Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
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Results<br />
about good program management practices <strong>and</strong> the aim was to introduce<br />
the basic program management concepts, processes <strong>and</strong> practices to the<br />
participants. The last two workshops were focused more on supporting the<br />
goal setting of Center’s program, <strong>and</strong> the role of our research team was to<br />
provide tools <strong>and</strong> templates <strong>for</strong> program planning <strong>and</strong> to facilitate group<br />
discussions. The workshops mainly received positive feedback from the<br />
participants, but they did not attract as many attendees as desired. The<br />
workshops participants openly criticized the low number of Center’s top<br />
managers taking part in the workshops.<br />
The second round of interviews was conducted six months after the first<br />
round, between the second <strong>and</strong> the third workshop described above.<br />
Compared to the first round of interviews, the program’s situation had not<br />
changed significantly. Although there had been attempts to define the scope<br />
of the program <strong>and</strong> assign responsibilities <strong>for</strong> advancing the program,<br />
planning was not progressing in the desired manner. There had been some<br />
concrete advances, but it seemed that they were not visible to those outside<br />
the core program team. For many peripheral participants, the workshops<br />
organized jointly with our research team had been the only program-related<br />
activity they had been involved in. The common view was that the emerging<br />
program could not demonstrate concrete plans <strong>and</strong> results, <strong>and</strong> thus was<br />
not able to proceed to implementation. Practically all of the Center’s<br />
managers that were interviewed expressed their dissatisfaction with the<br />
program’s slow progress, whereas the core program team complained about<br />
the lack of top management’s attention <strong>and</strong> direction. Further increasing<br />
the difficulties, the vice president who had acted as the initial program<br />
owner had left Center, <strong>and</strong> the other top managers were not able to decide<br />
who should take over the program owner role. At the time of our interviews,<br />
this question had been left open <strong>for</strong> several months. In practice, it seemed<br />
that the manager of the R&D unit served as an in<strong>for</strong>mal program sponsor<br />
who supported <strong>and</strong> motivated the key persons <strong>and</strong> promoted the program<br />
both within <strong>and</strong> outside the organization.<br />
During the interviews, various explanations <strong>for</strong> the program’s poor<br />
progress were presented. Many of the renewal program’s key actors felt that<br />
their authority was not clear <strong>and</strong> they did not have enough resources <strong>and</strong><br />
support. Both the program team <strong>and</strong> those representing the parent<br />
organization mentioned challenges related to Center’s organizational<br />
characteristics <strong>and</strong> culture that did not seem to support this kind of work.<br />
Many pointed out the lack of experience in cooperating across the unit<br />
boundaries <strong>and</strong> the related challenges in integrating the units, subsidiaries<br />
<strong>and</strong> member organizations into one change ef<strong>for</strong>t. The variety of<br />
expectations, interests <strong>and</strong> intents was seen as a source of complexity that<br />
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