eCameron has published numerous newsletters, emagazines, and Newsletters. Following is a listing of the past volumes.

It was such an innocuous question, "Working on an article; what is the biggest problem you see with project governance at orgs? Can you comment?" Can I comment? Really? That is like cheese to a mouse. Where could I start—bureaucracy, draconian process, poor executive sponsorship, disengaged leaders? Plenty of fodder, because they all lead to project failure. I fired off, "Creating an over bureaucratic morass stifling innovation & implementing process instead of cultivating leaders." Then the maelstrom started and it went directly to the gap between the executives and projects managers. Naomi Caietti, Robert Kelly and I had a great conversation. Most of the thread is below.

Yes. It has already been a month. There is a bit of a theme this month—Leadership. Three of our four articles talk directly about that. Speaking of leadership...

The Regional Leadership Forum is open for registration for the 2016 program. Have you checked it out? This is a great 9-month program put on my SIM (Society for Information Management) in nine regions around the United States. Top notch facilitators work with cohorts of 18-24 upcoming leaders to hone their leadership skills. It is a great program and you, or one of your team members, would find immense value in taking it. Please drop me a note, give me a call, 360-834-7361, or visit its web page.

In this month's Vision to Value eJournal we cover:

• Three talk about leadership, and
• Two articles are on Organization Change Management (OCM),
• One is a snarky article about IT.

I hope you enjoy them!

Cheers,
  Todd C. Williams
  President, eCameron

After nearly 30 years of project work, I struggle to understand the role of a project management office (PMO). Even though, I have written of the pros and cons, and read a plethora of articles, opinions, and how-to guides little has been done to convince me that the PMO is reducing project failure. It seems to be nothing more than a tool to fill a void in leadership? Even the acronym, which is so widely thrown around, has little meaning as the "P" has no less than four meanings. It is an executive's crutch for their lack of understanding in how projects work. These, like other, unattended holes in the corporate accountability create opportunities for new and greater bureaucracies and empires that further obfuscate accountability.

eCameron is conducting interviews on Organization Change Management (OCM). This research stemmed from other research on the role of Executive Sponsorship.

eCameron is conducting interviews on Executive and Project Sponsorship. The interviews are based on a request from a prospective client on training courses for executive sponsors. (This request is now closed and the white paper, Challenges in Executive Sponsorship, is published.)

Welcome to our new eJournal with a new name, look, and feel. We hope that you like it. It brings you significantly more information on how to execute your initiatives and projects successfully. After all, being able to deploy new capabilities faster with better adoption is what makes any business leap forward. We are sure you will find material to help you do just that.

This month we cover:

• Two case studies on major failures
• A look into how all of us can learn from public sector projects
• How to keep you out of court, and
• Leadership in your projects

Cheers,
  Todd C. Williams
  President, eCameron

"Kotter, ADKAR, or CAP which methodology should we be using to build our approach to improving project adoption?" I hear this question repeatedly from people trying to implement an organizational change management (OCM) program. The problem is that is the wrong question. Take a perfunctory peek at any of the models and you will see that in the quest for an answer people have mistakenly jumped over the first few steps and they head down the road of failure. It is a Catch-22; unless you already have an OCM process in place, you will most likely fail at implementing it. Putting one in place, however, is a change—one of the most difficult cultural transformations your company will undertake. As a result, people jump to the solution stage, which is well down the change management process path (which, they did not know, ironically, since there was no procedure in place).

A failing project’s fate is destined long before assigning a project manager. Its doom is sealed from the time the customer envisions the idea. Traditionally, project inception is defined as when the customer comes to a solution provider (internal or external to their organization) asking for a product or service. In actuality inception is much earlier. It starts when someone says, “Wouldn’t be neat if I could...” From that point forward the customer’s exceptions are set, changed, and reset as the process of discovery refines the concept. The customer’s ideas change from what they want to what they need, while continually constrained and formed by the realities of an ever-changing business environment. Although people cite unrealistic expectations as major problem during inception, the constant change in expectations causes the real issue—misalignment. For project managers to make a significant difference in a project’s success, they must use a new paradig.