The best of intentions and the greatest ideas, such as Human Capital Supply Chains, do not get implemented without a solid strategy for change.  The statistics are startling:

• Change initiatives crucial to organizational success fail 70% of the time (Miller, 2002, p. 360).
• Major corporate investments in technology are not used as intended or abandoned within six months 80% of the time (Miller, 2002, p. 360).
• Of 100 companies that attempted to make fundamental changes in the way they did business, only a few were very successful (Kotter, 1995, p. 59).

But, don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom; we’ve seen tons of successful implementations, but you must be prepared!  From my combined MBA studies and 5 years experience managing implementation projects for the leading staffing and recruiting industry software, www.eEmpACT.com and www.BondTalent-US.com, I’ve put together my ideal strategy for successful execution.  (This is after completion of a thoughtful analysis and design phase).

1. Management Planning for rollout
2. Communicate the vision to the entire team
3. Train for change
4. Parallel (practice) new processing
5. Go Live
6. Assess and reevaluate
7. Recognize great effort
8. Continue to evaluate processes

Start by conducting at least 3 days of “Management Planning”. In Management Planning, key personnel and management will meet to determine the steps required to rollout the change initiative. Dates and deadlines will be determined and assigned. We will also consider customizations and “tweaks” needed to initial design.

Following Management Planning, decisions will be communicated to the rest of the company with a very clear outline of what’s coming next. Everyone within the organization will be asked to verbally relay back to management “What”, “When” and “Why”: What is happening, when it’s happening and why the change is occurring.

The vision relayed to the organization should be encouraging and allow others to clearly picture a better future. In a central location at the company, a large white board will stand with a calendar and each of the deadlines posted. Key points will be outlined for that week beside the calendar. I will also print individual schedules with the goals and deadlines for each step of the project for each employee to keep with them.

Next, we will complete training. Each member of the company will receive training related to their role in the change initiative in an undisturbed, quiet, and hands-on environment with a knowledgeable instructor. Training should occur within 1 to 2 weeks of the parallel.

The “Parallel” process is a dry run and is treated with equal importance as the “Go Live”. This means that both systems will be used at once.  Therefore we’ll be doing double duty for a period of time. Members of the company should be forewarned that this will be a time consuming process and extra work may be expected of them. During parallel, employees ensure they have access to the necessary information, people and processes as is defined in the written goals and vision of the change.

Once the team is comfortable with the change taking place and they know their new roles, we will “Go Live” with the new processes. The company will actually be relieved at this time, since they will no longer be doing double work.

After a pre-defined period, we will reassess if the goals were achieved. It is necessary to study each business function and ensure they are operating as trained and intended. Often additional training and tweaks are needed at this stage.

Along the way, great efforts will be encouraged and recognized by management. Stories will be shared with the entire team. Those that are “catching on” more quickly than others will be encouraged to help their peers that are having difficulties.

References

Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.

Miller, D. (2002). Successful change leaders: what makes them? what do they do that is different?, Journal of Change Management, 2(4), 359-368.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010
Categories: Human Resource Strategy, Trends in HR, change management