The Opportunity that fell through…

My second blog post originally touched on best practices of performance management, but after lecture this Saturday and an event that occurred with my team project, I thought it would be more interesting to touch on risk management. Professor Cook briefly touched on an important topic merely highlighted in the text and that is not discussed enough, opportunities, Chap 7 page 227. I never thought that an opportunity could be classified as a risk, until I experienced one.

My team/I have been working our networks to secure funds and increase awareness for the GCFD. Throughout our campaign, my networks have been extremely supportive of our mission and the GCFD. One connection, through a former DePaul teammate, seemed like a golden opportunity that I was definitely ready to exploit. Our team was connected with a food company that makes food items for large restaurant chains, as well as food service companies like Sysco. The company already had a connection with GCFD through monthly donations, but wanted to jump on board to support our campaign by donating as many pounds of food that we could take (share). I initially thought, “This opportunity is unreal! We’re going to blow our 9,000 pound goal out of the water.” After weeks of corresponding with our contact and GCFD (enhance) to donate the food items and confirm a pick up date (accept), the golden opportunity fell through the cracks. How did this golden opportunity turn into a risk? Everything was coordinated and clearly communicated, right? No. This turned out to not be the case.

The team was originally set to receive the entire 9,000 pounds. However, GCFD did not have the capacity to store the items because they were refrigerated/frozen items, as opposed to non-perishable items, which our campaign is based on collecting. A vast difference that I didn’t realize until after communication with both parties ensued, which in retrospect was scope creep on our own campaign. Our 9,000 pounds of food quickly dwindled down to 900 pounds, which was not the end of the world, but my spirit was a little crushed. We had already secured about 80% of our goal, and had a little over a week to finish strong.

The evening before the food item pick up was scheduled; I received a surprise email that our contact had worked hard to secure 4,000 pounds of food to donate on behalf our team to GCFD. I emailed GCFD to confirm, and the driver would be on site in the morning. The driver showed up the next day, and our contact emailed me, “The driver refused to take the food, what happened?” My immediate reaction was to follow up on my end to find the disconnect and fix it, ASAP. How could I fix this? Where was my contingency plan? I had none.

Once GCFD followed up, I learned that the food item storage dates were outside of the accepted time frame. I didn’t realize the risks associated with food item date ranges, and how this could impact receiving donations.

I don’t know if there is a way to make up for this missed opportunity, but I have definitely learned a lesson on practicing due diligence and realizing that opportunities can not only pose positive but also unassuming negative risks. The positive is that we were able to make a connection, and maybe someone else will be able to use this information for their team project. The negative is, we not only loss on an opportunity to make a large donation, but our credibility may have be compromised.

Has anyone experienced an opportunity that resulted in a risk/loss at either their company or within their teams? If so, how did you resolve and/or develop a contingency plan to counter the loss?

Project Portfolio Matrix

I think that every organization has a matrix that they use regarding what classifies and quantifies the range of success for a project and/or client prospect. During our review of Chap 2, we didn’t dive deep into the project portfolio matrix, but when I reviewed it I immediately thought of the BCG Growth-Share matrix and how it can be applied in so many facets of business. This is the second time that I’ve seen this matrix, or variation, reference in my MBA career. First time was in MKT 555, and now MGT 598. I initially didn’t think that either class would reference this kind of tool, and I was surprised to see a variation of the BCG matrix highlighted in our class lecture notes.

It’s fascinating to see how other organizations and industries apply this type of portfolio planning model as a starting point for targets and/or projects to pursue or reject. The matrix simplifies how risk and project types are viewed and assessed.  Below is a high level breakdown of the BCG matrix correlated with the Project Portfolio matrix:

Market Growth Rate / Technical Feasibilty High 

Low

Stars (Bread/Butter) Question Mark (Pearl)
Dog (White Elephant) Cash Cow (Oyster)
Low                                                                                     High

Relative Market Share / NPV

  •  Stars aka Bread-and-Butter – yield the highest NPV but also consume large amounts of cash because of innovative technology
  • Question mark aka Pearl – can potentially be a “problem child” because of the amount of cash needed to support the opportunities to become a star
  • Cash Cow aka Oyster – Innovative breakthroughs with high payoff
  • Dogs aka White Elephant – reflecting promise at one time, but has little future potential

The chapter 2 case study was a perfect exercise to touch on measuring the success of projects based on the stated “must” and “want” criteria and how projects are selected. Each project could easily fit into the Project Portfolio matrix to determine which category each selection would fall under.  The class exercised revealed that there was a tendency to kill off those projects that did not fulfill the “must” objectives, i.e. “Raffle For Life” and “Build Your Own Box”. These projects would likely fall into the white elephant or dog category. Whereas another project, “Singing for Smiles”, was determined to be a bread-and-butter or star project.

I personally found that my own assessment was very optimistic in comparison to the class results and the original case results. I didn’t think about outside factors like, rain or college kids loving Halo competitions. The only dog/white elephant that I identified was “Hold’ Em Fo Hunger”, based on my personal preference and bias. It was a nice learning experience to incorporate the knowledge and perspective of my teammates to make a collective decision on the projects we thought would be successful.

How do you or your organization plan and select projects? If you do not have a matrix set in place would the matrices above improve how you/your organization currently selects projects? If you are not a part of the planning/selection process at your organization, what process did you follow in selecting a team project for this class?