Is that true? ”Failure is a more likely outcome than success.” Really?
I read a great article in Harvard Business Review this morning, Stop Using the Excuse “Organizational Change Is Hard.” (Not sure if that link will work for everyone; I have a subscription, but I think you can get a few ‘free’ article views.) You should read it if you implement changes at work. It answers those questions.
I’ve been working on a huge change for my organization. My team is building and implementing a new electronic management system which will be a radical change in how we do business. There is so much change, we have a person nearly full-time working already for months on change management.
Software implementations suffer from a pre-conception that “no new computer implementation goes well.” Who can’t point to the bugs in the last one they experienced? How about your latest iPhone…that battery performance better than what you gave up? We love to complain about electronics and computer systems. So I’m worried that no amount of rah-rah cheerleading and product perfection is going to have people clamoring to get on our system next. No, they are going to wait to see what the early adopters say and what those early adopters say is critical to our longer-term success. As the HBR article points out, they are the ‘dead canary in the coal mine.”
Being in a big company that likes to standardize, we will eventually bear on everyone to move to the system in spite of whatever reservations they have or complaints they hear. But that’s not an excuse to build and launch anything less than the perfect product. We need to message that ‘success is the ultimate outcome and we can be optimistic and determined and create that.’ This is easy for me, an optimist. Small ‘breaks’ are not game-stoppers. People are busy; changes imposed on them shouldn’t alter their ‘flow’ too much or they will surely be crabby about it. Unless you deliver high value – in which case the crabbiness ebbs. Clearly, the changes ahead worry me! I’ve done many enterprise-wide change initiatives in the past, but a computer software change is testing the limits of my optimism too!
I read a great article in Harvard Business Review this morning, Stop Using the Excuse “Organizational Change Is Hard.” (Not sure if that link will work for everyone; I have a subscription, but I think you can get a few ‘free’ article views.) You should read it if you implement changes at work. It answers those questions.
I’ve been working on a huge change for my organization. My team is building and implementing a new electronic management system which will be a radical change in how we do business. There is so much change, we have a person nearly full-time working already for months on change management.
Software implementations suffer from a pre-conception that “no new computer implementation goes well.” Who can’t point to the bugs in the last one they experienced? How about your latest iPhone…that battery performance better than what you gave up? We love to complain about electronics and computer systems. So I’m worried that no amount of rah-rah cheerleading and product perfection is going to have people clamoring to get on our system next. No, they are going to wait to see what the early adopters say and what those early adopters say is critical to our longer-term success. As the HBR article points out, they are the ‘dead canary in the coal mine.”
Being in a big company that likes to standardize, we will eventually bear on everyone to move to the system in spite of whatever reservations they have or complaints they hear. But that’s not an excuse to build and launch anything less than the perfect product. We need to message that ‘success is the ultimate outcome and we can be optimistic and determined and create that.’ This is easy for me, an optimist. Small ‘breaks’ are not game-stoppers. People are busy; changes imposed on them shouldn’t alter their ‘flow’ too much or they will surely be crabby about it. Unless you deliver high value – in which case the crabbiness ebbs. Clearly, the changes ahead worry me! I’ve done many enterprise-wide change initiatives in the past, but a computer software change is testing the limits of my optimism too!