People. Take Them on The Ride
When You Want to Trouble the Waters, Do It Right
In a recent consolidation project which was originally part of an Application Rationalization programme, there appeared to be some apathy from the stakeholders who were impacted by the transformation drive. The apathy was strong enough to be interpreted as resistance in the early stages. The idea was to centralize the infrastructure for an application and consolidate for fifteen African nations in order to save costs and harmonize the process supported by the platform. The problem was that this effort appeared to be taking jobs away from the technical staff who were managing the platforms independent of the centre at that time. These technical staff were very important to the project because they understood the AS-IS state most.
Our typically model when developing solutions was to create a support structure that gave technologists at the centre full control of systems that were deployed at the centre. But when we started consolidating almost everything, it made sense to take the key stakeholders in th affiliates along in the journey. This particular set of stakeholders were support staff who were based in the fifteen African countries (affiliates). They had tacit knowledge of the application, they had relationships with the vendors and we were not willing to give them any impression that we were trying to get rid of them. So we did three things:
- We maintained the vendor contracts and relationships at the level of each impacted affiliate instead of consolidating this. Consolidating the contract relationships could have delivered lower overall license and support costs but this was reserved for the long term and considered a good compromise to keep the technical support staff engaged.
- We created a support structure that included technology leads in the two regional clusters which consisted of these fifteen African nations. These technology leads were considered level 2 support, receiving scalations from the centralized Service Desk.
- We ensured the leaders in the regions were subject matter experts for the execution of the project, carrying them along and having them carry us along in engaging their colleagues in the various affiliates.
The Sacred Transformation Triangle: People, Process & Technology
Our experience was just one example of the importance of giving attention to all three dimensions of any transformation initiative. It is typical of technology professionals to think that everything magically changes when you get the latest bright and shiny gadget that everyone else is using. This tunnel vision problem is not limited to technology. Sometimes business people also think things magically change once you introduce a new CIO. It turns out that there is generally no silver bullet that addresses all the complexities of an enterprise.
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Back to technology professionals though. The people, process and technology triad is even more relevant in today’s world where every conversation is dotted with the expression “digital transformation”. Don’t I already sound smart by simply mentioning it? I could add another one to sound even smarter: “digitalization”. No matter how smart we think we are, excluding impacted stakeholders from the planning of your transformation efforts is a recipe for sub-optimal outcomes. There are a few reasons one could allude to this:
- Change is scary. The moment employees smell change in the air, disturbing questions arise. “Are they going to lay us off?” “Is someone going to find out al the bad things I have been doing?” “Who is my new boss?” “Will I understand this new system?” The list goes on.
- Uncertainty breeds apathy. If people cannot see themselves in the future you are building, they probably don’t want to help build it. What would be the value of shooting oneself in the foot? The “us” and “them” divide arises because nobody included “us”.
- A single brain has blind spots. Anyone who chooses to work alone tends to leave a lot of gaps. It takes many pairs of eyes to see the entire picture associated with any huge project. The more eyes you can get on your side, the better.
Simple Things Often Have Fancy Names
TOGAF and other frameworks refer to the people who have a say in your transformation project as stakeholders. The Stakeholder Map is a representation of different kinds of stakeholders and how to deal with them. In reality, it is not quite as simple as this classification. In the story I shared at the beginning of this article, I described a certain kindly of stakeholders — those ones that influence the influencers. The don’t necessarily have “High Power” but those who have “High Power” and “High Interest” tend to listen to what they have to say (in our context at least).
The point here is: in your specific scenario you must analyze who is impacted by your transformation initiative and choose to get them involved early in the project. No one is unimportant and some that seem unimportant might be the most important when push comes to shove. It is really not enough to get the power brokers and money bags on your side. The Stakeholder Map in a real, complex, politically charged enterprise is often more complex than four quadrants.
Conclusion
- The success of your transformation project is heavily dependent on your ability to identify and engage key stakeholders early enough
- Not all stakeholders are in the ivory tower, some can delay or derail your project by simply refusing to release valuable information in the most subtle ways
- Paint a clear picture of the future you are building to all stakeholders, describing it in a language they all understand and accept (to a reasonable extent)
- Ensure, as much as you can, that those who may feel threaten by your end state have a comfortable place in the new state of affairs
It would be great to read the “people” story from your last transformation initiative too.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
