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.
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