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Making the Impossible Possible
Applying Heliotropic Abundance for creating Program and Project
Management Processes to Increase the Probability of Success
Do not undertake a
project unless it is
manifestly important
and nearly impossible

Making the Impossible Possible, Kim Cameron and Marc Lavine, 2006
Lessons Learned from the Cleanup of America’s most
dangerous Nuclear Weapons Plant

That Success Started with

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The Ordinary Approach to Success †
¨ Identify and define the problem accurately.
¨ Generate alternate solutions to the problem based
on root causes so that convergence on a solution is
not premature.
¨ Focus on evaluating and selecting the best
alternative.
¨ Implement the chosen alternative solution and follow
up to ensure that the problem or obstacle is
resolved.
† Leading Change, John Kotter Harvard Business School Press, 1996
Organization Change: Theory and Practice, W. W. Burke, Sage, 2002
A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, J. G. March, Free Press, 1994
Smart Thinking for Crazy Times: The Art of Solving the Right Problems, I. I. Mitroff, Berrett–Koehler, 1998

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Abundance Principle of Management
¨ Strive for positive deviance, pursuing the best of the
human condition and working to fulfill the highest
potential of the organization.
¨ Focuses on:
¤ Resilience
¤ Flourishing
¤ Vitality
¤ Extraordinarily positive individual and organizational
outcomes

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The Abundance Approach
¨ Abundance is not a substitute for ordinary
management – it is a supplement for the problem-
solving approach.
¨ Abundance focuses on:
¤ Closing the gaps between acceptable performance
and spectacular performance.
¤ Emphasizes positively deviant accomplishments rather
than normal or expected accomplishments.
¤ Positive possibilities rather than deficits.

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Conventional versus Abundance Principles
Conventional Principles Abundance Principles
General Leadership Principles
§ Problem solving and deficit gaps § Virtuousness and abundance gaps
§ A single heroic leader § Multiple leaders playing multiple roles
§ One leader from the beginning to end § A continuity of leaders
§ Congruence and consistency § Paradox and contradiction
Principles Related to Visionary and Symbolic Leadership
§ Logical, rational, and sensible visions – with
SMART goals
§ Symbolic, emotional, and meaningful –
with profound purpose
§ Consistency, stability, and predictability § Revolution and positive deviance
§ Personal benefits and advantages § Meaningfulness beyond personal benefits
§ Organizations absorb the risks of failure
and benefits of success
§ Employees share the risks of failure and
rewards for success

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Conventional versus Abundance Principles
Conventional Principles Abundance Principles
Careful, Clear, and Controlled Leadership
§ Organizational change at the expense of
the people
§ Organizational change for the benefit of
the people
§ Commitments and priorities based on
environmental demands
§ Unalterable commitments and integrity at
all costs
§ Managing the contract, attaching resources
to performance
§ Managing the contract and ensuring stable
funding
§ Ultimate responsibility and accountability
for measurable success at the top
§ Responsibility and accountability for
measurable success for everyone

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Conventional versus Abundance Principles
Conventional Principles Abundance Principles
Collaboration, Engagement, and Participation
§ Building on and reinforcing the current
culture
§ Introducing challenges that the culture
cannot address
§ Decision making and leadership at the top
§ Employee and management in
partnerships in planning, decision making,
training, evaluation, and discipline
§ Need–to–know information sharing and
physical separation
§ Early, frequent, and abundant information
sharing with colocation
§ Long–term employment, personal
relations, and use of specialist
§ Long–employability, professional relations,
and retraining

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Conventional versus Abundance Principles
Conventional Principles Abundance Principles
Rigorous, uncompromising, and results oriented leadership
§ Managing external communications
§ Openness of all message through early and
often communications
§ Keeping critics at a distance
§ Making critics stakeholders, building
relationships, and using positive strategies
§ Clear, stable performance targets that
meet standard coming from the top
§ Escalating performance, virtuousness, and
positive deviance targets from multiple
sources
§ Organizational financial benefit from
outstanding success
§ Financial generosity and benevolence with
employees

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Four Quadrants of Improvement Guided by
the Abundance Approach
Collaborate Create
Control Compete

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Collaborate
Relationships, Human Capital, and Collaboration
¨ Develop talent, build strong relationships, and foster
trust between all parties based on:
¤ Culture
¤ Collaboration
¤ Credibility
¤ Human capital and social relationships

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Create
Vision, Innovation, and Symbolic Leadership
¨ Articulate and reinforce a motivating vision of what
could be in contrast of what occurred in the past.
¤ Forge a clear and shared vision of the future.
¤ Symbolic leadership in support of changing mission.
¤ Innovative and creative ideas about work.
¤ New sense of meaning and importance to pursued tasks.

