A programme was six months in, fully staffed, every workstream busy. When three of its leads were asked, separately, what success would look like at the end, three different answers came back.
None of them was wrong. One described a system going live. One described a process being faster. One described a number on a board. All three were reasonable. All three were being worked towards. They were simply not the same goal.
This is the Layer 1 problem, and it sits above everything else. Before anyone asks who decides, or how we measure, or which tool we use, there is a quieter question that is often skipped: what, exactly, is this programme for? When that answer is assumed rather than agreed, every layer beneath it inherits the ambiguity.
The danger is that it does not look like a problem. Activity is high. People are committed. Reports are full. A programme without a clear goal does not stall — it accelerates in several directions at once, and calls the motion progress.
The cost surfaces late. Two workstreams optimise for different outcomes and quietly work against each other. A decision gets made that serves one definition of success and undermines another. At the steering committee, everyone agrees the programme is important, and no one can say in one sentence what it is supposed to deliver.
Here is what to test. Ask three people who carry the programme, separately, to finish one sentence: this programme will have succeeded when ___. Do not prompt, do not align them first. Then compare the three answers.
If they converge, you have a goal. If they diverge, you do not have a steering problem yet — you have a definition problem, and every steering decision downstream will be slower and more contested because of it.
A programme does not need everyone to work harder. It needs everyone aiming at the same thing.
Cordula Buss · Plan A2C / Helping finance and programme leaders build steering logic that works.