Strategic Project Management Made Simple, 2nd Edition

2Visualizing Project Strategy

Shallow people believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong people believe in cause and effect.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagine you have been given the job of creating and communicating the strategy for an important project in your organization. How are you going to approach it?

In this chapter, we will introduce two simple visual tools to assist you. These two tools are Causality and Objectives Trees, and they add value in every strategic management scenario.

We first explore causality, also called cause and effect, or If-Then thinking. Causality is the “special sauce” that differentiates this approach from most others.

Then we move on to Objectives Trees. Objectives Trees are a way to visually display and work out the underlying logic chains relevant to your project. To master this design tool enables you to design projects from a strategic perspective.

Following these precepts will give you the capacity to communicate the big Why of your project and the benefits it will deliver.

Let us begin by exploring how to align Goals and Projects with Vision and Strategy.

Make Simple Strategy

I have taught Strategic Management for dozens of years all across the globe. From this experience it has become clear to me even though many books talk about Mission, Vision, Strategy, Goals, Projects, and Objectives, they do not offer simple ways to bring these concepts together to craft executable projects from a strategic perspective.

The following discussion and ...