Find, define and value the initiatives

Your report suggested a move on at least one of these two practices:

• how well each initiative is defined;
• whether the benefits add up.

This move guide finds the initiatives by asking four questions of every activity. It gives each initiative a one-page brief. Then it tests each benefit before it counts, so the total adds up once.

1. When it applies

Use this move guide if your report placed either practice in the lowest two stages.

If both already sit at the middle stage or higher, skip this move guide.

It fills the workstreams from shaping the programme and giving it owners with defined, valued initiatives.

2. What to do

Five steps, in four to eight weeks, in waves.

1. Ask four questions of each activity. Can we stop it or do less? Can we cut its overhead? Can someone else do it? Can we do it more efficiently? The tree below lists the fifteen levers those questions lead to.
2. For each unit, set out why it exists and what it does. Then list what each activity produces, what it costs and the value it adds.
3. Give every initiative a one-page brief. Owner, scope, baseline, benefit, cost to achieve, milestones and measures. The initiative-definition worksheet holds the briefs.
4. Test each benefit before it is counted. It must tie to a line of the profit and loss. It must be counted once. It must be something that would not have happened anyway. The value-logic worksheet runs the test.
5. Weigh each initiative's saving against its risk. Low risk is a go. A low saving with any real risk is a no-go, as the grid below shows.

Risk here is how likely a bad consequence is, and how serious it would be.

The two free worksheets do the recording:

• /worksheets/transformation/initiative-definition for the one-page briefs;
• /worksheets/transformation/value-logic for the benefits test.

3. What to produce

One table, plus the two worksheets above.

Table A. The initiatives, valued once

A benefit finance has not signed off does not count yet.

4. A worked example

Illustrative. Written for this move guide. It describes no client.

A software and services business has a list of 60 ideas. Most have a name and a round-number benefit. Two workstreams both claim the same office move.

The briefs.

• The programme office cut the list to 22 initiatives, each with a one-page brief. The rest were merged or dropped.

The benefits.

• Finance tested each benefit against last year's actual costs. The office move now counts once. A hiring freeze from before the programme came out of the total.

The cost to achieve.

• Each brief carries its one-off cost, and the total sits in the budget beside the benefits.

Six weeks on.

On a retake, both practices could be answered at the middle stage.

What it looked like in our work

From our own work. Figures changed.

An equipment maker listed each initiative with its potential benefit. Beside it sat the amount already in the coming year's budget. Most of the list was new money the budget did not yet hold.

Less than half the list was already in the budget. Two more initiatives, in the table but not the chart, carried no saving yet. One was there for focus, and one needed a review before anyone could size it.

5. Effort and dependencies

What you need

• The cost base by unit and activity.
• Last year's actual costs, as the baseline.

How long

• Four to eight weeks, in waves.

What gets in the way. We have seen this in our own work:

• Opportunities nobody defined. A drinks producer's audit found poorly defined opportunities and no plan for realising the benefits.

6. How will you know it worked?

The test is the briefs and finance's sign-off. Retake the check once every initiative has a brief and the total is signed off. Each of these should be true when you answer:

The worked example is illustrative.

Think we've used your work without proper credit? Tell us and we'll fix it.