment activity. So if your business is is planning to hire people in elsewhere in the business, maybe make this a first stop before they move into the target role as a backfill and and backfill into the day job. I would recommend against backfilling into a project role. The reason being is that the people who are going to be in the in the project roles need to be able to spot when something's not right. I think most of us can can you know kind of affirm that looks right, but it usually takes knowledge of the business to spot that's not right, that's not gonna work for us, and and that's a key part of that kind of the whole uh definition sign-off testing piece of the work. So I I would backfill the day job, um, and that can be done through cross-training as well as hiring in, put sufficient, you know, cross-cover backwards forwards so that if any one person disappeared out of that plan, the plan's not not going to fail. It's uh it's fairly solid. You know, there's plenty of great resources out there who will gladly take a temporary role or gladly see this as a first step into a longer career with with a new custom with a new employer.

SPEAKER_04:

And there is something about exposure to finance, actually, building a more well rounded individual, right? I think, you know, if you look across maybe you've got a project organization or an admin organization or, you know, another area of the business that perhaps has more capacity or could have more capacity. And as you say, with a view to that person's. Stepping into that role if there's a recruitment plan in the next six months, you're building a knowledge because you know, I think we underestimate the power of finance to build a knowledge of an organization as well. And then you've not wasted that onboarding time and that sort of business awareness knowledge that you've you've given that individual. And I think it's a really good shout to pull out the backfill versus higher for projects. Like have, I will say, I have come across some exceptional project resources. And there's one or two that we work with that have gone, we've worked with on a couple of projects. And but the reason that they they they work well when they're in the organization for a period of time before and a period of time after, right? And then even then, if you outsource decision-making process pieces, then you lose some of the capabilities. And there have been instances with some not so good resources where we've had to undo some of the work that's and decisions that have been made because it was made by somebody that didn't understand the organization well enough and, like you say, couldn't spot the issues. So I think that's a really important point, is making sure that you you have the capacity in the current team. Um, and like you say, that cross-training is something I think people forget, don't they? Can somebody step up maybe a step temporarily to give somebody more senior more capacity? You know, and that's a really nice conversation, it's a development conversation to have with your team, which is really exciting and a great, a great conversation. I also think, you know, we talked about um hiring in and project CVs, is that it is a good look for your team to have project capability. If you want to give people genuine development, you know, a new implementation, if I guess done right and phrased right, can be considered development for an individual. You know, it's something you don't get to do a lot in finance, you know, though we're seeing it more as people become more aware of the power of systems. You're unlikely to go through a lot of system changes. You might get, you know, one for each new role you go through, but it's is a real great uh development point to give people access to the experience of going through. So that's that's always a good reason to keep somebody engaged and involved in a project because they'll feel like they're getting an opportunity they wouldn't have have elsewhere. So we've talked a bit about um capacity. Um, and I really like that we've pulled out, you know, what can you stop doing as well as what can start doing? Um and and there's also a bit, isn't there, about, you know, is there some small tweaks to your existing systems that you could do to create capacity? Because we we talk a lot about the new systems, but we don't suddenly say, well, what if you just implemented this one feature on your existing system? Would that change a capacity on a key person, you know, person or allow it to be handed over to somebody else? So there is a little bit about setting your existing systems to go, if we invest a bit of time, not too much, because we know we're moving away from it, but if we put a bit of time into the existing systems, would that allow us to create more capacity for change? So we've talked about capacity. What about skill sets, right? Because, you know, we talked already that very unlikely that people have been through a system change. Some I've seen it quite a lot recently, actually, where the new hire that they bring in for a role will have some kind of system capacity, you know, even though they're intended change capacity, even though they're intending to be a permanent hire, but we're seeing that a lot. So talk to us a little bit about that, Neil.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think it's a great shout out, Hannah. There's a few things that can kind of jump up in my mind from the get-go with this. The first thing, which I think a lot of employees will really, really appreciate is go back through the CVs of the employees you have. I bet there will be a whole load of skills that you forgot those people had when you hired them. Um, a whole load of experiences that they've had, things that they've done, and you never know what nuggets of skill sets you've got in your team already that have just never been utilized because they're in a different day job. I know that uh on a number of occasions I've been absolutely and furious that uh somebody's talking about bringing somebody else in to do something I had years of experience of doing. It's sort of uh and I've I've seen so many people express that concern. So have a quick, you know, go back through your CVs or stalk your team or LinkedIn, do something to find out, have a chat with them, find out about um what skill sets they've got. There's a very practical challenge that we might not have um the right skill sets in the team or people that feel confident in what they're doing. I mean, part of our story is that we'll handhold the team through that.

