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As you grow a BRM practice in your organization, you may often find yourself in a discussion with someone who just doesn't get it. You may hear this from a project manager or leader in the PMO, "What do you do differently than me?" You may cross paths with someone in a type of liaison role that may challenge you with, "How is what you do, different from the service I provide?" Or one of my favorites is: "I already do what you do, so, we don't need your role here." The new roles that we represent as BRMs are causing some major change in organizations and change can be difficult for some individuals.  Resistance to change is common--we all know that. So, when I hear comments like these, I often count the number of times I hear the words, "what" and "how." I then calmly and respectfully respond that they are missing the most important concept that is driving the need for BRMs. They are missing the word "Why." So often people challenge the need for BRMs with questions of "what" and "how," but they almost never ask "why." When people are focused on the "what" and "how" they are living in the tactical realm. They want to talk about all of the tasks, or projects, or documents they deliver (the what). They want to talk about the processes they use to manage work or the meetings and committees they run (the how). Yet I challenge them with, WHY are they doing all of that? Frequently, they cannot articulate why they are (or are not) working with the business partners. Sure, you will hear about great accomplishments, metrics, stats, etc. but do you ever hear how they ultimately impact the business, or the client, (in healthcare, the caregivers or most importantly, the patient!). The conversations I have are not intended to be caustic or contentious but rather my goal is to provide people with a different perspective; to educate them on the role of a BRM. I want to get their views out of the Service Provider level and focus them on striving towards being Strategic Partners. 

So, the next time you are feeling challenged by someone else in your organization about your BRM role, I would challenge you to count the number of "Whats" and "Hows" you hear and the reply with the "Why."

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We continue to work tirelessly to provide you an absolutely remarkable conference experience and have now published an even more exciting and more detailed BRMConnect^™ 2015 schedule! Please be sure to check out the latest additions and explore the new sessions we have added. Before they are all gone, buy your conference pass now! This one-of-a-kind global professional development and networking event will be the first time in history that the world's topmost BRM practitioners and expert consultants will converge under one roof to talk about the present and future of business relationship management. Be ready for tomorrow--be there!

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BRMI was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in February 2013. As part of this celebration, we hosted an extremely exciting and very responsive giveaway!  

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Question: 

Here's an interesting challenge I once had in a BRM class. The training was taking place at a major international bank, whose structure is a result of quite a bit of M&A activity. The bank's senior management strongly pursued a strategy of acquiring organizations that could be converted into business units focusing on areas complementary to the bank's core competencies. However, the culture at the bank had become one in which those who provided the highest ROI to the bank were given quite a bit of leeway to run things as they pleased. One student approached me to ask me how to deal with a situation in which one business unit asked for a new IT service. When the strategic requirements for the service were identified, they turned out to be very similar to another service being provided to another business unit, and the infrastructure used to host that service had plenty of idle capacity. The BRM proposed modifying the service and hosting it on shared infrastructure, but the head of the unit refused, stating that he wants his own service developed from scratch, and his own infrastructure exclusively for their use. When the BRM brought this up with senior management, he was told to do what the unit head asked for, even though it would mean a tremendous waste of money and resources in duplicating something they already had. The justification? "They make the bank a lot of money, so they get to do whatever they want." The student asked me how to deal with that situation from a BRM perspective.

How would you deal with such a situation?

Our Expert, Aaron Barnes, Says:

I'll share my experiences around a similar situation where given LOBs (line of businesses) were allowed to spend at will on solutions and how we put an end to that. Because of the culture for internal battle over budget turf, these LOBs were often competing against each other (think marketing spend for channel against channel, brick and mortar, eCommerce, etc.) and ultimately became siloed LOBs. The LOB showing the most growth was allowed the most budget the following year. With that capital often came the freedom to define and bring in their own solutions. As you can imagine, the infrastructure to support the various systems supporting these independent LOBs was the biggest spaghetti ball I had ever seen. They had over 6000 IT supported applications (think multiple versions of software releases, etc.) 57 item files, 13 customer files, and a tremendous amount of corrupted data. IT could not deliver anything as a result of the spaghetti ball infrastructure and was very disrespected by the business as a result.  

Based on the situation, we built a BRM team to take control and start turning things around. This freedom for LOBs to spend what they wanted, where they wanted on solutions was the first opportunity we addressed. Knowing this "business ability to bring in system at will" was so ingrained in the culture, we quickly realized we had to start at the top with the CEO and educate her why this was such a bad idea.

We compiled a list of wasted costs as follows:

1. IT costs supporting the spaghetti ball (No, they were not even keeping the lights on. All IT's time went towards trying to keep sauce on the spaghetti).
2. Lost opportunity costs from corrupted data (or missing data in some systems).
3. IT's inability to deliver as they had so many system connections, nothing ever got done.
4. Business loss due to IT not being able to stay current, or inability to move fast when needed.

We then spent about 3 months educating the CEO on these costs and lost opportunities as well as how things could be different. She quickly realized what the culture of rewarding the winning LOB was doing to the business and to IT. Needless to say, once we had the CEO support, it was easy to have a conversation with the business executives and explain why they might not be able to spend at will any longer. 

We then used this opportunity with the executive to explain the value of the BRM role and how a BRM would be building three year capability roadmaps based on business needs. These capability roadmaps would then be shared with the Architect teams who would then build out solution roadmaps. The BRMs could then very clearly show the business when a needed solution would be implemented while the Architects started cleaning up the infrastructure.  

Back to your question: "They make a lot of money, so they can do whatever they want." Start at the top. Gain the CEO's support and go from there. That said, there will always be times when IT will need to deliver a quick solution to enable a succeeding LOB. If they have a BRM in place, the BRM should be well on top of the need and already have a plan in place to satisfy the pressing business need. 

Our Expert, Vaughan Merlyn, Says:  

Aaron is exactly right. Let me draw out a couple of principles in the form of "one-liners."

• Never collude with dysfunctional behavior! What the Business Unit wanted has to be viewed in the context of the entire bank. The question is, at what level do you optimize? Most CEO's and Boards would say, "Optimize value for the entire enterprise, not for a single business unit." That will often mean sub-optimizing a given business unit. The BRM in the above training was being asked to optimize for one business unit, thereby sub-optimizing for the whole bank. By any measure, at the board level this is dysfunctional behavior!
• Principles are powerful tools to make visible the "rules" to be used to process these kinds of strategic choices. Optimizing at the enterprise versus the business unit level is a strategic choice. Therefore, a Principle needs to be articulated to that choice and followed consistently. The principle in this case might be, "We optimize our investments for the enterprise, not for individual business units." Make the principle explicit, get buy-in from the top, articulate the implications of the principle (i.e., optimizing for the whole sometimes means sub-optimizing for a part), articulate what will be different when we apply the principle, and determine how the principle will be woven into the governance fabric. i.e., the BU cannot do "whatever they want" and the governance body (e.g. Portfolio Prioritization Board) would screen for activities that violate key principles. They can always allow an exception, but that has to be explicit with a plan for how the exception will be managed.
• Sell the need for the Principle by surfacing the "cost of status quo" data. Just as Aaron's example states, the BRM team surfaced the data (cost of this type of sub-optimization) and spent the time needed to socialize the cost/penalties of the dysfunctional behavior.
• In managing organizational or cultural change, you need the unwavering support of the "Initiating Sponsor". As we cover in the CBRM and BRMP change management training, the Initiating Sponsor is the "Individual/Group who has the institutional power to initiate and legitimize the change for all change targets." Managing such sponsors is a challenging but crucial activity that BRMs must take on and be masters of.

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