Why don't we simply "do better with what we have."

As a casual observer it seems the Australian corporate executive set have a pretty limited playbook when it comes to improving their organisation's bottom line.  This generally involves slashing head count across the board, coupled with yet another round of restructures, all in the hope that somehow the remaining staff can deliver on the company's lofty strategic objectives with less and less resources with which to do it.  Surely this is a race to the bottom, or as Simon Sinik puts it, a legacy from the 80’s and 90’s.

Instead of hoping for "more with less", which never materialises, why don't we simply "do better with what we have"?  This requires faith in and commitment to your workforce that with the right support, training, and frameworks the people who generally hold your business' most valuable IP in their heads, can improve their productivity, reduce waste, and drive the bottom line improvements sought, without the continual disruption of downsizing and reorganisations.

In the Digital context, the impact of the current flawed strategy is even more pronounced given most organisations are already trying to execute way more IT initiatives than their available resources can reasonably deal with.  Even if you have the luxury of bottomless budgets, it is a simple impossibility to manage hundreds of IT projects simultaneously across siloed departments, who are all hamstrung by finite capacity and a tight labour market.

We were recently engaged by a large FMCG retailer to assist with a challenged project.  I was immediately horrified at the sheer number concurrent digital project trying to be executed, more than 300 as I understood it, many of which were large and interdependent.  Needless to say the morale within many of the tech enablement teams was pretty low because of the constant pressure from the various project teams, without any overarching prioritisation or guidance from the Executive leadership.  And all this was in an environment of significant, publicly declared headcount reductions across the same teams. How would you feel?

Transfit's Prioritisation Excellence framework implements a disciplined, enterprise wide continuous innovation program, founded on the recognition that we are all restrained by finite skills, time, and energy.  Limiting the number of projects in flight at any point in time to only the highest value, achievable outcomes immediately brings greater alignment, clarity, and cooperation across the business, and a commensurate reduction in risk and waste from failed or delayed deliverables.  This is the classic case of "less is more".

I would love to hear your own experiences and approaches to prioritising multiple complex programs of work.