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Agile Ideas
#164 | Navigating Strategic Transformation with Human Centred Change with Renee Giacalone
From Strategy to Execution: Making Change Stick – with Renee Giacalone
Why do some organizations thrive through change while others get stuck in the gap between strategy and execution? In this practical and inspiring episode, I’m joined by Renee Giacalone—seasoned transformation leader turned entrepreneur—who shares what it really takes to make change stick.
With three decades of experience leading strategic change at companies like Bank of America, Kellogg, and McDonald's, Renee has seen firsthand that successful transformation isn’t about perfect plans—it’s about what happens after go-live. She challenges the overemphasis on pre-launch training and advocates instead for ongoing, people-focused support once the change becomes real.
We explore how to shift from resistance to engagement by tapping into human motivators like peer influence, FOMO, and friendly competition. Renee also makes a compelling case for democratizing project management across the business—so every team member, not just specialists, can confidently contribute to big-picture goals.
Whether you're navigating a complex transformation or simply trying to get your team unstuck, Renee’s insights offer a grounded, human-centric approach to change. It’s time to stop managing from the sidelines and start enabling people to succeed.
To learn more about Renee’s work, visit: rsgconsultinggroup.com
Renee's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneegiacalone/
In this episode, I cover:
02:50 From Corporate America to Entrepreneurship
05:42 Career Defining Moments in Leadership
09:26 Effective Change Management Approaches
14:58 Navigating Remote Work During COVID
19:15 Why Project Management is for Everyone
24:30 Execution Gaps in Organisations
29:05 Strategic Planning Challenges
39:00 Rescuing Challenged Programs
45:31 Leading Stuck Teams and Final Thoughts
And more…
Have you built a PMO from the ground up—or thinking about it? Tune in to learn how to create a solid foundation that supports growth, governance, and agility. Then, share your PMO wins or challenges—I’d love to hear your Agile
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Learn more about podcast host Fatimah Abbouchi
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You're listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted by Fatimah Abbouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I'm Fatimah, CEO at AMO, mental Health Ambassador and your host. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to share with you all, if you are not already aware, that I have set up my own Substack newsletter and it talks about all things execution and execution gaps. Originally set it up as a bit of a playbook for PMO, but then evolved it and now cover topics across change, transformation and really insights from seeing and doing things in different environments over the last 20 years. The Execution Gap Substack Newsletter is a little bit more of a deep dive and goes into practical how-tos in terms of addressing particular themes and challenges that I've observed or that viewers and followers have shared and asked. So to find the Substack newsletter, go to www. substack. com. Forward slash the execution gap.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Over the past 30 years, renee has led enterprise-wide strategic change and transformation, delivering value to Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of America, kellogg and McDonald's. Renee specializes in building world-class EPMOs, creating optimal business management routines to drive outcomes, accelerating change adoption through a human-centric approach and cultivating high-performing teams through effective coaching, learning and development. So please join me in welcoming Renee to the show. Renee, thank you so much for joining us today.
Renee Giacalone:I am so glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Fatimah Abbouchi:It's been interesting. I was just saying, as I was recording your bio, that we coincidentally came across each other through an article I had written and then I reached out and said, check out this article. And then we connected and now we're here. So I'm really excited and share a lot of share a lot of similar views with some of the things that you talk about. So I'm really excited and share a lot of similar views with some of the things that you talk about. So I'm excited to get into all of that. But I wanted to kick us off with you recently made the leap from being in corporate America to entrepreneurship. How is it going so far and has there been any interesting learnings in the last I think? Has it going so far and has there been any interesting learnings in the last I think? Has it been a month?
Renee Giacalone:Just about, just about. Yeah, thank you for starting with that question, because obviously it's quite top of mind. Yes, just about mid-May I made the decision to officially open my own business consulting firm. I mean, look, I've spent 30 years in corporate America in some shape or form large companies, small companies, mostly large companies and then I, you know, gained a lot from it. But I'd reached a point. You know you reach a point when you want to work on your terms. I want to bring everything I have learned over those 30 years and I found that corporate jobs were limiting and you know, there's also some of the cultural dynamics of working in an organization that get tiresome and I just made the decision that now is the time to go solo.
Renee Giacalone:And it's been great. The best part about it is meeting people like you, right? I mean, you don't have the time. When you're a slave to the clock and you're a slave to your you know outlook calendar and you're trying to commute back and forth, you just don't have the time to find, you know, high quality relationships and invest in them. And so I am so appreciative of being able to do that right now and I trust and have faith that that will lead to. You know, one conversation leads to another. We're still in early days. Obviously the market is a little soft in the summertime for here in the United States a lot of vacations but we're making progress and again I'm having a great time getting to know people and learning about their problems and business opportunities that I might be able to help them with. So we're off to as good a start as you can when you're starting a new business.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Well, welcome, welcome to the entrepreneurship journey. I'm sure it's going to be a roller coaster of emotions. I can definitely tell you that, and I think also, like you said, the experiences that you've garnered from your career are going to be immensely helpful in this small business. I like to think that having that big corporate background helps you understand problems on a larger scale, and then you just need to bite, size them down into a small business. So I think that that's definitely going to be part of the journey, but I'm keen to see how that journey progresses as you go.
