Insight Blog

EPMO Strategy Articulation

by Lake Shore Associates

May 24, 2020 | Case Study, Change Management

The Challenge

The Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) Leadership Team was tasked with building out a multi-year strategy for the first time in the department’s history. This strategy needed to build on work already completed and engage an extended cross-functional leadership team to architect the initiatives necessary to reach its long-term vision. LSA was engaged to facilitate the strategy development process, utilized its own tools and approach and thereby allowed the EPMO Leadership Team to focus on the needs of their customers and strategic direction of the company. There was an incredible sense of urgency with less than two months to complete the work. The strategy needed to be completed and communicated to the entire EPMO organization by the end of the third quarter of the current year. It had to be credible, engaging, motivational, and aspirational.

 

The Solution

LSA first reviewed in-process and completed initiatives of approximately 15 internal customer departments to gather data points around where the EPMO’s customer base was heading. Outputs from this work informed an initial draft of a Strategy Articulation Map which records a function or organization’s vision, mission, and values. The Map also captures market differentiators and strategic imperatives. Facilitated workshops with the extended leadership team produced additional refinements that were ultimately approved as the EPMO’s strategy and North Star.

With the vision, mission, and values in hand, the next step was to create the multi-year plan. LSA used a Journey Map that served as a milestone, or initiative-based representation over time. Strategic imperatives from the first step provided filters by which to ensure potential initiatives were aligned with a selected imperative and created customer value. LSA also applied the Congruence Model of Organizational Change to aid the leadership’s team recognition of interdependencies between initiatives. The end result was a Journey Map that provided a visualization of prioritized initiatives, aligned to strategic imperatives, over the multi-year horizon. As a living document, the leadership team was able to communicate their strategy’s progress and plans over the multi-year horizon.

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