Why year one is easy and year two is hard
The highest-value, lowest-effort opportunities get tackled first, by design — they're the easiest to build a business case around. What's left for year two is structurally harder: deeper organisational change, legacy system work, and value that takes longer to materialise and is harder to attribute cleanly to the programme.
A sponsor who sold year one's quick wins as representative of the whole programme's pace has set an expectation year two can't meet, regardless of how well the programme is actually run.
How to protect year-two funding before it's threatened
Setting expectations explicitly at the outset that value delivery slows in year two by design, not by underperformance, and defining year-two success metrics that reflect the harder, slower work rather than reusing year-one's quick-win metrics, protects the budget conversation before it becomes defensive.
Year two isn't underperforming. It's doing the harder work year one was designed to skip. Set that expectation before the budget review, not during it.MNB Strategy Practice
Key actions
- Set expectations that value delivery slows in year two, by design
- Define year-two success metrics reflecting harder, slower work
- Avoid selling year-one quick wins as representative of overall pace
- Revisit funding conversations with the original expectation documented