Fatimah Abbouchi:I'm always here as an open ear, so tell me, you've obviously when I sort of started talking about your background, you've worked at some really big companies. You spent almost 10 years at Bank of America, you've worked at Kellogg's and most recently at McDonald's. Is there a particular experience in your journey I like to think of? You know our corporate career having some, I guess, career defining moments. Was there any career defining moments for you that really stand out? That is a lesson that you can tell us about that really helped shape your career.
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, yeah, I think so. And, to your point, given that I've worked at a lot of different places, there's a lot of stories to draw on. But when I reflect on kind of moments of inflection, there's two that come to mind. First, the first 10 years of my career actually before some of those companies that you mentioned I was in business to business sales, started as an entry level sales rep and worked my way up and I found that I could be probably the second best sales rep all the time because I didn't really have that hunter instinct. I was a problem solver. So the first defining moment was when I actually read the book Now Discover your Strength, realized that I could keep doing what I was doing and being kind of. You know a second sales rep who happened to love to solve problems for customers, or I can go get a job that leverages the skills of solving problems, and that was a big, big turning point in my career. The second one that really shaped kind of my passion for change management, that human centricity for execution, came later, at my time at the bank.
Renee Giacalone:I was running banking centers at the time, or branches that you might refer to them, 40 of them.
Renee Giacalone:I had an extended team of about 400 people and in that experience that kind of frontline leadership experience I've learned the hard lessons about humanity, about change and how humans respond to change.
Renee Giacalone:I ended up leading this team after a acquisition. We had acquired our rival, our local rival, and the majority of my staff came from that rival bank no-transcript sales oriented than service oriented, and they never saw themselves that way. So it was a real mindset shift and so it really taught me hard lessons about you know you can draw up great plans, you can have a great product or process, but you got to win the hearts and minds. You got to meet people where they're at and pull them into the journey as opposed to push change on to them. I could go on and on about some of the techniques we use, but we might we might hear more about that in follow up questions here. We use, but we might hear more about that in follow-up questions here. But that was a real watershed moment and it was experiences that I draw upon frequently when I start to work on a really large strategic change.
Fatimah Abbouchi:It's so interesting because you're right, when there's sort of your really large transformations like an acquisition, I feel like a lot of the time it draws people to have fear that they're going to lose their jobs or that a restructure is coming. And look, a lot of time there is a restructure and I just feel like one of the things I see a lot and I'm wondering whether you see this too is change management in general sits in one of two camps it's either an afterthought and completely neglected, and therefore there's no budget or resources assigned to it, or that it's done, but usually under the guise of oh, that's the project manager's job or the program manager's job. What do you typically see and how do you influence executives to give change management the time and energy that it actually needs to deal with situations like that?
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, no, it's a great question. I do see a lot of variability. I see it as, sometimes, change management, when it's provided, they over index. On the upfront part, it's all about training and comms and that's it, and they give no attention to post go live, no coaching and support, and I firmly believe that there is no amount of training you can put people through before the change is real, before your hands on the keyboard, that you just you'll never learn enough, you won't retain enough. You need to support them post go live. You're absolutely right now in terms of convincing them of the investment.
Renee Giacalone:Some of the learnings I've had came from mistakes, came from, like I said, this, over indexing, we're going to do all this. Massive amounts of training, six weeks of training, we go live, and then everyone's scratching their head wondering wait a minute, they're not doing it, they don't get it, they don't understand it. Oh, I guess we need to retrain them on everything, right, everybody. And so one of the approaches I've taken that seems to have worked a few times is like okay, let's play this out. How much energy do you want to spend doing it all again? Right, you know, after we go live. Why don't we do this proactively. Why don't we do the minimum to get them excited and kind of conceptually ready for the change and then let's spend the time, money and energy coaching and supporting them after the change while they're doing it, because then it's real, it's not conceptual, it's not hypothetical, they're really doing it.
Renee Giacalone:And that's when the real questions and concerns and fear starts to come out and some of the techniques that I find that work way better than you know over engineering, on training, formal training, to go grab a, call it an early adopter, somebody who's a peer that's trusted, that you can have, sit down, virtually or otherwise, shoulder to shoulder, and say talk to me, what is it about the process or the tool that you're getting stuck? Where are you getting stuck? And I can help you. That actually doesn't cost you that much. It's just take some planning and forethought and some acknowledgement that you're probably not going to get them completely ready ahead of go live. You're going to need to be there to catch them, support them after you go live. So I have a. I have a. I'm very passionate about the, the, you know, kind of over more, over indexing or placing more emphasis on post go live, because I, because I think it works better and it's meeting people where they're at.
Fatimah Abbouchi:It's so interesting. You say that because I see a lot of transformation programs. I can think of a recent one that was a quite large $50 million program and change management and the change management team. They were allocated to this program and they spent a lot of time planning the change planning, the change planning, the change and the training and the comms. And then they execute right at go live point but nobody actually spent any time getting up. So you see all these people that are seeing things happening in this big program team of a hundred people but not really know what's coming, and then at the end you expect them to get it in a two week, you know window. Well, I don't.
