Program Leadership for Successful Business Outcomes

At LDS, our consultants bring their own unique skills and expertise to all our projects. Our teams work together towards a common purpose, not defined by deliverables, but by measurable business outcomes. Successful business outcomes are the bull’s-eye on the target, or the golden circle, for our teams.

Our program managers play an important role in helping our teams achieve successful business outcomes. They are leaders first and managers next, as they provide guidance in several key areas to successfully drive programs from strategy to execution.

1. Fostering innovation

As project leaders, they create the spaces that allow creativity and innovation to flourish. They tap the full range of people’s knowledge and talent, and leverage different skills and thinking styles. As program leaders, they help their teams overcome barriers, avoid a fixed mindset, use good judgement on when to diverge and converge, and continuously validate our strategies to see if course corrections are needed. This helps us innovate when it might be least expected and in places where it provides maximum value.

2. Driving critical thinking and problem solving

We work on complex business problems every day. As leaders of these expert teams, our program managers are responsible for setting the right agenda for solving a problem, not for solving it themselves. Our teams have the necessary skills and deep expertise, and given the right guidance and insights, the result is better outcomes. Our program managers are there to provide broader solution or organizational context, fresh perspectives, or simply bring the focus of the conversation back to the bull’s-eye – why we are doing what we are doing!

3. Manage delivery of business outcomes

As leaders, our program managers maximize the business value of our projects within the constraints of the ecosystem – time, money and resources. This means working with our teams to develop solution strategies and providing smart options that lay out the delivery of big changes in smaller steps. It’s about encouraging the discussions and decisions that turn ‘now or never’ into ‘now and later’ approaches. As managers, they follow the process, but do not let it rule. They apply good judgement, manage stakeholders, manage risks, and adapt and change as necessary.

While there are other leadership activities our Program Manager engage in, these three areas are key to supporting our teams of experts, and our Program Management team ensures that they are an integral part of every program we run.