Business-Centric Change #3 – Counsel

One of the greatest quotes on the frustration of executing a plan comes from a poem by Robert Burns called “To a Mouse.”

The line from the poem that most people are familiar with is

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,”

The poem is about a farmer who turned up the nest of a field mouse with his spade during fall plowing. The mouse had built her nest and planned to spend a comfortable winter in it. Now, she would have a difficult time surviving the winter because there was no time or material for her to build a new shelter. The poem is an apology to the mouse and a display of empathy by Burns who compares his lot in life to that of the mouse.

The quote from the poem is generally thought of as a resigned recognition that with any plans, issues are inevitable. True enough, but in the context of the poem, I see the meaning somewhat differently.

People get sick and tasks get delayed; changes need to be made to the plan. This is work that good program and project managers handle all the time, no worries.

Getting whacked by the farmer because you built in a place that gets plowed every fall is another story. The revised moral of the story – don’t set yourself up for failure.

The remainder of this post is my “Top Ten” list of considerations to minimize the potential of “getting whacked” during program execution.

1.  Leadership Time Impact: Recognize that the transformation is a large amount of work and will require dedicated resources. It cannot be managed “off the side of the desk” in a part-time I-still-have-my-day-job fashion. The program team (including support resources from Finance, HR, Procurement, Legal, etc.) needs to have that as their only job, with ample time for your leadership team included as well – perhaps as much as 30-40%. Your time will also be in high demand – anticipate well over half of it being consumed by the transformation.

2.  Alignment of External Resources: If you opt for external help (consultants), make sure that they and their rewards structure are aligned with the results that you seek, and not only the process or other aspect of the solution executed in isolation (a sure recipe for an “extended engagement”).

3.  Communication Management: Understand that transformational change is hard. Your job is to lead the organization though it. If you have a capable program team, your best return on time invested is in Organizational Change Management and communication activities. Remember that if you are not managing the communication, it will very soon be managing you (which is a really bad place to be, trust me).

4.  Organizational Resistance: As the vision or end state is communicated, there will be perceived winners and losers. Those who believe that they are “losers” in the new world will resist the change and can be quite effective at it. Spend extra time and effort with this group to help them understand the future state and the opportunities that they will have there.

5.  Organizational Pulse: Remember that people move along the change curve at different rates. Have feedback loops built into the OCM process reflecting where the organization is so that the process can be adapted to the changing needs of the organization.

6.  Participative Change: There are different change management styles. The transformational change that you are bringing about almost always needs to be a collaborative style to be successful. More coercive approaches only usually work in the short run and almost never result in organizational buy-in to the change.

7.  Positive Confirmation: Make certain that there are detailed transition plans to the future state and that they are well communicated and understood. My simple rule for the organization during this time is that nobody can give up a job responsibility until the new-world recipient says affirmatively, “I have it.”

8.  Customer Service: Mechanisms for “Business as Usual” must be well known by both IT and by the customers of IT. If the customer is used to having a particular service provided by “Joe” and he is now part of the transformation program team, then the customer has to know now to go to “Rick” for that service. Perhaps there will be an entirely new method to get that service, like via an intranet form, and that needs to be understood as well.

9.  Face Time: There is no such thing as over-communication or too much contact with your organization during the transformation. You and your leadership team are the face of the change and need to be out and about, not sequestered in your offices or in back-to-back planning meetings all day.

10.  Cut the Cord: Once the transformation is in its final stages, find and complete any activities (usually projects in-flight and well-intentioned folks who want to do favors for friends) that are being done outside of the new model. There’s a reason that Cortez burned his old boats after landing in the New World; it greatly increased the commitment of his men to going forward and exploring. You’ve committed to the new model, now make it work.

There are probably a few more, but upon refection, these seem to be my most valuable experiential learnings on execution of a transformation program. As always, feel free to respond with any comments, additions or questions.

The final post in the series will be Business-Centric Change #4 – Coda.

Business-Centric Change #2 – The Solution

Let me begin by offering my apologies to those of you who may have been thinking that this post would contain the solution to a particular business-centric change problem.

This post is not so much about “the” solution to a particular business change problem as it is criteria for the solution.

From BCC-1, we have a crisply and clearly articulated business problem and constraints around the solution that have been bought into by executive leadership. Now all of our efforts will focus on development of potential solutions, so it is important to understand what characteristics a solution must have to be brought forward for successful approval.

Before we begin that effort, given the number of folks involved in developing “The Problem,” we have expectations to manage and stakeholder needs to consider. The solution will not be developed in a vacuum. As the effort will most likely result in a significant change program, a communications plan (as a part of a larger Organizational Change Management workstream) needs to be developed and implemented.

