The Top 3 Things To Successfully Pull Off an Olympiad

Planning, organizing, and carrying out an Olympiad is not for the faint hearted. There are so many moving parts and so many constituents that nothing less than a state-of-the-art program management office (PMO) supported with the latest technology is required.

Planning Horizon

The 2018 PyeongChang winter olympic games’s organizing committee (POCOG) was launched on October 19, 2011, a full 6 years and 3 months before the start of the games!

Why so long in advance? Just think about the sheer organization hosting an event of this magnitude entails in terms of planning, design, construction, logistics, sponsorships, media, information technology, and staffing.

A Big Undertaking

In order to keep all of this on track and coordinated, the project management and oversight requirements are no simpler than those required to launch a rocket to the moon. Here are some of the key numbers:

• Number of employees required to make this happen: 51,130
• Number of countries competing: 89
• Number of athletes competing: 3,000+
• Number of new or refurbished facilities: 13
• Total budget spent: $13 billion dollars
• Expected total TV audience/viewership: 2.2+ Billion

The Top 3 Things

With all of these moving parts and constituents, we have identified the top 3 things that the POCOG did right to be able to pull-off such a monumental task on time as planned for the world to enjoy:

1. Organization Structure and Governance

First, the POCOG avoided the multi-headed monster syndrome by appointing Lee He-beom as the President and CEO, making him the sole top decision maker. He then appointed only 3 Executive Vice Presidents – Games Planning and Communications, Operations and Secretary General, and International Relations – to coordinate all major areas.
By defining a simple and clear structure for decision-making the POCOG avoided potential confusion from the get go.
A simple reporting structure, with clear expectations, roles and responsibilities, and reporting relationships provides a solid foundation when setting up a new project.

2. People

Next, you cannot execute a project of this magnitude without recruiting the right people into the effort. Once the vision, goals, and governance structure was in place, the next challenge was to find, attract, and retain the right people for the different jobs for the duration of the project. Defining an attractive value proposition to convince people to join this effort was key and is crucial to any successful PMO.

3. A Culture of Accountability

Once you have a well defined organization structure and governance model and you have recruited the best people, you need to make sure you create a culture of accountability.
Using a tool like CommandHound, which has been built from the ground up to drive accountability in the workplace, will not only help track what needs to be done but it will track milestone completion performance at the individual and the team levels to be able to connect to compensation and reward systems. This also enables management to take corrective action on a timely basis so the overall program timeline if not impacted. This is especially critical when undertaking a project like an Olynpiad, a 7-year long project!

CommandHound Drives Accountability to Make Sure Things Get Done
As a task management application, CommandHound also assigns tasks and milestones, defines due dates and escalation paths for when things fail to get done as planned, and provides management dashboards to manage by exception at a glance.

Next Steps

Would you like to learn more about how CommandHound can help you drive governance and a culture of accountability in your organization to make sure things get done?