Energy Transition is all about people's willingness to goal

Global scale and dynamics of Energy Transition have created a brand new type of projects with a high level of complexity and spiral cycling development.

Economic and technological uncertainty of energy transition leads to a complex project structure requiring involvement of a consortium of project partners and a pool of investors and funding organizations. All this demands a flexible project strategy as well as an agile approach for its implementation. Moreover, each project phase may require different set of specific partners and funding sources. And this is where the spiral makes the next turn.

In order to survive in this new norm, the organization needs an enthusiastic and adaptive team of people capable to thrive in ever-evolving environment. To succeed with the Energy Transition Project, the company has to create specific culture continuously fed by the internal Energy Transition Agents. Such Agents should be incorporated in both functional business units and the transformational project team to bridge the market dynamics with the company's strategy and internal speed of organizational change. They should be continuously busy matching external and internal developments, immediately reporting on the mismatches and providing recommendations on what to improve.

This is a well-known approach. Theoretically. But what makes companies lose the speed or even fail? Multiple reputable surveys provide us with the compiling evidence it is a gap between theory (project strategy) and practice (project execution). In the majority of cases, this gap is of a cognitive nature rather than caused by strategic or technological drawbacks. How it looks in a real life?

In some cases, companies communicate the strategy downwards without creating specific roles responsible to match senior management goals with the hands-on specialists’ aspirations. Any transformation is challenging and so employees - especially those staying with the company for dozens of years - prefer to continue focusing on tasks in which they feel themselves professionals. As a result, the company may have unachieved goals and outdated KPIs accompanied by the employees’ demotivation and resistance to change.

Some companies try to make the right steps appointing specific people to support the change. However, quite often these people either do not have enough power or are overwhelmed by the daily routines lacking time or enthusiasm for the demanding transformational job. So, seemingly smart actions may result in unutilized capacity and even stranded assets and economic loses.

This again confirms a simple formula of a successful project execution: to make it happen you should create an agile and collaborative organization capable to keep up with the dynamics of the technology onrush of energy transition. The companies that manage to create a really supportive environment cherishing those dare for innovation and success are not only 10-15 years ahead of others. They are leading the path shaping the global energy transition agenda.

Аuthor: Oksana Roman

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