William McKnight, president, McKnight Consulting Group
Viewpoints
Perspective
Soft Issues, Hard Work
Consultant William McKnight explains how organizational change management requires clear steps for information management efforts to succeed.
by William McKnight
The disparity between expecting change and managing it—the “change gap”—is growing at an unprecedented pace. This has put many information management (IM) shops into traction as they initiate the projects needed to stay competitive.
At the same time, IM professionals must concern themselves about the organization’s acceptance of these efforts. To be successful, initiatives must transform the enterprise, but it takes more than wishful thinking to bridge the gap.
IM projects are uniquely able to uncover the need for realigning mindsets. Consolidating information in a data warehouse or a master data management (MDM) hub, applying rules to improve data quality, or implementing workflow/sharing mechanisms all require organizational change.
However, the complexities of engaging behavioral and enterprise transformation are too often underestimated at great peril, because the “soft stuff” is truly hard.
Five Tasks at Hand
Addressing soft issues should start with a clear set of organizational change management work products. In the course of an IM project, these tasks will ensure that the results are universally accepted and ultimately achieve their goals:
1. STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Stakeholders come from throughout the organization and beyond. Their perception of an IM project will determine its success. All agree that direct users fall into this category. But, practically, do you recognize the power they possess and act accordingly? Stakeholder analysis helps ensure you do.
Also keep in mind indirect users, such as external customers, supply chain partners, suppliers, vendors, users’ management and executive leadership. While they might not access or contribute to the new information firsthand, they are profoundly affected. In most cases, IM initiatives are really about these people because the direct users need to support them. Thus, any analysis should extend to indirect users as well.
Internal partner and support organizations are also stakeholders. They provide support during and after implementation, and they need to be set up for success. Although not solely the IM team’s responsibility, it is tasked with meeting these groups’ requirements and communicating what is needed for the project to succeed in the long term. After listing all stakeholders, develop plans to manage them—not as an afterthought but as a primary focus. This step may uncover that you have not five stakeholders, as originally thought, but 50.
2. POST-IMPLEMENTATION JOB ROLES
If employee responsibilities are expected to change, job descriptions must be updated accordingly. Failure to do so may confuse new hires and provide an anchor for the resistant stakeholders to cling to the old ways.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IS REQUIRED TO:
- Consolidate information
- Apply data quality rules
- Implement workflow mechanisms
Many organizations have established locations—human resource descriptions or the files of management who oversee affected employees—for job roles. To be most effective, new post-implementation job roles should not only specify how positions will change but also align performance and bonus metrics to the IM project’s objectives.
3. TRAINING DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY
Equally important for garnering support is instructing stakeholders on how to use the new system. Training development and delivery might involve any number of media, modules or events. It can range from desk-side coaching of a single person to conducting multiple classes or webinars for hundreds of suppliers on using MDM to track supplies for the company.
Training might also entail creating materials specific to end-use of the IM infrastructure. Regardless of the approach, education is a crucial task that conveys the expectations of the initiative to those affected.
4. DEPLOYMENT PREPARATION
Just before implementation, it’s easy to get caught up in final adjustments identified by the testing phase. However, pay close attention to the process of handing over the project as it goes into production and affects multiple support teams.
Usually, the project is supported by a production team, which might not ask all of the appropriate questions during the turnover. The project team should document how it expects production to be handled and its involvement post-production. The following questions will need to be answered at this time, not at the moment of failure:
- What are the escalation steps for production failures in the middle of the night?
- Who will manage hardware and software patching?
- Who will make the call and expend the budget for additional disk, CPU or memory as the implementation grows?
- Who approves new users?
- Who resets passwords?
Help desks, especially, need detailed instructions because they will most likely receive user questions first. Deployment preparation means deployment success, so don’t let the project be dogged by support issues.
5. COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING
Go-live dates are nearly always subject to change, so effectively communicating the last, official go-live date is essential. After all, stakeholders are impacted and job roles change on this day.
Announcing a project can begin a useful process of revision and improvement as new users who didn’t initially participate now emerge. General announcements also give weight to the initiative and a morale boost to the development team.
Build awareness through pre-established channels—company newsletters, intranet sites, etc. Communications planning is crucial; without it, such efforts will undoubtedly be late and less effective.
Essential to Success
All of these work products feature a pattern of project team responsibility. Keep in mind that IM teams don’t need to execute all of the organizational change management tasks, just ensure they’re completed. Whether these duties are “outsourced,” the IM group is ultimately responsible.
Few would argue against the criticality of any of these steps, yet many do so tacitly by avoiding or ignoring them. Don’t let solutions to “soft” problems be “soft.” Make them real, tangible and part of an action-oriented framework. Address risks to initiatives early and provide an outline for success.
An IM program must look beyond technology and address the people-related risks. The key is organizational change management.
President of McKnight Consulting Group, William McKnight functions as strategist, lead enterprise information architect and program manager worldwide.