Renee Giacalone:It's just crazy to me yeah, yeah, I just, I mean I think we need to there. There is scientific proof and studies that talk about the limits of training. The amount of amount of information one retains diminishes dramatically with every hour, day, week between the training event and the actual application of the learning. It's kind of fact. So I think, I think that that's another strategy that I've used. I've kind of brought out some of those facts and go look, I'm not making this up, you know, think about yourself, when you've taken a training, how quickly did it kind of leak right back out, right, and you needed to have some form of support or a refresher once you actually started trying to apply the training or the new process, etc. So, yeah, I'm not sure why folks struggle with the concept.
Fatimah Abbouchi:So much they like to. I call the change management stuff fluffy. They like to think about the change management stuff as the fluffy stuff you know, generic little loot bags and all those sorts of things. What are some thinking about? Change adoption techniques and things you've seen. What are some of the metrics that you would typically use to measure a change adoption?
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, so that does. There's a wide range of those. So, metric wise, look there's, some of the standard ones are ahead of time. You are trying to get a handle on their mindset. So I do want to take some surveys, I do want people to kind of rate their feelings and readiness about the change that's coming. I think that's pretty pretty strong practice that I've seen work really well. But I also really like and this isn't necessarily a metric, but I really like focus groups, like getting small groups together to hear about real concerns. I mean, I've done that a few times and actually what came out of some of those focus groups were legitimate. You know either process flaws or missed opportunities, because you know employee base can be quite vast and there could be a lot of variability in the current state and so it's really hard to go find out every nit and nat and nuance that the organization may have and those come out in talking to real people. So I do like to do that and that does kind of supplement the quantitative data around sentiment surveys.
Renee Giacalone:Clearly, if at all possible, I'd love finding ways to measure the actual usage of the process or the tool. Sometimes that's quite easy If it's a system. Sometimes it's as simple as logging in right, how many times did they log in? And so it can vary. But process adoption some of the techniques I've used are like post go live certifications. So I would go and sit, you know, send an expert in to kind of observe. You know how somebody might be applying that process. Again, this works in sales and customer facing scenarios where you can actually observe call centers, things of that nature. You can actually observe and you can say, hey, are they adopting the best practices as defined? Where are they debating? Where are they not? And you can quantify that too, especially when you're talking about a process change, because you're talking about behaviors and mindsets. So those are some of my favorite ways of doing it. And then my other favorite way is to kind of use a little competition. And then my other favorite way is to kind of use a little competition.
Renee Giacalone:I believe that humans as a rule don't like to be embarrassed and so, taking advantage of that notion, what I'll do is Postco Live will do some contests and you publish kind of some results so that people can see where they stack and rank against some of their peers. You know, are they coming up the learning curve or are they not, generally speaking, just having that displayed with no even real editorial behind it? It gets people going. Hey, wait a minute, I'm in the bottom quartile, I don't want to be in the bottom quartile, what do I need to do? I'm in the bottom quartile, I don't want to be in the bottom quartile, what do I need to do?
Renee Giacalone:And so sometimes simply just exposing how people are doing, again in a it's not in a mean spirited way, it's not in a shaming way, but it's just to kind of stoke that kind of competitive human nature to say you know, I don't, I want to succeed, I don't, I don't want to be at the, you know, ranked at the bottom, and so let me get more engaged and let me figure out how I can, you know, adopt and succeed. So those are some of the metrics and ways I try to measure adoption.
Fatimah Abbouchi:I think they're really great examples and I think, like you said, depending on the, I guess, the culture and the environment you'll modify, I think some people are so burnt by change that change happening at them, not with them that it makes it really difficult. So I think any way of measuring improvements, that competition sort of style, is really good, because we often assume people don't have capacity to get involved. But they actually really want to and I feel like they're less fearful of the change if you include them.
Renee Giacalone:Absolutely. I'll give you one more example. Actually, another technique I've used is is taking advantage of FOMO, the fear of being left out Another very common human trait, right? I implemented a new checklist for a call center and there were five teams and I gave this new script sorry, it wasn't a, it was a script to help upsell better and I gave it to one team. They started using it and their cross-sell rates started improving really quickly. The other team started asking questions hey, all of a sudden, your cross-sell rates are going to. What are you doing? Oh well, I am using this new script, this new technique. It's working really well. So what has that done? Yes, I didn't get the benefits right away by exposing it to everybody. I took a slower roll to get it started, but now I have pull. Now I have people saying when can I get it?
Fatimah Abbouchi:When am I getting it because that looks pretty good.
Renee Giacalone:I want that. That is the easiest way to do change, to be honest, and I found that to work even better.
Fatimah Abbouchi:It goes back to what you said earlier. I mean we call them super users as an example. But finding some of those, I guess change champions, super users, those that have influence and pull in an organization, and leveraging them because if they can get excited about the change and really sort of jump on board that journey, others will follow because their trusted employee colleagues are actually on board that change. So sounds so simple, but people continuously are make the mistake of not not um factoring these things in. So I wanted, I wanted to shift gears a little bit because still still referencing change, but one of the challenges I think is where does change management fit in an organization? Some people will say that if you're running an EPMO which you've done many times that change management is outside of the EPMO. Sometimes it says it's within the PMO. Where do you think change management as a capability within an organization actually fits? Where have you seen it work well and not so well?