SPEAKER_01:

Um maybe there's a piece about breaking the project role down into components.

SPEAKER_02:

So part of what we've already hinted at is that we're looking for a subject matter expert from the business for their part of the business, their functionality, um, their area of the business that they know or understand well, you know, the customer, nature of the customers, whatever it is, they bring a subject matter expertise to the party, and we want to capture that and bring that in. But they might they might be really, really uncomfortable or just have a mental block on delivering project work or getting their heads around testing, or maybe being a lead trainer if you're going to go down the cascade training cascade. There'll be other resources that can fill those activities in on the project. So there might actually be a project team that are brought together to fill parts of a project role together to combine. Actually, that's that's kind of a de-risking strategy as well, to take a little bit of um the risk out of any one person leaving the business or being ill or whatever for for whatever reason not being available. Um and so we're looking for those people with those skill sets that can bring the subject matter expertise, have ordered thinking, are good at following a plan and stepping through it, are proactive, are good at kind of trying to break things in all of the the the the best the best um implementations we have are the ones with customers who are real pain and during the testing phase and really test us.

SPEAKER_04:

We ask for them to become challenging in testing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's so sweet in hypercare, it's sort of like who, you know. Um so it it there's really uh a mix of of aptitudes and experiences that that to come to the party. You may you may have the the absolute um star player who brings all of those qualities to a project in a single person, then it's really about making sure that they've got the capacity. Again, we go back to capacity to to be available as per the project plan. But ideally, I'd give them some support. At times there is going to be frantic, it is going to the they're possibly going to be worrying, they probably need a second person to sense check what they're doing, you know, allow them to have that. The other, I'd say more qualities than skill set, maybe a bit of both, is that that person is influential within their own audience, within their peer group across the business. They're a trusted party when they're advising leadership on a concern. Um they have the kudos um to be given the floor, to speak their mind, to express a concern, and they have the trust of their peer group to take them on a journey, to be the trusted party. Um I I've I've often used people I know that had the trust of others in the past as a means of taking a group along on a journey. And I think that that's a a key quality of the people that you put onto the project as well. Um I think there are other other skill sets around completion, being tenacious. We can list a whole load of qualities, but I think that there are a couple of the considerations.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and I think there is a bit about some people get things done by charging like a ball through a china shop, right? Other people have the ability to influence their way through and not necessarily put up backs as they go through that process, right? And I think this is and we're gonna talk in a later podcast about change and how you do that, but it is a real piece about, you know, what's the reaction to that person when they walk into a room? You know, do people sort of prepare themselves for some something? Yeah, you know, how does that person behave when they're in a situation where things aren't going how they want it to? Because if that person is going to be leading or supporting the change through the organization, they need to have the soft skills to do it, not just the technical accounting knowledge, not just the ability to troubleshoot a process or to learn a new technology. They've got to be able to influence change, and we'll talk what that means, but I think it's, you know, this is why it's sometimes better to have multiple people picking up different pieces of that project role within an organization, because they may have either different levels of influence or different skill sets. You know, you might have someone that's really quick at picking up new technology and can figure stuff out and and really wants to get in and hands-on with the platform, brilliant at testing, right? But maybe they don't have a lot of patience. So is that person really ideally the person that you want tutoring your new and worried individuals on how to use the new system? Sometimes not, right? You can find both brilliant, they can do training and testing, wonderful, but you've just got to be mindful of the personalities you have. And and and I like to say, I feel like I can confidently say, given our recent awards for customer success and some of the expensive team, in that our team are really good at hand holding our customers through. That isn't the case for a lot of partners. A lot of partners have a, we're gonna give