The Idea in Brief
Big projects fail at an astonishing rate—well over half, by some estimates. Why are efforts involving many people working over extended periods of time so problematic? Traditional project planning carries three serious risks:
- streams Planners leave gaps in the project plan by failing to anticipate all the project’s required activities and work .
- properly Project team members fail to carry out designated activities .
- results Team members execute all tasks flawlessly—on time and within budget—but don’t knit all the project pieces together at the end. The project doesn’t deliver the intended .
Manage these risks with rapid-results initiatives: small projects designed to quickly deliver mini-versions of the big project’s end results. Through rapid-results initiatives, project team members iron out kinks early and on a small scale. Rapid-results teams serve as models for subsequent teams who can roll out the initiative on a larger scale with greater confidence. The teams feel the satisfaction of delivering real value, and their company gets early payback on its investments.
The Idea in Practice
Rapid-results initiatives have several defining characteristics:
- scale—The initiatives produce measurable payoffs on a small .
Example:
The World Bank wanted to improve the productivity of 120,000 small-scale farmers in Nicaragua by 30% in 16 years. Its rapid-results initiatives included “increase pig weight on 30 farms by 30% in 100 days using enhanced corn seed.”
- activities—The initiatives include people from different parts of the organization—or even different organizations—who work in tandem within a very short time frame to implement slices of several horizontal—or parallel-track—activities. The traditional emphasis on disintegrated, horizontal, long-term activities gives way to the integrated, vertical, and short-term. The teams uncover activities falling in the white space between horizontal project streams, and properly integrate the .
Example:
Take a companywide CRM project. Traditionally, one team might analyze customers, another select the software, a third develop training programs. When the project’s finally complete, though, it may turn out that the salespeople won’t enter the requisite data because they don’t understand why they need to. Using rapid-results initiatives, a single team might be charged with increasing the revenues of one sales group in one region within four months. To reach that goal, team members would have to draw on the work of all the parallel teams. And they would quickly discover the salespeople’s resistance and other unforeseen issues.
- results—The initiatives strive for results and lessons in less than 100 days. Designed to deliver quick wins, they more importantly change the way teams work. How? The short time frame establishes a sense of urgency from the start, poses personal challenges, and leaves no time to waste on interorganizational bickering. It also stimulates creativity and encourages team members to experiment with new ideas that deliver concrete .
Balancing Vertical and Horizontal Activities
Vertical, rapid-results initiatives offer many benefits. But that doesn’t mean you should eliminate all horizontal activities. Such activities offer cost-effective economies of scale. The key is to balance vertical and horizontal, spread insights among teams, and blend all activities into an overall implementation strategy. Example:
Dissatisfied with its 8% revenue increase in two years, office-products company Avery Dennison launched 15 rapid-results teams in three North American divisions. After only three months, the teams were meeting their goals—e.g., securing one new order for an enhanced product with one large customer within 100 days. Top management extended the rapid-results process throughout the company, reinforcing it with an extensive employee communication program. As horizontal activities continued, dozens more teams started rapid-results initiatives. Results? $8 million+ in new sales, and $50 million in sales forecast by year-end.
Big projects fail at an astonishing rate. Whether major technology installations, postmerger integrations, or new growth strategies, these efforts consume tremendous resources over months or even years. Yet as study after study has shown, they frequently deliver disappointing returns—by some estimates, in fact, well over half the time. And the toll they take is not just financial. These failures demoralize employees who have labored diligently to complete their share of the work. One middle manager at a top pharmaceutical company told us, “I’ve been on dozens of task teams in my career, and I’ve never actually seen one that produced a result.”