Renee Giacalone:Oh, I love this question. I'm very passionate about this question. So, first, my current state is you're absolutely right. It is everywhere, from HR to PMO to non-existent right, it's all over the map.
Renee Giacalone:Personally, I see you know I'll take you back to when I first learned anything about project management. It was a thousand years ago and it was under the. It was as I was getting my Six Sigma black belt. That's when I first learned all about project management and change management Wasn't through my time in technology, as it turns out, and in my mind, the way it was taught to me. It was embedded.
Renee Giacalone:I, as a Six Sigma black belt, did not have a specialist called a change manager to rely on. My job as leading a Six Sigma project was to ensure that we knew the problem. We brainstormed solutions, tested those solutions, deployed them in a way that they stuck and we got the benefits. Well, to do that, you have to know change management, because you know Six Sigma is all about process improvement. Well, who follows processes?
Renee Giacalone:People, humans. And until humans are all replaced with robots which hasn't happened yet, right, we need to be aware and understand how humans behave, and so I learned all about behavioral science and human behavior and how they react to change as a part of running those programs. And so I'll be honest, I'm biased in that. I like to see it integrated because I'm tired that the energy wasted and actually trying to parse out the exact deliverables that are change versus program, versus project. I kind of struggle with that. To me it feels like wasted energy. I, in fact, when I left McDonald's, one of the last missions I gave to my PMO lead was to upskill as many senior program managers on the full suite of change management so that we weren't dependent on a consultant all the time, not that I don't love consultants.
Renee Giacalone:I am one now right, but sometimes you don't need all that overhead and infrastructure. You need to appreciate what it takes to make a project successful and one of the things is adopting the change, whatever it may be. I also didn't want to be reliant on necessarily a dedicated team. We had a dedicated team as well, but they were limited in resources. So my final answer would be personally, I'd love to see it integrated.
Renee Giacalone:I'd like to see if there is a place for a dedicated SWAT team of really really highly skilled change managers for maybe the biggest transformations. Maybe they're more of a coach and less of a doer, and then the program managers are skilled at really doing the planning and driving it out with the benefit of the best practices and the expertise from, say, a change COE. I really like that model. I get that. A program manager can't be expected to be an expert in all disciplines. They need to phone a friend, they need support. But I don't like the idea of like two discrete individuals with different mindsets fighting over turf when inside of a project or trying to parse out you know, my deliverable, your deliverable. I care about change, you don't. To me that's wasted energy and I'd like to. I like to see that merged with a support structure that makes sure they're they're armed and dangerous and ready to really manage the change effectively. So you may not have expected that answer, but that's the best one.
Fatimah Abbouchi:I have that. That example there. Just rings true to you know, another program I was working on where there was so much time spent debating what's change and what's project delivery and they had consultants come in very big name consultants and they had to cycle through multiple change managers. And where we landed was we actually got clarity that the change management team were going to be managing the change in comms activity external to the program so your end users, your operational teams, your vendors, et cetera. And then the PMO that sat in the middle said that they were going to be supporting the change into project delivery, working with the project managers, the program managers, the BAs, etc. So effectively, we worked in tandem as opposed to fighting over that turf.
Fatimah Abbouchi:So it's a very real problem and I do agree with you. I don't think it's always black and white. Yeah, agreed, agreed. So one thing that's really interesting you talk a lot about change and one of the things that you did during COVID is you sold your house and you gave everything away and you became a digital nobody. So if there's anyone who understands change, it's definitely you. Tell me about that.
Renee Giacalone:It's crazy, but, look, I can get a little restless. My husband has a little wanderlust too, but, like since I was a kid, I love change. I used to rearrange the you know the furniture in my room like every you know, every month or so, because I would just want something new. I haven't lived in the same house or, quite frankly, as you can tell, even worked for the same organization all that long. I am not the person who's going to be the, you know, obviously it's too late for that, but you know, the 30 year life, I like change, I like change.
Renee Giacalone:And so this opportunity presented itself. You know, working from home was available to me and as long as I had my background on, they didn't know where I was. In fact, we were really hoping in the early days that we could go to Europe even and work. You know I'll work, you know, us time but be in France. But the borders closed and that was impossible. So we instead, you know, took off to see a couple different cities in the US that we were interested in and loved and loved, loved the flexibility.
Renee Giacalone:I will say, you know, from a professional perspective, I'm very conflicted on this topic. I love the work from home thing, but I also was running a massive business integration. We had acquired a small company three years prior to that and finally got around to integrating them. And then then COVID hit and and there was big cultural differences. Think, think, mom and pop entrepreneurial company bought by a behemoth right mega corporation. So the culture clash was real.
Renee Giacalone:And not being able to look I, you know, look at each other in the eye, go out for a beer, break bread, to kind of work through challenges, took a toll. It did have an impact on the on the project. We got it done, but it was more painful than it needed to be and I know COVID was a part of it. That inability, you know, to get to know each other. Look, humans are social creatures. People need people, right, and you know. So I'm very conflicted on it. I'd like to return to home but I return to office, but I really do, you know. Also like the flexibility and the reduction in commute time.
