From Managing Work to Realizing Value: Article 1

Managing Work Is Not the Same as Realizing Value - Rethinking How Execution Is Governed

For most of my career and now as the founder of an Advisory firm, I have worked on the execution side of major initiatives.

• Post-Merger Integrations

• Divestitures and Carve-Outs

• Enterprise Transformations

• Large Technology Programs

• Manufacturing Consolidations

‍And I keep encountering the same pattern across industries and organizations:

‍Companies establish formal execution structures to manage the work. A Program Management Office (PMO) for a major program. An Integration Management Office (IMO) for an acquisition. A Separation Management Office (SMO) for a divestiture. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) for enterprise change.

‍These offices are usually well run, workplans are detailed, milestones are tracked, Status is reported, and there are Steering Committees in place.

‍On paper, everything looks great.

Then why are organizations not reaping close to 100% of the benefit they set out to achieve? This is something that has bothered me all these years. When I set out to research this, I found:

‍ McKinsey & Company suggests that roughly 70 percent of large transformation programs fail to achieve their intended outcomes

‍Analysis of mergers and acquisitions referenced by Bain & Company indicates that 70 to 90 percent of deals fail to deliver the value expected from the transaction

‍Harvard Business Review highlights that only about 20 percent of strategic initiatives fully achieve their intended results

‍And I wonder, how is this acceptable? How, on a $100M Value Promise, does the industry leave anywhere between $20 and $30M on the table? How can we embark on a transformative journey shrugging off such a gargantuan value loss? Why are we doing this work in the first place?

Its not as if people are twiddling their thumbs, Teams spend hours reviewing milestone progress. Dashboards show task completion percentages. Risks and issues are discussed every week. In short, the governance structures are extremely good at managing tasks, but not nearly as effective at ensuring the work produced the value it was meant to create.

‍These numbers are striking when you consider how much effort organizations put into managing execution.

Companies build detailed workplans, track thousands of tasks, and run structured governance meetings. But the entire execution ecosystem is built around managing activity, not governing value realization.

SteerCos keep asking, “are we on track to meet our timelines”? Is that even the right question? Just because we meet our timelines, does it inherently mean we are achieving the value we set out to achieve?

A couple of years ago, tired of seeing this pattern repeatedly, I started asking myself:

“What if execution governance was designed around value realization instead of task completion?”

“What if the purpose of execution governance was not simply to track progress against a workplan, but to ensure that every workstream remained connected to the value drivers that justified the initiative?”

This line of thinking eventually led me to develop an approach I now call Execution Value Realization.

‍The idea is simple, once strategy has been defined and leadership has committed to execution, governance should focus on ensuring that the work actually produces the value it was intended to create.

Execution still requires planning, coordination, and discipline. Those elements do not go away. But they should serve a larger purpose, namely, maintaining a clear connection between the work being performed and the outcomes the organization expects to achieve.

Over time this thinking evolved into a framework that we now use at MAD Advisory called MAD EVR- Execution Value Realization.

This article is the first in a short series where I will unpack this idea.

In the coming posts I will explore:

• Why execution governance often drifts toward task management

• How modern project management tools reinforce that behavior and do a grave injustice to their customers

• Why the consulting industry seems to have largely ignored value realization governance

• How the concept of a Value Management Office can change the way execution is governed

and finally,

• The framework we use at MAD Advisory to connect strategy, execution, and value realization

‍ Organizations today are very good at managing work. The next evolution is learning how to govern the value the work is supposed to deliver.

‍ That is the conversation I hope to start with this series.

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