Major Programme Leadership - A Poorly Understood Profession
The Art
Major Programme Leadership - A Poorly Understood Profession
Major programmes have a habit of humbling the best of people. There are times when executives who've run large organisations, managed billions in P&L, and navigated complex transformations are asked to step into a major programme. These stalwarts of the corporate world find themselves challenged in ways they didn't expect once they step into a major programme.
There is sufficient evidence to back up the claim that true leadership is rare. Research from the Institution of Civil Engineers found that up to 70% of major infrastructure projects disappoint their owners on cost, schedule, or outcomes. As tempting as it is to blame the engineering or the contracts, ICE’s report shows that a significant part of the diagnosis points back to leadership. On the enterprise front, Korn Ferry, a leading executive search firm, found that fewer than 14% of executives could be considered true enterprise leaders, i.e., people who lead across the ecosystem rather than just within the organisational structure.
If only 14% can do justice to enterprise leadership, the number truly capable of leading a major programme - an effort that demands a lot more - is almost certainly smaller. It's a reflection of something the AEC business refuses to admit: leading a major programme is a fundamentally different discipline, and treating it as a scaled-up version of corporate leadership, or just elevating an engineer to a programme leader just because they have tenure or is well-connected are a few reasons so many programmes continue to go wrong.
In short, leading a major program is an art in a world full of professionals trained in science. No disrespect, none whatsoever, meant to the engineer for they do some truly brilliant work!
So why do they keep failing?
Let's be honest about the evidence. HS2 has become a byword for how not to do it; skyrocketing from an initial £37 billion estimate to projections well north of £100 billion, before being considerably scaled back. If the media is to be believed, Neom - The Line in Saudi Arabia will likely never happen. It took 15 years for 19-km long Eglington Crosstown Light Rail in Toronto, Canada to commence operations.
These are all recent examples in a long line of programmes that have proven to be insurmountable challenges. They're elements in a recurring pattern. And, in the pattern, there are a few recurring culprits
Optimism bias goes unchecked. Major programmes are conceived when the politics warrant ambition and the costs are still not fully defined. Leaders are often incentivised to keep the numbers favourable just to get the ‘powers that be’ aligned. Nobody wants to be the person who says "this will cost three times as much and take twice as long."
The wrong kind of leader gets the job. Programmes logically recruit from enterprise or government backgrounds, typically people who are brilliant at managing within a system but have never had to conjure one (i.e. the system) from scratch. In many cases, they recruit experts in project management - the two (project and programme management) are frequently conflated. The skills simply don't transfer cleanly between the two.
Accountability gets diluted into meaninglessness. When you have ten main contractors, eight government departments, two regulators, and a board - who do you think is actually responsible? The answer is often: nobody, at least not completely. Leadership becomes a negotiation between competing interests rather than a driving force.
Politics chews on strategy. Major programmes exist in volatile political environments where decade-long delivery horizon don't match with the ministerial changes, budget cycles, or elections. Every change of government brings a review. Every review brings uncertainty. Leaders spend enormous energy managing upwards rather than delivering downwards.
The human dimension gets ignored. Major programmes are, beneath all the steel, bricks, cement and contracts, a collection of human beings doing hard things under pressure over long periods. Burnout, fatigue, conflict, culture failure kill programmes as surely as budget overruns do. But leadership development in this space still treats the human dimension as secondary.
Is there a leadership model that actually fits?
The project management profession has spent decades building frameworks (think PRINCE2, MSP, APM, PMI and others) that are largely about process. They are, somewhat, useful. But they have produced generations of people who know how to manage or execute a programme rather than how to lead one. We have industrialised the mechanics of the profession but neglected the human side.
What would a leadership specifically for major programmes look like?
Drawing on what we see across programmes globally, we'd propose six capabilities that major programme leaders need to successfully deliver desired benefits.
The first is being a systems thinker. Not just understanding the parts, but seeing how they interact, where the leverage points lie, and how interventions in one area create ripples elsewhere. This is harder than it sounds, because major programmes are genuinely complex adaptive systems.
The second is being a translator. Major programmes span technical, commercial, political, and social worlds. Each speaks its own language. The programme leader's job is to move fluently between them. Converting engineering risk into political risk, translating community concern into contractual mitigation, making the commercially complex legible to a minister in two minutes is just business as usual on a major programme.
The third is operating as a politician and we mean this in the best sense. Managing power, understanding who has it, building coalitions, and shaping the narrative. A programme leader who doesn't understand politics will be eaten by it.
The fourth is being the team’s psychologist. Organisational fatigue is real on major programme. Understanding what motivates different people. Knowing when the team is burning. A programme leader is responsible for creating psychological safety in an environment where admitting problems can feel career-threatening.
The fifth is acting as a engine of resilience. Major programmes will face shocks - black swan events that will certainly create chaos. The leader's job is not to prevent these (its impossible) but to absorb them and adapt without losing forward momentum or team cohesion.
The sixth is being a clairvoyant (of sorts). Acknowledging today's crisis but also being able to plan tomorrow's disruption that could catch you on the proverbial backfoot should come innately to a major programme manager.
The truth is that almost nobody can naturally excel at all six. The model is aspirational. But knowing which capabilities you're weak in, and building a close team that compensates for your shortfalls, is itself leadership maturity that major programmes in today’s world need.
Five recommendations for major programme leaders
If you're in the chair, or about to be, here's where we'd focus.
1. Build a leadership team that covers your blind spots. If you're brilliant at systems thinking but weak on human dynamics, hire for that. If you're a great politician but not a natural resilience builder, find someone who is. The idea of the heroic solo programme leader is unrealistic. And, for god’s sake, please don’t hire yes men/women - they will most certainly kill your programme.
2. Establish honest reporting from day one. Create an environment where people feel safe telling you the bad news. This means never shooting the messenger. A programme that can only surface good news is running blind. HS2's cost trajectory was not a surprise to everyone inside it. Leave your ego and arrogance at the door when you walk into that workplace!
3. Don’t sideline culture creation, rather invest in it. The culture of your programme team - across your ecosystem - is as important as your governance structure. Culture won't look after itself - it needs active work. Run cross-organisational team events. Create shared rituals. Make people feel they belong to something, not just that they're contracted to deliver something.
4. Protect time for blue sky thinking. Proactive thinking is almost universally ignored in a major programme enviroment. The operational pace of a major programme will consume every minute you give it. Allocate time to step back, scan the horizon, and think about year four, five, six or seven - not just next month's board report. The crises that kill programmes usually has long lead times. They just don’t get noticed until its too late.
5. Name the politics early, don't wait for it to ambush you. Map your stakeholder landscape at the start - don’t focus just on the obvious ones, but the ones with informal power. Who can kill this programme? Who needs to feel heard? Build your political strategy with the same rigour as your delivery strategy. Most programmes don't do this until they're already in trouble.
For the seasoned practitioner, these recommendations may sound obvious but we have seen programmes topple over for precisely these reasons.