you the information and the tools you need to implement this yourself, go do, right? That isn't us, but I think it's a really good thing to be aware of is understand the partner that you're working with, right? Because otherwise, if you're not clear on the level of support that you're gonna get and the level of support other customers of theirs have been given, right, you run in danger of two things. Either your team will fail because they've not got the level of support they need, or you'll end up paying for that support, perhaps when you're not expected to, right? And I'm not saying that's a problem as long as you know about it in advance. If you're on a time and materials-based contract and your team needs more support, what does that mean? Yeah. Um so looking at that and understanding that is really important because you know, just like not all individuals are created equal, not all partners and not all technology is created equal, they will all require different levels of skill set and different levels of capacity to implement. And that I think that's something to really be aware of, right? So having conversation around these kinds of things with the partner that you're working with ahead of time is really important. You know, that whole, what am I expected to do in this? And what level of support are you going to give? And very often the piece will say, as long as you have those conversations up front, they wouldn't often be able to support you more in certain areas, right? So we get it often where we know there's a bigger change piece, they might need more hand holding. So we'll have that conversation up front about what they're going to need. So those are the things you need to talk about before you sign on the dotted line. Or if you sign on the dotted line, just don't have that conversation, right? So at least you know what you're getting yourself into. Okay. So that is also super important is how how supportive are your partner? And your definition of support might be different from theirs. So get into the detail when it comes to that. Because again, um, I don't think any partner goes into an implementation wanting their customer to fail, but they may have different expectations of you than you have of yourself, right? And that's really important to get into. So we talked a little bit about capacity, but what about you mentioned this earlier, right? Retention. Like this has come up a lot recently. And I don't know what's changed in finance and workplaces generally, but the tenure for an individual in finance has dropped significantly, like noticeably. And so what we have seen is that you know, good people, and that it's not for any bad reason, it's just they've got a great opportunity to move to in a lot of scenarios that people are moving on mid-project. So, how what are some of the things we can be thinking about ahead of time to make sure we don't have a risk in our project from those levers?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think I think kind of post-COVID and gig economy has kind of really made retention a more more of a subject we need to think about. Um I mean, there's the blindingly obvious, you know, you can put a financial reward at the at the at the back end of being in the business for a certain length of time beyond the successful completion of the project. That's quite crude, very effective. Um but you know there's a bum. Um but I I think there are other uh other options available as well. So again, looking at this being on the project as part of somebody's ambitions and you know the their longer term career growth and and experiences that they want to have that they might not anticipate within their current employer. And if the worst case is actually that they wanted to do this kind of work and you don't honestly have something to offer them beyond this project that is this kind of work, maybe a really mature agreement about helping them to seek their next role, a kind of uh uh um an outreach kind of arrangement with with them, maybe some sort of sponsored training that will help them to go on a study path and stay with your business whilst they're studying that that topic. There's a there's a f any number of rich ways that we can kind of get a really mature mutual benefit out of somebody staying with your business rather than heading off. I think a really basic hygiene factor in this is that if we're bringing in a new system, anybody that's involved could possibly be thinking, what does this mean for my employment? Am I at risk? And so maybe a very open and honest conversation up front that might be an assurance that there are we we anticipate no redundancies related to this, or we're going to handle it through natural turno, whatever it is. Um, you know, put those fears aside, address them, and it's probably addressing them with more than just the people who uh you're asking to be directly involved in the project. Give somebody the the comfort that they're they're secure, give them a plan for how they can develop and have a mutual benefit for being involved in this work. And that mutual benefit might be filthy lucre, you know, it's it could be of a monetary nature. Um, but there's there's a there's lots in between.

