Agitator-Aggregator Role

The benefits realization community has a wide variety of experience and I would appreciate your thoughts on promoting a current role as an ‘Aggregator-Agitator’.

The role is to pull multiple sources of needed information together (aggregator) yet drive and challenge people to achieve more (agitator). When the role of Benefits Manager includes the behaviors of an Aggregator-Agitator then the following challenges are addressed.

The Challenges

Typical programs and portfolios cry out for benefits realization to help them achieve more with less and sooner. However, common data and people challenges can reduce its  success and make it much less fun:

Data challenges:

1.     Overloaded and overwhelmed: Models created are kept simple to reduce information overload and to avoid overwhelm. They lose rigor and value as a source of knowledge in complex and fast changing situations.

2.     Too much from everywhere: With too much information from many different sources to take on and connect together using most modelling styles and tools. Very simple and incomplete models used in decision making and governance miss out on opportunity value.

3.     Richness lost: Simplifying and separating information can mean the richness of connections and relationships can be lost. Their potential to provide transparency and insight is held back.

People challenges:

1.     Blindness, bias and assumptions: People can show unintended blindness, bias and hold invalid assumptions that are left unchallenged. What is achieved is only a fraction of what could be.

2.     Being safe and certain: People can fear certain levels of risk and uncertainty. Healthy levels of conflict and debates are often avoided in many organisations and needed questions not asked/ honesty is withheld.

3.     Let’s rest awhile: Without a push it’s hard to keep groups innovative and producing ideas beyond the early honeymoon period. They don’t perform to a high standard and the potential satisfaction of members in seeing brilliant results is lost. Inertia and stagnation close in.

These are some of the reasons why benefit realization is more than a process. Don’t get me wrong, you can achieve a great deal with a good benefits realization process and standard roles. To drive superior performance in complex situations then I believe that more is required. Part of this ‘more’ is the Agitator-Aggregator role.

The Agitator-Aggregator role

There are two sides to this role, firstly the Agitator.

This requires a persistent drive to:

1.     Challenge and Plug holes: Get others to fill in gaps in knowledge, understanding, reduce confusion with clarity and add detail to vague areas. Question and challenge.

2.     Shout about it: Share information, make it interesting and attention grabbing where possible to build awareness across everyone involved.

3.     Chew through assumptions: Surface, clarify and ‘burst’ assumptions where-ever and whenever you can. These help reduce risk.

4.     Don’t stop moving: Create a sense of urgency, engage people and don’t let things settle. Momentum and agility are priceless and support success.

5.     Personal selling: 'Sell' the value of involvement to each individual and role – appeal to their rational, emotional and political needs.

6.     Resource fighting: Make the case and secure the needed time, energy and attention on benefits realization.

7.     Point and amplify: Draw attention to where it is needed most, agree priorities and ensure action is taken.

The other side of the role is that of Aggregator. This has a different personality to the Agitator but they fully support each other.

This requires persistent focus to:

1.     Be a match-maker: Connect people and information by pulling them together and keep meaning intact, when possible. Highlight new connections.

2.     Break and share codes: Understand and make sense of information and situations and help others understand them too.

3.     Level noise: Balance the level of detail to that needed by the situation. Some data will be detailed and others high-level, so use judgement in bringing together.

4.     De-clutter: Remove duplication, summarize and use visual modelling to simplify difficult concepts and ideas.

5.     Clean cause-and-effect: Pull together different aspects of the program/ portfolio and align them to expected benefits. If they can’t be aligned then don’t force them – they may not be of value!

6.     Agreement through iteration: There will be multiple iterations and improvements over time – incremental crafting is one way to describe the development of a model. Each iteration builds understanding, quality and agreement.

7.     Attention grabbing framework: Build a shared framework/ model that is applicable to as many stakeholders and experts as possible – by ensuring many groups understand and value it then it has greater chance of keeping attention and changing behavior.

I hope this helps set the expectation of how exciting and interesting benefits realization can be for all those involved. Finding an individual to fill both sides of this role can be hard so why not split the role between two people?

With all the information and engagement needed then I’m afraid that Visio, PowerPoint and Excel can leave you wanting as support tools. Help to make benefits realization practical in complex environments was one of the drivers behind the creation of Realisor (www.realisor.com) - we didn't want to just support the simple benefits realization processes but give people powerful tools to drive significant additional value.  

(Many thanks to Suzanne Felber of Felber Consulting for the help in clarify ideas)

(c) Trevor Howes   2013.