Fatimah Abbouchi:I get to use that time for things like this, right yeah exactly and honestly, just based on the way that you described your, you know your style.
Fatimah Abbouchi:This entrepreneurship journey that you're now on as your own consulting company is actually perfect for it because it gives you that flexibility to do that. But I agree, I think, just on the return to to the office mandate, the only thing I can say is, if I think back um 20, 22 years ago, when I started my career, I can't imagine getting to where I am today if I was early on in my career working from home. I think as a more as a as early regardless of the age, but as someone starting early in their career, I think the benefit that you get from being in the office. Maybe when you're more mature in your career career and you've spent a long time building relationships, it might not be as impactful, but I do think that there's a big benefit of having the flexibility of being in the office more often than not, but also flexibility to also work from home without the guilt. So I think. But let's see how that plays out Great.
Renee Giacalone:Just to pile on there the benefits for that early career person of being around senior career people who've been there, though that's where some of the learning and the wisdom comes from, and so we got to show up for our younger, you know, early career teammates, and so, yeah, I said I'm conflicted. I love the benefits, but I also very much appreciate the power of people being with people.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Yeah, absolutely, otherwise you get forgotten. I really do think I'm very visual. If I don't see something, I forget about it, and often you forget about employees that aren't in the office as sad as that is.
Fatimah Abbouchi:So one of the other things you talk about, which I love and not many people talk about this is so one of the other things you talk about which I love and not many people talk about this, is the fact that project management should be for everyone. I'm super passionate about this because I feel like, particularly with the work that we've been doing over the years, is, strategy is one thing which we'll talk about in this moment. And then you've got delivery, and then you've got operational teams, and operational teams, who are those that have to work with projects for most of their lifetimes, don't seem to be given any training, any experience, any thought, but yet then people expect them to get up to speed on how projects are going to be delivered. So tell me why you're so passionate about that, and do you think that project management should be taught across the company, even for people that aren't in project management roles?
Renee Giacalone:Great question. I'm so glad we get to get to this one and I want to give this a good bit of air because I'm equally passionate about it. So this epiphany happened when I was actually at Kellogg. I was asked to intervene on a business project that wasn't going well. I was working with operations people, marketing people, supply chain people, non-project management professionals, a little bit of IT, but not really mostly business people, and these guys are smart, talented, some of the best in their fields, but had absolutely self-proclaimed no idea how to organize around a problem and get to the other side it just they couldn't do it, they couldn't get out of their own way, they couldn't get the traction. So, as I said, I intervened, I got involved, we started to get organized, we solved some of the challenges that were getting in their way and after a while someone on the team coined the phrase hashtag need more Renee's. They were so pleased with you know how I helped them kind of get off dead center. But obviously you know appreciate the compliment, but obviously the answer wasn't to go hire more Renee's, right, that isn't. You know, that isn't an option financially, not an option complimentary, as that would be an option financially, not an option, complimentary as that would be. So I actually got inspired to solve the problem another way or to address this need another way.
Renee Giacalone:I created this high impact, concentrated what do you know? What is the minimum you must know to, as a business person, to lead a project? And I started training different operational team members marketing supply chain team members on this. And then, true to my philosophy about change, I offered office hours every week that they could call into to get real time on the spot, coaching and feedback. They're putting a charter together that they have to go send to their boss to get some funding to start a project to solve a problem. They would show up with a copy of that charter and I would critique it and I would tell them how to make it better. I would point out where they have gaps. And we did that week in and week out. And people started showing up week in and week out to get that support and reinforcement. Because, again, just like we talked about, I could have trained that all day long, but if they walked away, never used it again, it's gone, it's as if I never did it. And so we would try to catch them when they had active project work going on, and then again we would back them up with that weekly access to an expert. You know, I called it the phone, a friend hour right call in and get the help you need right now. And so that was our way of expanding our reach as a PMO without expanding a single headcount, and so I and I, and that worked really well. We got incredible feedback on the process and we had every intention. I think they're still doing it to this day.
Renee Giacalone:To your question about who and how should we teach project management I am still shocked that people go and getting their MBAs in business school, still walk out not knowing this. I have to say I'm still shocked. Get your money back, guys, because you should be walking out knowing how to do this. I had this idea the other day. Think about HR. Hr helps people. Managers manage people better. They have best practices, they have tools, they coach them and they counsel them, but they never actually manage the people for them Right. They help the people who do it.
Renee Giacalone:I think the PMO could take a similar role. Own the idea, as I did, of passing on the basic knowledge of how to run projects to everybody in the organization who wants it and then, like I said, be there to support them, but you don't do it for them, you support them. Now there's always big strategic initiatives, that a PMO kind of like the change management conversation. You want your best and brightest and most experienced person. You're not going to go and ask somebody to play the role of a senior program manager who hasn't been there and done that. And there's a, there's a role for that and we need to keep doing that. But not everything needs. It's kind of like not everything needs the sledgehammer, right. Not everything needs that level of expertise. And so how do we skill up? You know the rest of the organization, so, when needed, they know how to get from point A to point B.