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Control
Stability, Discipline, and Process Control
¨ Grounded in virtuousness, extending beyond just
doing well, but developing mechanisms for
producing extraordinary results
¤ Goal clarity
¤ Agreements between producers and suppliers
¤ Planning and objective measures and accountability
¤ Stable support and funding for work efforts

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Compete
Incentives and Rigorous Performance Standards
¨ Aggressive actions, external constituents, market
forces, performance incentives, and obtaining
measurable results
¤ External stakeholder agreements
¤ Managing external relationships
¤ Taking bold action
¤ Incentives for measurable progress

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Long Term Flexibility for Change New
Internal
Maintenance Culture Type: CLAN Culture Type: ADHOCRACY
External
Positioning
Orientation: COLLOABORATE Orientation: CREATE
Leader Type: § Facilitator
§ Mentor
§ Team builder
Leader Type: § Innovator
§ Entrepreneur
§ Visionary
Value Drivers: § Commitment
§ Communication
§ Development
Value
Drivers:
§ Innovative outputs
§ Transformational
§ Agility
Theory of
Effectiveness:
§ Human development
and high commitment
produce effectiveness
Theory of
Effectiveness:
§ Innovativeness, vision, and
constant change produce
effectiveness
Culture Type: HEIRARCHY Culture Type: MARKET
Orientation: CONTROL Orientation: COMPETE
Leader Type: § Coordinator
§ Monitor
§ Organizer
Leader Type: § Hard driver
§ Competitor
§ Producer
Value Drivers: § Efficiency
§ Timeliness
§ Consistency and
Uniformity
Value
Drivers:
§ Market share
§ Goal achievement
§ Profitability
Theory of
Effectiveness:
§ Control and efficiency
with capable processes
produce effectiveness
Theory of
Effectiveness:
§ Aggressively competing
and customer focus
produce effectiveness
Incremental Stability Control Fast

Putting These Ideas to Work
¨ With the four quadrants, let’s put them to work to
increase the probability of project success
¨ This success starts with defining what Done looks like
in units of measure meaningful to the decision
makers
¨ In the case study here’s what this meant …
q Close the site, staying on schedule (we can get more
money), adhering to Federal, State, and Local
regulations, and have NO on the job injuries

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“Why do so many projects overspend
and overrun?
Because they’re managed as if they
were merely Complicated when in fact,
they are Complex.
They’re planned as if everything is
known at the start when in fact, they
involve high levels of uncertainty that
create cost, schedule, and technical
risk.”
In, Architecting Systems: Concepts, Principles and Practice,
Hillary Sillitto, College Publications, 2014.

1. Where Are We Going?
2. How Do We Get There?
3. Do We Have Enough
Time, Resources, And
Money To Get There?
4. What Impediments Will
We Encounter Along The
Way?
5. How Do We Know We
Are Making Progress?
5 Immutable Principles of Project Success
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What Does Done Look Like?
§ Develop a list of features or deliverables and
describe the technical capabilities for each in units
of measure meaningful to the decision makers.
§ Model the interdependencies between these
deliverables.
§ Develop the Measures of Effectiveness and
Measures of Performance and Key Performance
Parameters for each Capability
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“Done” Provides the Capability to Do
Something

How Do We Get to Done when needed
for the planned cost?
§ Build a Plan and a Schedule for the work to be
performed.
§ Define “packages of work” for all the activities
with deliverables defined as “exit criteria”
§ Link the Accomplishment and Criteria
vertically First and then link the Work
Packages horizontally
Principle ②
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The Schedule Tells Us the Order of the
Planned Work

