How Much is Enough?
As part of a major change initiative, many companies spend an extraordinary amount of time documenting the ‘current state’ as well as the ‘future state.’ The rationale for defining the current state often gets lost amid the zealousness of attempting to be thorough and accurate. All too often precious time and significant expense is wasted on over-documenting the current situation.
To effect change, an organization must understand the existing dynamics between their people, processes and technology. This knowledge combined with the company’s constancy of purpose (the ‘vision’ thing) establishes a solid platform for developing a plan to transition an organization to the desired future state.
Checklists have been created and tomes written about how much current state information should be collected. The reality, as a good change consultant will tell you, is that ‘it depends.’ While that may provide little comfort to the executive leading a major change project, it suggests that enlisting the help of an experienced change management professional can save the organization significant time, money and momentum.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. - Mary Engelbreit
To successfully change something, usually you MUST change the way you think about it.
Rather than understanding and framing an issue, too often the tendency is a rush to develop and execute a tactical plan.
A sense of urgency is extremely important. But, when the pressure to 'do something, do anything' steamrolls efforts to scope a change initiative, the outcome is usually disappointing.
Spend a little time at the beginning of a project soliciting different perspectives, considering alternative approaches and reviewing your assumptions. That small up-front investment will frequently yield significant benefits in terms of meaningful and measurable change.
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