SPEAKER_04:

And there is a bit about just doing basic hygiene. So I don't know about other organizations, but just doing a basic benchmark of where your salaries for your team sit versus the equivalent um in the UK. Because sometimes I think particularly if you've got long-standing stuff, you know, you might be working off a percentage uplift versus a benchmark against what's happening elsewhere. So just being very aware. And if somebody's not happy, it might be tempting to give them an exciting new project to play with. Just be aware if they're not happy before, you know, what is it something to do with the way that the organization operates or something else? So just be just be a bit mindful of if you're putting somebody that potentially isn't enjoying their current role into a project, which is a great piece in itself. It's a great way to use that resource, but you also run the risk of that somebody that's already not enjoying their role within the organization. Um, yeah, you just just just be aware, I think, on that one as well. And and I do think that you know, there is a conversation about making sure that you're close to the team both before, during, and after the project itself, because you know, having good conversations with them and understanding genuinely where they're at, and it like you say, it doesn't have to be a you're gonna stay with us forever conversation, because like we all I think we all live in the real world, but understanding where they want to go and what their ambitions are for their careers can help you find things that align with their ambitions that might keep them with you longer, which is always super important. So that allows that to happen. I also um so we talked a bit about levers, and I think this is the one piece, and you know that de-risking, the last piece I want to say about levers is it's a lot easier to keep somebody for three months than it is for 12, right? So if you have phases to your project, clear start and stop dates, you have more opportunity to de-risk what you're doing. Because if you've got a massive sort of 18-month transformation project, which on the face of it sounds really exciting and might keep that person with you, but if that in itself is chugged up into three-month sprints where you, you know, you move something forward, you close the activity, you move on to the next. If something happens, I don't know, maybe somebody gets pregnant and needs to go on maternity leave or something, something you haven't planned yet, you have the opportunity to assess and maybe shift that one phase out whilst you get alternative resources in place, right? So there is a bit as well about looking at how you're chunking your transformation and change to enable like a broader base on which to support and to give yourself time to pause and reflect before you move on to the next phase, which is also important. And we've done it, Neil. I did say this before, like off off uh off podcast, we did say we've got so much to talk about. How are we gonna fit this into one podcast? And we've done it. So we've we've literally got to the end of the podcast, we've got the end of the podcast without clearing our list of things to be ready for. So very aware that our listeners may not be waiting for a marathon podcast and expecting one. So, guys, we are gonna pause here on the team availability readiness conversation and the piece about processes, that data cleansing, contingency, outage windows, all those great things we're gonna cover in part two of our readiness challenge. So let's just sum up then, Neil. From from your perspective, what are the key things that we need to think about or key top tips for making sure are we've got the right team capacity and skill sets for team availability?

SPEAKER_02:

So I I think you you said it, get the baseline of where your team is at in terms of the capacity right now. Look for what you need to do to create the right capacity for the project. Bring the right people to the project and recognize that various people's people in your team might bring different aspects of that skill set and experience and qualities and aptitudes that are required. And so it might be a joint team rather than a single person or or two people. Consider the need to backfill and have a strategy for how you backfill that um doesn't involve putting a person on a the backfill resource onto a project, does put them into maybe a development role, maybe caught um joined up with your recruitment. Do think about the things that compete with somebody's availability. Holidays. The number of times holidays are forgotten. Competing projects, auditors coming in, major events in the in your business, any other external events that might be going on, holiday periods that are not yet booked up, things like that. Think about the the things that you could do in advance to create some capacity. Maybe adherence to defined projects, sorry, not defined projects, to defined processes, so that you get taken by a worth the variation and workload away. Um and make sure that you're thinking about how you retain people for the duration of that project, whether it be through some financial incentive, some developmental incentive, some recognition, whatever is important to them that they want to be with the business and they see this as a as a good thing to be doing. And finally, de-risking that by breaking it into stages, kind of making it bite-sized so that you're you're dealing with a bite-sized risk. You can deal with it if the risk comes and for it to into reality as an issue. Brilliant. I think they're the things we talked about.

SPEAKER_01:

And summer, do you want to jump into the podcast, Dave?

SPEAKER_04:

Brilliant. Well, guys, you know, thank you to Neil obviously for joining us for part one. I'm not sure how many parts we're gonna have. We'll see how that goes, guys. But all of our listeners, I genuinely hope this is useful. I think you know, sometimes just taking this this 14 minutes just to think about what you need and maybe some alternative ways to approach capacity, not just you know, buying in a project resource, can make your project team stronger and your organization more enabled for change. So thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this. And if you've got any follow-up questions for this, then please do reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear them and we will cover them in a follow-up podcast. So thanks again for listening to the CFO4 Pito podcast, and look out for part two coming soon.

SPEAKER_00:

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