Renee Giacalone:Because, after all, what is a project I mean? A project is, to me, it's simply the path from current state to a better state. I don't know a single business leader who takes on a role, joins an organization for the first time and says, oh, status quo is just fine, no change is needed.
Renee Giacalone:You know that doesn't happen. They come in and they've got problems. They've got opportunities to seize and problems to fix. Projects are the path to do that. So you got to figure it out and I think the PMO could be the one to help do that.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Absolutely. I think the PMO can be a catalyst for change, for delivery, for all of these things and demonstrating by leading by example. It's so interesting because the executives themselves you're right. I have this discussion recently with a senior board member that's been on numerous boards across the world and one of the things I said to him is why don't they teach board members project management? They all come from operational backgrounds.
Fatimah Abbouchi:There's companies out there one of the companies I worked for spent a billion dollars per annum on project management. They all come from operational backgrounds. There's companies out there one of the companies I worked for spent a billion dollars per annum on project management $1 billion per annum just on projects so to change their business. But then they didn't spend anywhere near the amount of money on actually training the people that had to receive the change in the operational areas or even spend the time to help them, to ask the project managers the right questions to keep them accountable. They just got the change delivered, thrown over the fence and then operational teams had to live with that and and try to realize the benefits and so forth.
Fatimah Abbouchi:So I'm super, super passionate about this and it's not something often people talk about, so I think it's a great example. It's interesting. So, talking about project management in general, one of the things I wanted to touch on is I know you talk a lot about how well-formulated strategies fail more often than not because of the idea, but more due to missing capabilities. People misconstrue what capabilities mean. They think it means capabilities of an individual. Where I think capabilities is your people, your process, your tools. More broad, we talk a lot about that, but what do you think the organizations most commonly are falling short when it comes to execution?
Renee Giacalone:most commonly boy. There's quite a quite a few there that I can think of, but I would say, if I had to pick the one that they fall short on, I would say kind of the more operational excellence and the reason I say this and this might not be the answer that you were thinking, thinking, but often I think organizations think of operational excellence or you know good business routines and management routines as the domain of manufacturing and they don't think of you. Know, if you're a service provider, they don't think that that applies to you, and I would submit that if that's the case, then you are likely talking about the wrong things with the wrong people at a time that's too late to do anything about it, not using facts and data, but gut and intuition and you're probably making bad decisions or poor decisions, decisions that you know that are leading you maybe in a different direction and you're probably slightly behind the curve because you're inefficient in how you are operating. And to me that is something that I think, folks, this is kind of like the project management topic.
Renee Giacalone:It's just taken for granted that everybody gets into a C-suite role and just knows how to run their function, knows how to run it all, and I find over and over again, people do not. They may be subject matter experts, they may be the best person who's ever done logistics, they may be the best brand manager ever, but they don't necessarily know how to harness the power of their team, measure what matters, talk about what's important, make better decisions and continuously improve how they do what they do. Those are things that are secondary. It's really more focused on the subject matter, the domain, the marketing, the logistics, the transportation and kind of the ecosystem that you need to put in place to effectively run a team, a function, a department is taken for granted, and so when I look at kind of the core four capabilities that I look at, I see that one as like for C-suite folks, that one gets the least attention and I think it should get the most attention, to be honest right.
Fatimah Abbouchi:So we talked about change, we've talked about operational and a little bit about PMO. From a strategic planning perspective, what do you think organizations are getting wrong? I feel that there's so much time spent on strategy because it appears to be more fun and then those plans seldom get delivered and it's just carryover from quarter to quarter to quarter. What do you think we're getting wrong when it comes to strategy formulation, strategy planning, and what's the advice you can give to leaders that may be new to this space?
Renee Giacalone:Great, great question. So I would say I think that there's strategy development and then there's strategic planning. In my mind when I think about strategy development, this is the fun part. This is the pie in the sky, the blue sky thinking. Everybody loves that there's a million consulting, that you can pay millions of dollars to help you do that and bring you outside in thinking. Check, got it. Not going to argue that that's not valuable. There is definitely value. But the next step is the translation of all that fun, sexy, futuristic stuff into something you can do something about and you can action on.
Renee Giacalone:And that's the gap that I see. I see a gap between the blue sky pie you know, really exciting, cool stuff and the day to day. What do we have to do today to make our quarterly number? That's like a short term goal. There's nothing in between and, or worse, there's nothing that bridges it all the way and makes what you're doing today make any sense. Right, what you're doing today, tomorrow, next month, next quarter, should all be in service of your strategy, and what often I see is siloed strategy, strategic planning, function by function. Okay, well, I got my goal, you know. Thank you very much. And here's my world, here's my portion of it and these are my strategic priorities. These are my goals for the year and I'm going to cascade to them at my team hot dog right.
Renee Giacalone:But what doesn't happen is the pull all the way from the big strategy, the big initiatives, the big priorities and how you, as a collective team, cross functional team, all have to contribute to the achievement of the big, the big goals. It looks something like I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with OKRs. It's kind of that's an old and you know an old methodology objective and key results. I find that people can't even figure that out. I mean, I'll be honest, I'm not going to name names, but very recently I've had to facilitate some serious working sessions to get very senior leaders to understand the difference between objective and a key result and how the linkage has to make sense. It has to tick and tie back to the big goals. Why are otherwise? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? And and I'm sorry if it's because you think it's what your function should do, but it's disconnected from the larger picture and the larger goals. You know, I think that is an error, that is a missed opportunity, that's waste and that needs to be reconciled back with the larger you know the larger strategy that has been developed.
