The Transformation Needed for CCM: Part 4

• Part 1: Transformation is a Necessity
• Part 2: The Centrality of Value
• Part 3: Value Management – the Missing Piece
• Part 4: How to do it

Everything we do is under the banner of “Value Management”. It’s what’s needed to truly achieve the transformation needed for the CCM role – and the relationships it’s responsible for – to not only survive, but thrive, in today’s complex world.

But why is transformation needed? And why is “Value Management” the answer?

In this final part, having looked at what Value Management involves, we look at how to get going, and why it’s easier than you probably think.

Last time, we saw how Value Management contains a complete framework of value – enabled and powered by the technology that drives the Complexity it responds to – and to most people we explain it to, it all makes sense.

But it also looks a long way away from what they currently do.

And so what we’ll look at now is how simple, natural, practical and powerful the first steps are.

It all begins with misalignment.

Starting with Misalignment

And that’s because the first and most fundamental issue confronting teams, organizations and the relationships in the middle is always misalignment.

Misalignment inevitably leads to misassumptions, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities: all that waste and cost we saw in Part 1.

So to get going with Value Management, you simply need to start uncovering misalignment – as we saw in Part 3, with a diagnostic.

This diagnostic just happens to be from one we’ve just run and, as we nearly always see, look how misaligned participants are, especially in the middle:

(Amusingly enough, including being misaligned on… alignment!)

Yes, they’re relatively aligned on a few areas of apparent strength at the top, and a few areas of apparent weakness at the bottom.

But there’s no way they can be effective overall – or prioritize amongst these areas – until that misalignment is understood and, where necessary, addressed.

So, misalignment is always the starting point.

But which focus – which diagnostic to start with – then depends on three related things:

• Where in the lifecycle things are.
• Your perspective in the organization.
• What the priorities then are.

Where to start

You’ll remember our framework from Part 3, but let’s now add in the contract lifecycle (courtesy of WorldCC) and also our organization chart from Part 2:

These are our variables, and the first place you can start is with a diagnostic around values and, from there, move down to the Things That Matter those values drive, and ultimately their Value Codes:

As you can see, this is likely early in the lifecycle, and usually reflects the senior Alignment perspective and its priorities.

More common, because most relationships are further on in the lifecycle, is to enter in with the Things That Matter, and then move either “up”, “down” or both:

This is perhaps around the handover from pre-award to post-award, and is often driven from that horizontal Resilience perspective, to get or keep things on track through things like governance and processes.

But probably most common is working “up” from Value Codes around operational issues, often based on best practice or standards (as we said in Part 3, these often have great stuff in them!):

This is likely later in the lifecycle, and often comes from that front-line Coherence perspective: someone very aware of those issues that needs a pragmatic way forward and quick results in areas like Communication, Capabilities, Risks and Metrics.

But in all cases… you’re ultimately aiming for the same end goal: to cover the whole lifecycle, to achieve Alignment, Resilience and Coherence across the whole organization, and for these to flow through the whole value framework, with all those priorities properly in focus:

And to start getting there, it really is as simple as running a diagnostic, as it really will open-up the next steps towards something we call the “Value Management Function”.

Towards a Value Management Function

Once you’ve run a diagnostic, you’ve now got undeniable evidence of the case for change and for wider engagement.

Because once you’re aligned – or even if you seemed aligned upfront – how aligned are you with your relationship partners?

(Clue: likely not very!)

The diagnostic process is how you start to organically embed, spread and scale:

• Taking the same diagnostic (now proven) and using it more widely, both within your organization and beyond.
• Starting to bring in the other parts of the value framework from where you started.

And it’s the foundation of what we refer to as the “Value Management Function”.

After all, you’ve got HR for human resources, quality, legal, and so on…

…but there’s no dedicated group responsible for value in organizations.

Running diagnostics is what starts to make this happen – creating a platform of crucial information, evidenced insights, transferable learning, and a set of Value Codes that gets refined over time to capture (in a persistent way) precisely what good looks like for you in the context of your value chain.

You’ll become the overseers – even the “owners” – of what matters most.

You’ll also start to identify those individuals that most willingly and insightfully participate.

Put all this together, and leadership starts to be reconceived as a behavior open to anyone (as opposed to an appointed position).

And you also have what you need to facilitate more fluid organizational structures – crucial for agility – as, going beyond hierarchies, teams naturally form and re-form around constantly changing priorities that you’re now on top of.

(So whilst “adaptability” is a hot topic at the moment – including people’s Adaptability Quotient, or “AQ” – it’s Value Management that provides the substance of what’s being adapted to.)

The end result will then look very different from how things likely are at the moment:

But this will happen organically, because Value Management is:

• Complexity-aware: channelling it, bottom-up.
• People-centered: empowering people and bringing them with you.
• Value-led: what matters to you and your customers, from within your relationships.

So, as I said at the start of Part 1, there’s a huge opportunity here.

The huge opportunity

We saw in Part 1 what a challenging environment we’re operating in.

We saw in Part 2 how traditional roles need to remain relevant and valuable to their organizations, and how there’s a crucial gap to decisively fill around value.

And so somewhere in every organization, someone is going to positively embrace transformation, and start building a “Value Management Function”.

The thought I want to leave you with is this: why not CCM professionals?

They’re at the front line, where value is won and lost.

They’re at the hub of key relationships, which your organization’s success depends on, and they’re overdue recognition.

How is it that, given this key position in the organisation, executive sponsorship of the role is so rare… and it’s almost never represented on the executive board…?

But if CCM professionals can take the lead with value, they can:

• Transform the focus of the role.
• Transform the practice of the role.
• Transform, at last, the profile of the role – who knows? Perhaps even to the C-suite level…!

It all begins with diagnostics.

So, we’re offering you a free one, pitched at the more pragmatic operational levels that we saw above.

Just get in touch, and start seeing for yourselves how aligned things are(n’t) in your organization…

…and then, more importantly, start to do something about it… for the first time.