Does your project make sense?

It’s one thing to do a project right – excellent planning, fine work, a great team spirit – it’s another to do the right project in the first place. Too often a poorly thought out strategy starts off a wonderfully executed project that leads to… well, failure.

Fifty years ago Leyland, that once great producer of trucks and buses, unveiled its revolutionary Leyland National bus. The engineering was ingenious; the styling was by Italian maestro Michelotti; a brand new, highly automated factory was built to manufacture it on a production line, just like a car. Wow! The trouble was, Leyland had prioritised technical wizardry over pragmatic strategy making. The company had markets around the world, and earned big profits from selling buses on every continent.

Yet this project created a vehicle that was unsuitable for most of them and cost Leyland dearly. If there was a strategy it was deeply flawed. Getting the strategy right is hard, yet is vital for every project, and I discuss how to achieve this in the programme Fitting the Strategy. Find it here: Fitting the strategy – Zavanak