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The Schedule Shows Progress to Plan
§ Deliverables represent the required mission
capabilities and its value as defined by the business
and shared by the contractor team.
§ When all deliverables and their Work Packages are
complete, they are not revisited or reopened.
– They are 100% done.
§ The progression of Work Packages defines the
increasing maturity of the deliverables.
– The mission value of the deliverables to the customer
increases as Work Packages are completed.
§ Completion of Work Packages is represented by the
Physical Percent Completion of the deliverables.
– Either 0%/100% or Apportioned Milestones are used
to state the completion of each Work Package.
Mission
Capabilities
Technical
Capabilities
Work Packages
Deliverables

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The Schedule Connects Work to
Deliverables
§ Vertical traceability ACè SAè PE
§ Horizontal traceability WPè WPèAC
Program Deliverables
Define the maturity
of a Capability at a point in
time.
Significant Accomplishments
Represent requirements
that enable Capabilities.
Accomplishment Criteria
Exit Criteria for the Work
Packages that fulfill Requirements.
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
package
Work
Package
Work
Package

Do We Have the Resources Needed to
Reach Done?
¨ List the needed staff and materials for the project
¨ Assign these staff and materials to the work
packages
¨ Estimate the cost of the staff and materials and the
impact of this variance on the total project cost and
delivery schedule
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We need the right people, with the right
skills, at the right cost, at the right time to
have any hope of project success
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What Are The Impediments to
Reaching Done?
¨ Make a list of risks and rank them by priority.
¨ Assess impact on cost and schedule for each risk
and the dependencies of these risks on external
and internal drivers
¨ Assess the probability of occurrence and the
probabilistic impact on cost and schedule impact,
cost of handling, and cost of the residual risk after
handling
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All Risk Come From Uncertainty

How Do We Measures Progress Toward
Done?
¨ Describe the outcomes of the work effort using
language the customer understands
¨ Assign Technical Performance Measures to the
Deliverables
¨ Assign Measures of Performance, Measures of
Effectiveness, Key Performance Parameters, and
Integrate these throughout the project
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The goal of all project management
processes are to align all measures of
Effectiveness and Performance into a
cohesive process to
Increase Probability of Success
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This is What DONE Looks Like
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Backup Material

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Apply Continuous Risk
Management to each
Performance Based Management
process area
Identify Needed
Capabilities to achieve the
project objectives or the
end state for a specific
scenario.
Elicit Technical &
Operational Requirements
needed for the system capabilities
to be fulfilled.
Establish Performance
Measurement Baseline time–
phased network of work
activities describing the
work to be performed
Execute Performance
Measurement Baseline
activities while assuring
technical performance is met
I II
III
IV
V

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I ‒ Identify Needed Capabilities
A Capability is …
“Planning, under uncertainty, to provide capabilities
suitable for a wide range of modern-day challenges
and circumstances while working within an economic
framework that necessitates choice.”
By Identifying system capabilities, the elicited technical
and operational requirements can be traced from the
Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) to each deliverable in
the Integrated Master Plan and Schedule.
Capabilities state the “why” of the system.
† Analytic Architecture for Capabilities-Based Planning, Mission-System Analysis, and Transformation, Paul Davis, RAND, 2002

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II ‒ Establish the Technical and
Operational Requirements
Technical and Operational requirements are the basis of
Work Packages and Planning Packages and the work
efforts needed to produce the deliverables from these
Packages.
These deliverables fulfill the technical and operational
requirements needed to deliver the system Capabilities.
Tracing Capabilities to Requirements and back again,
assures each requirement has a “home” in the system.

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III ‒ Establish the Performance
Measurement Baseline
The Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) is the
integration of scope, schedule, cost used to assess
progress to plan with measures of physical percent
complete for the Effectiveness and Performance of the
delivered Capabilities.
Starting at the Work Package level, a pre–defined
performance measure is established.
During the performance period assessment of “progress
to plan” produce measures of Physical Percent
Complete.

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IV ‒ Execute the Performance Measurement
Baseline
Using the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB),
each Work Package must start as planned, complete on
or near the planned date, and produce the planned
technical performance.
This is the key to success for any credible Performance
Based Management plan.
In the absence of this, the project is behind schedule,
over budget, and non–compliant with the technical
goals.

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V ‒ Perform Continuous Risk Management

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