It's a curious role, delivery leadership.
We look at the awkwardness of advocating for customer outcomes, business goals, and project team needs all at the same time.
And we look at the odd, often contradictory combination of skills and capabilities that a high performing delivery director should have.
We're picking up some threads from the first episode, looking in greater depth at the strangeness of a delivery leadership role.
In the first half we return to that uncomfortable location for the CDO — sitting between each customer's needs and the objectives of your own business — and we discuss how it's more complicated still, because you also need to serve the teams that actually deliver client outcomes. Experts need the right opportunity to exercise their expertise, and it's the CDO's duty to create that space and guard it. We've talk over an example or two for that.
Later on, we look specifically at the strange, sometimes contradictory combination of skills and capabilities that a high performing delivery director should have. We talk over some of the fundamentals at a high level, many of which we'll return to in future episodes:
- High EQ
- Strong communication skills
- Diplomacy
- Strong organisational skills
- Outcome oriented
- Process driven
- Forecasting and capacity management
- Knowledge and skills sharing
- Strong sense of team — we’re doing this together
- Set standards, and hold people accountable to them