One year on

One year ago, Kumilos Vision was born. I remember it like it was yesterday. It has been an amazing year, filled with a roller coaster of experiences, emotions, and awesome discoveries. I won’t lie, it hasn’t always been easy. There have been days when I felt dark emotions and negative thoughts creeping in. 

This was a mistake. You do not know what you are doing. You are going to fail. Turn back now before it is too late. No one cares and no one believes in what you are proposing. 

In addition to these thoughts, being an entrepreneur is a lonely and solitary road. I had everything to do, but had very little resources to do them. I had many ideas but never enough time to get them all realized. There have been opportunities, but to some I said no because I was not aligned with the mandate. The most difficult thing to do lies in finding the balance between staying true to my values and to remain authentic but at the same time ensure the business strives and generates revenue for the long term. In these moments, the most difficult of battles happen, the one that is internal. 

These moments can feel like internal storms. Windy, rainy, dark, confusing and scary. But when I close my eyes and I center myself and I listen in stillness, all of a sudden, all of these negative thoughts, emotions and noise fade away. When I listen, in presence, I hear another voice - the voice of my true essence.

You can do this. Believe in yourself. You are already awesome the way you are. Don’t give up. One day, your message will be heard. Just be patient. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Weather the storm, because no matter how dark it gets, the sun will rise. 

We call it intuition, gut feeling, or sometimes coming to our senses. When I am connected to who I am, aligned with my values, I already know what to do in the moment. So long as I stay centered and true to myself, and I am home, never lost, happy and at peace, no matter what. And in those moments, I always know what to do. 

As I embark on my second year as a business owner and founder of Kumilos Vision, I am filled with gratitude for this awesome opportunity. I am so lucky to be living my dream. I am trying to bring forth another way to realise benefits and to create collective value. That vision is still true and clear for me. Though it may take time to realise and the road is long and full of challenges, I am grateful that I am walking that road. Because no matter how challenging , difficult and sometimes lonely this road gets, I have chosen it, it is my path, it is my journey. So long as I stay present, each and every step of the way, then the journey is the destination, the process is the objective, and that process is a joy to discover every step of the way. 

Thank you to all of you who have supported me, coached me, mentored me and made your presence and support felt. Thank you to those who have taken time to walk in the forest and chat, to go to a cafe and have a coffee chat. I am grateful to have you in my life and with me on this amazing journey. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you as I walk and live it, one step at a time. 

And to those who are curious and just have time to spare, it would be my pleasure to connect, share ideas and perspectives. Perhaps there are ways we can help each other, or not. Worse case? We have a nice coffee or a nice walk and chat. 

Take care , be well and see you down the road. 

John Acuna - Kumilos Vision

Why do projects fail and why I care

I know I have been keeping quiet lately. Not because I have nothing to say or share but because I felt I needed to be silent, observe and reflect. I also admit I was scared. I was scared to share my thoughts and opinions fearing judgements, disagreements and backlash. I have been working on a lot of things, both personal and professional. As a new business owner, I wanted to be careful, to be ready, to be in a state of perfection. I realized that I can’t wait for the perfect value proposition, business model or website. I realized that waiting to be ready might mean waiting a very long time. What if there is no perfect state to achieve and that process and journey is what matters? In other words, don’t wait, just go for it! So here it is, I am back writing and sharing. My hope is that I get your feedback and learn from you so as to enrich my research and validate, tweak and if necessary, modify my conclusions and approach.

In my reflections, I have been grappling with many questions but the question that keeps coming back is “why do Tech Projects fail and why do I care?” This question is one of the primary reasons why I decided to become a business owner and why Kumilos Vision was born.

I currently live in North America, in the province of Quebec, Canada. If you are a resident of Quebec then you would have surely heard about the SAAQClic project. If you are living in Canada, then you might have also heard about the Phoenix project. If you haven’t heard of these initiatives, then I can suggest a quick search on your favorite AI platform, there is more than enough information available. As I understand it, both initiatives have more in common than differences. The main difference is that SAAQClic is a Quebec provincial government initiative, whereas Phoenix is a Canadian federal initiative. Both are digital transformation initiatives in nature. Both projects wanted to integrate systems into a centralized hub. Both project scopes broadly wanted to modernize, digitise, improve efficiency, transparency and cut costs, whilst improving service to the end user. Both started with a similar budget, scope and time frame. Both focused on technology as the savior and magic pill. All that being said, both also failed, more than doubled costs, delivered very little value and both have been called fiascos.

I have read both reports, Phoenix is more advanced as it has been going on for longer. SAAQClic is currently undergoing an investigation to fully determine what went wrong. However, a panel had released an interim report to try to make sense of why SAAQClic failed. When I compare it to why Phoenix failed, the results were almost identical.

