Accelerate the results of your investments
My experience
Too often I see companies miss opportunities for greater results because they choose to kick off projects the wrong way, or they choose to keep employees in the dark about a change until they know more themselves, or they focus on the wrong part of a change instead of focusing on achieving real benefits from the change, or they prioritize technology over people, or they neglect to ask if the organization is ready for a change before moving ahead...
I could keep going but I am sure you recognize some of these in your own organizations. I want to disrupt the norm, stop accepting average, and start getting after what we deserve. That is why I have named my company The ChangeAccelerators – because on every engagement, we want to find those opportunities to shorten the time to real results and leave behind the skills, and mindset, for our clients to do it on their own the next time.
3 categories of accelerators
1. There are things companies can do to accelerate time to results. I refer you to my website section titled “Top 10 Change accelerators to Extraordinary Performance”. Assess your maturity against these proven accelerators to determine how you can improve time to desired results.
2. There are opportunities for accelerating impacts of initiatives versus waiting until go-live to realize the value.
3. There are opportunities internal change consultants can take advantage of to accelerate their impact in their own companies and on their projects.
This article covers #2. Next week I’ll share #3.
Don’t wait until go-live - in fact, it doesn’t have to be a project at all
Every Steering Committee meeting focuses on the same thing – are we going to hit our go-live date? And that is fine. But what the Steering Committee could also ask is - what changes are we implementing today that are agnostic of the go-live solution and will benefit us now? The solution can be the impetus, but the result can come earlier than most realize.
Here are 4 examples:
1. Typical ERP solutions demand good cross-functional awareness and discipline. Most companies are very siloed. You can start collaborating cross-functionally before you have an ERP system in place. You can educate yourself and others on upstream impacts to your own department tasks and downstream consequences of your work on other departments before you are in a system that forces you to do so. And awareness and education are precursors to real change. Stop measuring the health of your own department at the expense of your functional neighbors and the organization.
2. We all know the phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Do you need a system to force you to keep your data clean? Do you need a system to force you to institute good governance around the data that all departments rely on? Do you need to be told that the credibility of your reports will be greater when you have good master data governance? Do we have to wait until go-live to have it? Assign ownership and accountability and a governance process now. This will take a tremendous amount of change off the go-live date that is already overburdened.
3. Your customers find your invoice process to be fraught with errors. Even though both sides suffer – the customer gets billed twice for the same work or not at all and you must issue a reimbursement or a write-off – you think the only fix is to source software. And so begins the long process of selecting the right partner, standing up the team, creating a project charter, building out a Gantt chart…you know the drill. I am sure software can eliminate many of the invoicing issues. But I also know that even the software will demand you clean up your process and assign accountability for ‘good invoicing discipline’. The software will enable it but won’t do it. So why wait?
4. It takes 6 months for a new lab technician to be certified to do the job he was hired to do. Is that acceptable? How much is that costing the organization? How does that hurt the client? Is that the type of experience that instills pride and loyalty in your new hires? How could you shorten that onboarding time? Assign a team to assess what it takes now, how long it SHOULD take, and design the more realistic, accelerated onboarding plan. Stop accepting that it takes that long because that is how long it has always taken.
Secure changes as you go – don’t wait to get them all done at go-live. Look at what is expected of employees by go-live and determine what you can decouple from the technology. You will be amazed. Another benefit to bringing change up is if the project gets canceled for any reason, you will have realized benefits even though you didn’t reach the finish line.
Don’t forget to celebrate these accelerated wins and recognize employees for doing so. That instills pride in accomplishments and encourages employees to keep looking for ways to accelerate results.
