Leading Change: Start With a Clear and Compelling Outcome
Most change initiatives of any consequence are all but DOA at launch.
It is a sad and expensive reality that most change initiatives in businesses of all sizes will not succeed or deliver the intended value. Research and business journalism giants like McKinsey, WSJ, and Forbes have all pointed out the high cost of enterprise change-initiatives that failed to deliver the value intended. Across the board researchers agree that roughly 70% of change initiative fail to get into production or deliver the value projected. In my experience leading change initiatives and coaching chage leaders, the implementation and adoption phases can be particularly challenging.
The reason is not owing to fraud, malfeasance or even overly optimistic projections. The root of failure generally resides in the planning and launch of the initiative. Traditional task-forward planning is just not up to the job of understanding and planning for human factors and organizational or social pushback against either the change proposed, or the simple inertia of current reality.
Most project teams rely on a vast and highly complex Gantt charting tools (like Microsoft Project or Asana) to plan for a change initiative. Gantt charts are excellent tools for managing change initiatives. Still, at the risk of running afoul of the Project Management Institute, and other industry giants, a Gantt-based planning process is generally ineffective and often dead on arrival even though a lot of time and money will go into discovering the demise. While they are excellent for work planning, they do not lend themselves to the dealing with the intangbles of change, including organizational resistance.
Instead, consider the sage wisdom of Steven Covey to “...begin with the end in mind.” Rather than plan for a more efficient process, consider what greater effiectiveness looks like. What is the end-state outcome that you wish the project team to create? In fact, rather than just having the outcome in mind, build a clear, compelling, and detailed picture of the new future, based on the benefits of successful implementation- and let that guide the project's planning. Or, in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
“If you wish to build a ship, do not gather the men and give orders. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea."
Begin with a detailed profile of what will be different when the project’s goal is the new reality of how the business will operate. Get deep into the weeds of re-engineering what interactions should look like in an idealized future. In my early CRM consulting days, we took clients into a studio and designed and filmed what the most critical customer interactions should look like in an ideal future, not just with small implemented changes. Do not allow this Experience Design process to be constrained by current reality or the potential for budget-busting change or technology. You may choose to be conservative about the rate of change or the investment—but do not allow those constraints to impact the ideal design.
By envisioning and engineering this future state, you better understand potential ROI and organizational impact. The bad news is that this level of planning does not allow for an all too common seat-of-the-pants, “…let’s just get started” implementation. The good news is that by testing and vetting carefully, you are far less likely to find budget-busting limitations halfway through.
And, critical to success in this process is how the project is chartered. In example, many projects which include the configuration of a technology platform are erroneously cast as a software installation project. The classic example was the number very expensive stellar failure of CRM projects in the early days of enterprise grade systems (Siebel, Vantage, Salesforce) and even small to mid tier solutions solutions like SalesLogix. While there are many reasons those projects so often failed to provide value, the root of the shortfall was simple. The attention and expense focused on getting the software to work became the critical mass of the initiative. Issues like user uptake, how the data was used for managerial reporting and implementation in businesses whose very business model did not suit a CRM system to begin with. It was a feeding frenzy for software based on management’s hope of more control and visibility.
One such example comes from a large investment banking firm in the UK that had spent a significant sum integrating one of the marquee systems for the trading floor. The short form is that the brokers did not want to use the system since, at their core, they believed that the customer relationships were their’s, not the banks. It turned out that some of them had personal tools like ACT! or Goldmine on their private laptops to help with creating contact history and calling lists- but they were unwilling to not be able to take their customer data with them, should they leave for another brokerage.
With a clear and compelling future designed (on paper at least), a change leader can break down the implementation process based on interim business outcomes that contribute value along the way. Do not wait until the end of a “task-forward” process to determine if the project is a success. Instead, stage the work so that the implementation is never too far from a place where the work can hold, or even be closed entirely- but still have created value.
Remember, working backward from a clear and compelling vision of the future is a planning process- not a project management methodology. All projects encounter conflicts and difficult decisions based on timelines and costs. Rarely does the initial design end up unchanged in the final product. Start with the ideal end state and work backwards. When the inevitable bumps in implementation or budgeting surface - informed decisions, even if they are difficult, can be based on the value to the business of the successfully implemented change.