Renee Giacalone:That's not to say things don't change and evolve, right? I mean obviously the days of. I mean, can you? I mean you talked about 20 years ago your career started I'm a little bit. I started more like 30 years ago and I remember learning about doing a 10-year plan and then it became five-year and look, now we're down to the quarter and so I do understand speed is a component here and so you can't spend.
Renee Giacalone:You know months and months and months. You know overanalyzing. You do have to start to put things on paper and get after some things and course correct along the way. I believe that in some ways, strategic planning is a continuous process and not an event. You're getting continuous feedback as you implement new things, as you make changes, as you get new external feedback, you should be constantly re-evaluating is the strategy on point still? Do we need to make an adjustment? Are the initiatives that are going to realize that strategy the right ones? And that should be a question that is asked quarter in, quarter out, nonstop, because things are changing so fast, and I can certainly appreciate that.
Fatimah Abbouchi:It's a really good point that continuous feedback is something that's undervalued. I think one thing you said that I see a lot of is the silo thinking for strategy, and I get it there's. You know, one department and division is different to another, but the challenge is and I don't know if you've seen this before as well, but I found that after they spend all this time developing their strategy and putting their plans together, that you end up finding at least in one one manufacturing organization. As an example, one team was actually delivering a piece of work, a significant piece of work, that actually was going to undo a piece of work in another division. Um, yeah, so all the time.
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, so it's just all the time, all the time. Yes, yes, yes. And so that's where? Um, that, that portfolio view, that the pm. This is where pmo can come into play and really help create that portfolio view. Let's look at bodies of work that are all thematically related. Are they really working in harmony, are they supportive of each other, or are they working at cross purposes, kind of evaluating, zooming out and really taking an evaluative look? I think a PMO is uniquely positioned to do that because they're unbiased. They're not from any one of those functions. None of those initiatives are their babies, right, and they're beautiful and perfect, right. So they're looking at it more objectively. I think the PMO can play a great role in providing that analysis.
Fatimah Abbouchi:A hundred percent If it's got the I guess the support, sponsorship, backing respect, because there are some PMOs that are not doing a good job, that are making it harder for everybody else but one of the things speaking of programs and complexity and process, I'm interested to get your thoughts on. Let's say that there's someone listening, running a complex program or supporting a complex program. They're low on resources, they don't have the capacity to bring in any additional resources and they don't have the time to fix everything. What would you say would be the sort of two or three key focus areas, if you were coming in to rescue a program that maybe was being challenged and you had limited resources?
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been asked to rescue projects, you know, many, many times, and over the years I've actually developed a I think it's a 14 question questionnaire, a checklist if you will a rescue project, rescue checklist. And I use this to kind of help me figure out where to start and some of the elements on that, and it ranges between what I'll call the kind of the hard skills and the soft skills stuff, so to speak. Right, there are elements of project management that are, you know, tangible. You're like, do you have any idea the why this project exists? Right, is there coalition around the purpose of it, the objective and so kind of that charter work. Right, to be honest, if you do nothing getting clear on the problem you're solving and the goal and the definition of done, I think of those, as, like those early charter questions you would ask, that's like 80% of it.
Renee Giacalone:I mean, most of the time I see programs that are off track. It's because you don't have alignment or agreement on that. And why that's important is because you end up with scope creep, too much work, because you're not clear, you don't have your eye on the prize, the prize is unclear. So some of those common sins that you see, with projects going off the rails, like scope, scope creep, are actually the root causes upstream, back in the definition of done, back in the problem statement, back in the goal statement. So I start there give me the charter, give me the goal statement, give me the. Give me the problem that you were trying to solve in the first place that justified the existence of this program.
Renee Giacalone:If that is not rock solid, super clear, unambiguous and totally aligned by all the sponsors, you know, time out, time out Right, start there Risks and issues management. I would say you go there next. As people are doing their contributions to a project right, things come up, things happen right, and so teasing them out in a proactive way, creating an environment where red is embraced, yellow is embraced, right, we get rid of that fear of reporting bad news early, early. That's actually good news. I would attack that next so that you can problem solve more rapidly.
Renee Giacalone:And then the third thing I would attack is simply your governance cadence. Are you having conversations with the sponsors frequently enough and are you talking about the right things? Are you being candid? Are you exposing the real deal, the real issues? Uh, with the sponsors who can do something about it uh. So your rhythms, your, your governance and your rhythm uh, business, uh, your management routines as it relates to the program, I think would be the third thing I would attack it makes sense, because if any of those things are not being focused on, it could make sense for why the program or project might be failing or heading towards failure.
Fatimah Abbouchi:I think just educating people on fundamental risks and issue management is sometimes something that needs to happen as a mandatory piece as well, but that's a conversation for another day.
Renee Giacalone:I have done straight up risk management one-on-one training too, even just getting people to understand the difference between a risk and an issue.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Yes, yes, they don't get it. Yes, yes, they don't get it.
