With Changes come Projects, Come Change
The purpose of this blog article is to cover change management, the adoption of change, and how it has to be at a personal level, and the three dimensions you need to uncover when looking at change adoption. Personal change is identified as Adoption, under People in the LEAD part of the MPM model.
Change is identified as Adoption, under People and under LEAD
Change in business is relentless and change brings a different way for the business to operate. Different ways to operate mean there’s personal change involved, and therefore the change wrought by a project must be understood from a personal daily transactional level.
Understand As-is Versus To-be
Sometimes the change introduced by the project is insignificant, sometimes it is very challenging.
It’s especially challenging if you’re someone on the receiving end of an implementation where there is little attention paid to understanding how daily transactional activities are changing and it’s especially challenging if those activities are completely replaced.
Understand As-Is vs To-Be – The Earlier the Cheaper
Complete replacement of financial and other operational systems, such as what is experienced with something like an ERP implementation, must be looked at from an as-is versus a to-be perspective because daily transactions are important to ensuring customers are served, staff are paid, and finances are managed appropriately and in a timely manner.
The perspective of what is changing must be understood as early in the project as possible. If the difference is not understood it will eventually make itself known and too often that is at the time of implementation.
In fact, there is no question that eventually it will need to be understood. The real question is when, and the price increases the later the change is understood.
Save time, money, and stress by identifying the change early
Identifying changes as early as possible does save time, money, and stress. Exploring options is cheaper and faster on paper early on in the project, and the collaboration builds a sense of engagement and commitment.
Collaboration to explore change options early on in the project builds a sense of engagement and commitment
Exploring options later after commitments have been made, roles defined, and steps decided, is very impactful, costly, difficult to maneuver, and stressful for those on the receiving end of the last-minute change.
It is straightforward in the beginning of the project and not that complicated. Not to go down a rabbit hole, but when it is broken out, the exercise is not that onerous, as you are going to see in the next few paragraphs.
Take a straightforward approach to identifying change options
A single mission critical as-is process can be mapped from nothing written down, as in no documentation, to a draft in a top-down method in an hour with a couple of the key users. (Pro Tip: Top-down bubble charts are easiest for managers and process owners to brainstorm initially).
By the time it is drawn up and another review is held it’ll be another couple of hours, probably half a day by the time it is done.
The same for the to-be. Chalk up another half-day for in-person, more prettying it up, a second review, and clean up.
Remember these are just the mission critical processes for a business area.
We’re not boiling the ocean. Each business area has about a dozen of these. That’s what makes them a business area, common processes.
You’ll find exception conditions too during the discussion, and those are golden at this point, but back-breakers if found later – translated: very expensive in money, time, and very stressful.
Just a little bit further down the rabbit hole. Then take both of those diagrams and do swim lanes. Now the real reveal happens – and this is huge savings for any project.
Compare the two swim lanes, as-is and to-be and find the gaps. You’ll discover three dimensions to the change.
OK, we’re out of the rabbit hole.
Three things to learn from identifying change gaps
Understanding the gaps between the as-is and to-be save you significant amounts of time, and money, and they tell you three things:
- The gaps tell you the exceptions you have to figure out how to handle when things are moved over into the new outcomes created by the project.
- The gaps tell you the documentation or procedural differences between now and to-be, that you must fix or provide something for before you go live. It is mind-boggling how this is missed on so many projects. This isn’t rocket science, it’s potato-gun science.
- The gaps tell you the training that has to take place, and that could be contextual on screen, audio, in-person or video training, cheat-sheets, documented steps, or whatever. There are lots of alternatives.
Just figure out how all those people in the mission critical processes are going to know what to do so they don’t mess up and cause irreparable damage to the finances, or people, or customers when you go live. And just as important, so they all do the right steps in the same way.
Conclusion
In conclusion, regardless of the magnitude of the change that a project is introducing, you must understand the difference in experience for critical transactions, comparing as-is versus to-be to ensure the change happens in a predictable and controllable way.
The adoption of change must be at a personal level or it’s not complete.
Executing transactions on a daily basis cost time and money, and if they take five times as long because they have to be done manually or re-done because the change wasn’t understood early on in the project, then that has real financial and effort implications.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
- Identify the dozen or so key transactions impacted in each affected business area.
- Map out the as-is and compare with the to-be. If done properly, each transaction should not take a lot of time from rough draft to final and then compare the gaps.
- Use the gaps to identify the three dimensions to change that you need to know – AT A PERSONAL LEVEL.
The need for change will bring your project, and your project will bring change, but the change will be understood and managed, and it may be a little rough as the new ways are learned, but everyone will be on board and you won’t be walking into personal change blind; you’ll have your eyes wide-open.
And you’ll save some money, time, and stress in the process and your end-users are going to be more likely to adopt your solution.
Learn More
Business evolves through change initiatives otherwise known as projects. The key to managing these change initiatives so you have more time, and less stress is to use simple strategies and tools.
Have fun with some short quizzes on leading, controlling, and planning projects: Three quizzes on leading, controlling, and planning projects
Check out the Learning Hub for other Articles with Actionable Steps, organized, with a busy leader in mind, by topic or main idea: https://simplepmstrategies.com/learning-hub-index
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