I want to be clear. This is not a blame game against the government. Enough of that is going on in the news and media. I am just interested in finding out why and how this happened. How could SAAQclic fail in the same way Phoenix failed years before? Why were lessons learned not applied? This is after all public money. At a time when we hear about budget cuts to essential services such as in health, education and infrastructure, not to mention other social programs, the last thing we want to hear about is how these projects are not just hurting the bottom line, but also our security and way of life. I feel a sense of injustice as a taxpayer but also as a citizen who is engaged within the broader community. These examples of failed projects finally helped me understand the second part to my question: Why should I care? Because failing projects hurt the broader society and therefore ultimately, hurt people.

As to the first part of my question, why do tech projects fail, this becomes even more interesting in the broader context. I realized that projects fail in all industries and organizational types. I have worked for private, public , NGO and Charity organizations in start up, small, medium, large and multinational organizations. I have worked in Europe and North America. In my experience delivering projects, I have seen more projects fail than succeed. My research has shown me that this isn’t a new phenomena. Mckinsey* has been reporting for a while now that projects fail 70% of the time, especially of the nature of business or digital transformation. That’s a lot of time, effort, resources and money going to waste. These projects are not cheap, ranging from millions and sometimes billions of dollars over several years. One might argue that we can attribute this to the fact that tech projects, especially in the context of digital transformation, are more complex, larger in scale and scope therefore more prone to failure. Wrong. This has been true since the 80s when transformation projects meant modernization of production processes in order to upgrade and make production cycles more lean and efficient. So if this isn’t new, and we have had information as to why projects fail, why does it still keep on happening? Why is project failure the status quo?

In my last two decades of experience delivering projects, I became very disillusioned with project management. It seemed like no matter what I did, how hard I tried as a project manager, how hard my team worked, how much more money and effort and resources we threw at the project, it still failed.  Even after getting certified as a PMP and being armed with all the technical knowledge necessary and no matter how long I trained and practiced, I seem to be stuck with the same ground hog day experience at the end. We even had most projects delivered to the famous triple constraint which is to time, cost (budget) and scope. But when the dreaded meeting with the project sponsor or client came and while sat face to face with the person or group we were trying to help, I was told nine times out of ten, “thanks for the effort but this isn’t working, this is not what we wanted”.

I started to despair, I started to lose faith, and the job wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t feel like what I was doing helped or made a difference. And on top of all that, I was being told that it didn’t actually work or worse yet, we made the situation more complex. 12 months or more of work, mobilizing a team to try to get to that finish line, only to be told: “Yeah, not what we wanted.”

The thing is, I love project management and being a practitioner of project management. I believe in its ultimate power and ability to transform and bring about positive change. But after so many years  of trying to do this for different organizations, I decided to stop and take a step back. I decided to really try to understand what was wrong. I realized that something had to change. I couldn’t be part of project delivery that caused more pain, confusion and suffering and not realize benefits or create value. I wanted to find another way, one that would be more aligned with my values and how I think projects should be prepared, delivered and monitored.

The good news is, after nearly 2 years of analysis, introspection, research and even meditation, I believe I am closer to the answers I seek. I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. I now believe that I may have cracked the code and found the why and how. It took 20 years of experience and the last two years of contemplation but I believe I have finally found my secret sauce. As much as the research extensively shows why projects of this nature fail, many proponents of the same research would provide ways forward or solutions. I have read these recommendations and some make sense, but others, not so much. If these solutions worked, then why are projects of this nature still failing? Is the answer still in mega budgets, massive scope objectives and an army of consultants and integrators? Or is there another way?

In my opinion, a paradigm shift is needed, a change in mindset and status quo. The majority of the solutions put forward are based on assumptions that digital transformation is a race, that quicker and more is better, and that if we don’t jump on the next new piece of technology (has anyone heard of AI?) then we are dead. So long as digital transformation and tech projects are seen as races to be driven to a finish line or to be won, to an end result, goal or objective, and to do so in the quickest way possible at all costs, including human cost, then, in my opinion, projects remain doomed to fail 70% of the time.

What if we view projects as a journey instead of a race? What if the process in each step of the way, in each moment, was the focus and not an obsession to get to a result or a finish line? What if we plan, prepare, deliver and monitor projects with HUMAN BEINGS at the heart of every project phase? What if we take care of our team members and ensure each one is happy, engaged and autonomous to do their work instead of burning them out? What if the pains and problems of the clients and end users we are trying to help are clear and translated to benefits we want to realize to help them? What if project management can be done mindfully and consciously? Could a new status quo of project realization exist?

At the end of the day, this is my journey, and you have yours. I would love to hear from you about how your projects and digital transformations are going and what your perceived success or failure rate is based on benefits realization and real value creation. Please tell me about how the end user was impacted, how their lives improved, stayed the same or got worse.