Renee Giacalone:I'm like a risk might happen. An issue did happen. Can we just keep it that simple?
Fatimah Abbouchi:Exactly, it's for the fundamentals. Another question I had for you is if a leader is listening. Today and obviously you've spent a lot of time coaching, mentoring and building teams if a leader is listening and feels like their team is stuck or they're feeling overwhelmed, how would you recommend that they support their team to, I guess, get them unstuck?
Renee Giacalone:In a project context or in a more team or or functional context.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Yeah, more like in a team function. You know more as a leader, you want to do right by your team. Your team feels a bit overwhelmed, it feels a bit stuck, and I guess you just need to figure out what exactly is the problem and help them. Maybe you're a new leader to an existing team, like in your acquisition example.
Renee Giacalone:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I I. The first thing I do is I get real curious right. As a leader, my job at that point it's not about judgment, it's about getting curious. So I generally will go steal the best practices from traditional root cause analysis, rca.
Renee Giacalone:All right, what are the symptoms that you're seeing? What are the problems that you're feeling? And then we have to start to dig underneath. Often this is a human condition as well. Humans aren't great at naturally diagnosing the root cause. We see symptoms real well, that's easy, right, I'm feeling this, I'm seeing this.
Renee Giacalone:But it takes dialogue, it takes curiosity and it takes patients to say, all right, I'm seeing this, but it takes dialogue, it takes curiosity and it takes patience to say, all right, let's dig deeper. Why did that happen? I love it's such an old school tool, but I love the five why? Technique. I love just continuing to probe and ask why? Just enough times for them to kind of go oh, that's why this is happening. That's the problem.
Renee Giacalone:I'm a big fan of coaching, not telling. So I also like to lead the witness. I like to ask really potent questions. I actually want my team to self-discover what the opportunities are, to learn. How did they get here.
Renee Giacalone:I don't actually want in the context of leading a team, not necessarily as a consultant, but as a team leader. I actually want to enable my team to be successful. I'm not here to tell them what to do. That's management from a different decade, right. I'm not interested in being that kind of a leader, but I do want to grab them by the hand and get them through the process, facilitate that, ask potent questions and help them self-discover. You know where might they be wasting their time? Let's go. You know, tell me about your goals and your priorities. How are you spending your time? And then, through that dialogue and that self-discovery, often than not the employee self-discovers the real issue. They go okay, I see what it is. I'm over-indexing on this and it's because I've had a bad experience with that in the past and that is unfair and it's actually creating pressure on not spending enough time on the most important things. So got it, I'm going to make a pivot. That, to me, is that's what leadership is all about. It is enabling, not doing for them.
Fatimah Abbouchi:You've got to do that so that they can learn and, as they say, you've got two E's for a reason. So leaders probably need to listen more to be more effective overall. So we're almost at the end of our conversation today, which I've really enjoyed and I always say this, but generally speaking, genuinely speaking, I think we could talk a lot longer. My last question for you today, renee is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder today?
Renee Giacalone:Oh my, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder today? Oh my, that's a, that's a loaded one. Um. So when I think about leading high performing teams, driving strategic change, um, you know, uh, I. I think about setting shared, you know, having a shared team purpose with individual accountability, right.
Renee Giacalone:I think about leaders who pick great talent and then get the heck out of the way, right and again, be that coach or be that enabler, that's the kind of leaders, in fact, I just hosted a leadership webinar today, specifically for female leaders, and we talked about some of the best practices of leadership, talked about some of the best practices of leadership, and and much of them was about it's not about you, it's about your team.
Renee Giacalone:And you know, the days of you being successful on your own are over when you take on the responsibility of a leading and building a high performing team. And so I just encourage people to really embrace that role of coach. Embrace the role of I call it the CMO, your chief marketing officer of your team, right, meaning you are the best person to tell the story of your team, to talk about the impact you're having, steal a page from consultants and use, you know many case studies. What was the problem? How bad was it? What change did you implement? And now, what are the results? That's a powerful story that you can tell and showcase, to brag about. You know the accomplishments of your team, and only you can do that as the leader, and so these are some of the things that have been on my mind lately, in particular, about leading high-performing teams.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Amazing. Thank you, Renee, for all your insights. I'll continue to follow your journey on LinkedIn, which I will share in the show notes. I'll also share and reference people to go to your website, rsgconsultinggroup. com to learn more about the consulting work that you're doing, which is no doubt going to be very impactful based on your experience over the years. Be very impactful based on your experience over the years. Thank you for your time today and I look forward to continuing our journey for following and sharing content and collaborating more, because I think you share a lot of really really clear insights that I don't think people always put front and center, particularly around like operational excellence and also just the catalyst that a PMO can be. So it's very refreshing and I appreciate your time today, thank you so much for having me.
Renee Giacalone:Likewise, the admiration is quite mutual. I love your posts and I will continue to follow you and engage via LinkedIn as well. So thanks again for having me.
Fatimah Abbouchi:Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things Agile Ideas, go to our website, www. agilemanagementoffice. com. I hope you've been able to learn, feel or be inspired today. Until next time, what's your Agile Idea?