Executive stakeholders will want to have some knowledge of what solutions are being considered. Take the time to set up a formal or informal method to keep them informed at a level that makes each one comfortable with the solution process (having a few sounding boards will be invaluable in the socialization of the eventual solution).

Once that is done, our objective is now to develop and present a solution that executive leadership can understand, support and commit to (approve), and will be successful.

First, in the same way that we approached the development of the problem holistically, the solution must also be approached in the same comprehensive manner. Everything that has to change and what actions those changes will require must be identified and well understood. Every aspect of the solution must have a corresponding implementation plan. This will make executive leadership aware of the full scope of the change and give them the necessary information to make a decision to go forward with the strategy.

My suggestion is to use the Transformation Triangle to frame this information, with particular focus on the “Management Systems” changes that will need to take place outside of IT. Each executive stakeholder needs to understand what is happening and what he or she is signing up for within their own respective group.

Next, taking a page from Lesson 5 of Colin Powell’s Leadership Primer, the solution must be able to be implemented. A brilliantly conceived solution isn’t worth much if it cannot be implemented within the constraints discovered in the problem definition process or subsequently in the development of solution alternatives.

As solution component options are considered and modified, be sure to explore any potential secondary impacts on the other components and the overall solution to ensure that you remain within your solution boundaries (and the laws of physics). This will enable you to confidently check off against both the aligned objectives and constraints.

Finally, the solution must include an executive commitment to empowered leadership. An empowered change leader has responsibility for the end result and accountability for the outcome. They will have or have access to the skills, tools and resources needed for implementation and have the authority to do what is necessary to get the job done. This request for commitment must be made explicit in the presentation of the solution and made a part of the communications plan.

With those three criteria in place:

•    Full Disclosure of Scope (everything that needs to change and what those changes will require)
•    Ability to Implement (positive check off on both objectives and constraints)
•    Empowered Change Leadership (explicitly agreed to and communicated from executive leadership)

Our solution should be able to go forward with executive leadership support and stand a very high probability of successfully solving our problem.

But, as they say in the military, “The map is not the territory.” We now have a map that shows our destination and we have a plan to get there. Our success now depends on execution – on actually getting from here to there.

And that will be the subject of my next post.

Business-Centric Change #3 – Counsel

Business-Centric Change #1 – The Problem

From my previous post, the problem seems pretty straightforward: “IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered”

Solve for that statement and we will fix the problem, correct?

It’s possible, but not likely. Jumping to a premature solution is like a doctor prescribing a cure for a serious ailment based on a symptom or two. If you want a cure that works (and doesn’t kill the patient) you must thoroughly understand the ailment, its history, and its symptoms.

Now back to our problem. Chances are that like a sickness, the problem didn’t appear overnight. Sufficient time must be spent gaining a comprehensive understanding of what has been happening from different perspectives. Business leadership, business customers, IT leadership, IT staff and perhaps key vendors will have a perspective to share that will contribute to the understanding of the problem.

Taking time to meet with these stakeholders and gain their perspectives is the first step in understanding the problem.

If the solution were simply to fix the articulated problems, then we would have a pretty good chance of being able to use the information received to put together piecemeal solutions. However, very little of that information is what IT needs to be, only what it shouldn’t be. Getting information from executive business leaders is the next step.

These conversations almost always begin with issues, which is fine for gaining additional perspective. The discussion must eventually turn to a positive statement of what the business seeks to do in the next 18 months (or pick a suitable length of time that is future-oriented enough for strategic purposes) and what contribution or capability IT will need to have in order to support the business objectives. Done well, that part of the discussion will be incredibly rich and will form most of the objectives for our solution.

But we’re not quite finished gathering information for our solution yet. Again, from executive business leadership, we’ll have to get some idea of any constraints for our solution. These usually take the form of budget, capital or time-to-results and may extend to dimensions of company values, strategic concerns, or “unwritten rules.”

For me, the most interesting part of the process is working with the executive business leadership and working through the “disconnects” between executive business leadership that inevitably arise in the discussions. Be prepared for several follow-up meetings for clarification and collaborative issue resolution before being able to create a first draft of the problem statement, with constraining parameters for the solution and what “success” looks like (complete with proposed top-level metrics and measures).

Usually, the document will need some tweaking before the executive leadership team fully buys into it. However long that takes, it is vital that this part of the process results in a very crisp and clear understanding by the executive team of the business problem that is being solved (actually now more appropriately phrased as what IT needs to do to support the business objectives) and what success looks like.

Next post: Business-Centric Change #2 – The Solution