Alternatively, if you are fed up with project failures, cost over runs, wastage and all the suffering and frustration that comes with putting in the effort but not getting the desired outcome and you are curious to hear about an alternative way, then I’d be glad to share my findings. What have you got to lose but 30 mins of your time? These are my opinions, my conclusions from my experiences and what I have observed. If this resonates with you, and you’re interested to find out more, then let’s have a chat. I’d love to hear from you and learn from your perspectives.

* McKinsey, Common pitfalls in transformations: A conversation with Jon Garcia

Outcomes, Benefits, Value

Kumilos Vision is all about collective value creation. But in order to better understand value, we must understand it in the context of outcomes and benefits. These three concepts are interlinked in an important way.

Projects DELIVER outcomes. Outcomes are results that are punctual and specific. An example would be to deliver a new IT solution through an IT project.

But do we REALIZE benefits just because we go live on a new IT solution? We can have a new IT solution that no one uses. Sometimes, we install a new IT solution without doing the necessary validation as to our capacity and capabilities to run it, without change management or internal and external communications. We add training at the end thinking it will be enough. So if one of the benefits we want to realize is increased efficiency, we will need all these separate projects delivered in a coordinated way, sequentially, in the form of a program in order to realize that benefit.

Where does value creation come in? Value CREATION can be understood through the lens of benefits realization combined to solve a problem or problems specific to someone or a group of people. In other words, value creation is all about solving problems for someone. If your targeted benefits do not help anyone, then you do not create any value.

Why is this important you may ask?

The definition of value is crucial in understanding why you do business in the first place. Businesses normally start because they want to create value. What that really means is that there was a problem for someone that they wanted to solve with a product or service. The real VISION or WHY a business usually starts is because someone out there got tired of seeing a problem and they decide to fix it. The problem could be their problem or a more global problem. Businesses thrive, grow and become successful because they did a good job solving that problem. However and unfortunately, some businesses lose sight of that initial vision to solve problems and get pulled into new pressures and drivers to create a different kind of value more focused on a financial, monetary kind. When the ultimate goal becomes shareholder value and not collective value, then we can lose sight of what is really important and that is our people (employees) and our clients (customers). Whether we call it the value proposition or vision, it is lost along the way in the pursuit of quarterly numbers to please shareholders. Companies now get really good at creating shareholder value but are they still really creating value, and more importantly, COLLECTIVE value? Where does the priority lie?

The good news is that there is a way to get back to creating collective value. We can go back to basics and focus on PEOPLE and their needs and pains. We can go back to their gains and how products and services can help solve their problems. Focusing on PEOPLE internally will also result in more engaged, inspired and driven employees. In doing so , they will work harder to deliver a more professional, efficient and awesome product or service. When we go back to business fundamentals, we create collective value which in turn creates shareholder value. The equation is simple: happy employees equals best in class products and services which ultimately leads to happy and loyal customers.

How do you define value in your business? Where do your priorities lie? Why do you do what you do and how can your value proposition and vision align to go back to basics?

How do we define value?

How do you define value? What do you consider valuable? The traditional definition of value is monetary. The more something is worth in dollar terms, the more it is valuable. But in the context of an ever changing, challenging and increasingly individualistic world, is this classical definition of VALUE still the way forward?

Can value be defined and viewed from the perspective of collective value? Could it be that value can be derived from how much something helps others, how much your project or initiative actually benefits and helps others have better lives?

Collective value is also sustainable for our planet. It is not just enough to help people, alleviate their pain, improve their lives and help them get things done. It means doing all this but with a net positive or zero impact on our planet, it’s resources, environment and other living organisms. Collective value means we actually care about the future and that we are leaving this world better than how we found it.

Whether you are in the business of products or services, at Kumilos Vision we believe that value is truly created when we help solve someone’s problems in a sustainable way and thus ease their pain. In doing so, you are creating happy customers who stay loyal. Loyal and happy customers mean bigger revenues and profits. It’s that simple.

But here is the real secret: value is derived from PEOPLE. People are the key. In our rush to get things done and go straight to solution mode, we sometimes forget that people is what matters most, whether we are talking about customers, stakeholders, project team members or employees. Happy people means good business. Happy people means better project results. It’s actually that simple.

If you focus on people, you understand pains and gains, you understand what makes people tick and what drives them. You understand why people get out of bed everyday. No one starts their day wanting to do a bad job and we believe that there are no bad people, just bad contexts. It is up to leaders to decide where their priorities lie.

It all starts with how we define value, and what we consider valuable. Isn’t that what we are trying to create ultimately? When we have a great idea, and the idea turns into a project, aren’t we trying to ultimately create value?

If that is so, then remember why you want to create value, how you define it , and most importantly WHO you are creating it for. Only then will true VALUE be created.