PM ADVISORY:

Programme Manager in Chief - Lessons in Managing Complex Change from the Obama Campaign

By Greg Vukasovic
Principal, Moorhouse Consulting

Imagine running a programme with:

• An objective of gaining control of the most influential political office in the world in a way which expands the voting base by 20 million

• A budget of £400M, raised not with one business case but through individual appeals to millions of donors

• The need to rapidly mobilise fifty-plus regional sub-programmes, with a staff of thousands plus hundreds of thousands of volunteers

• An ever expanding group of national and international stakeholders

Now imagine managing this programme whilst under the glare of political opposition, intense media scrutiny, and a backdrop of economic meltdown.

If there is a news story of recent times with its share of lessons for project and programme managers, it surely is the US presidential campaign of Barack Obama – a master class in how to eat the proverbial (or in this case, Republican Party) elephant piece by piece.

Obama and his team can credit much of their success to the application of five key principles, which are relevant to any programme manager tasked with the impossible:

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About the Author Greg Vukasovic Greg Vukasovic is a Principal at Moorhouse Consulting in the UK, which was recently voted the Association of Project Management’s ‘Project Management Company of the Year’. Greg has been involved in Project and Programme Management (PPM) consulting for many years, specialising in working with public and private sector clients to deliver large-scale business change initiatives. Greg’s clients have included BT, Transport for London, the BBC, Jobcentre Plus and Hewlett-Packard. Before joining the consulting world, Greg worked in financial services in Milan and New York, and completed an MBA at London Business School. For more information on the latest in programme and project management, or to contact Mr. Vukasovic, please visit www.moorhouseconsulting.com.

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