Embracing Change

How are your New Year's resolutions?

Yes, I know it's May. Are you still following your New Year's Resolution? Many of us set out clear goals that we wanted to achieve in January. But how many of us have managed to implement them?  According to one survey over 70% of us fail in our pursuits. [quiet nervous cough from editor]

So why do we fail in our resolutions?
#1 We create resolutions that are too big
#2 We engage the wrong people to help us succeed
#3 Focus on WHAT to accomplish instead of WHY?

My first change this year.

OK, don't ask me why I chose to give up coffee. Two years ago at Lent I gave up fully leaded, but still allowed myself to have decaf. After a month I definitely had reduced my java cravings.

Realizing that technically I may have been cheating although not actually admitting defeat, I decided to have another go. This time I paid more attention. The first week I had a to consciously steer away from coffee. The second week wasn't too hard. By the third week I could actually sense when I would have reached for one - to drive energy after lunch or charge up for a hard / stressful task.

Anyway - after four weeks off, I now no longer even crave it. Now I wonder why I used to drink it so much.

Habit.

But change we must.

So lets say you want to institute a change.

Here's a simple one. Implement formal Change Management to improve change planning, reduce the number of emergency changes, and limit the impact of flood calls on the Service Desk.

And yet when I ask customers that I meet whether they can remember a recent failure- they all nod. Pushing on I ask if it was approved. Often not. Feeling bold I persevere and ask if they know who made the change. Affirmative. Last question - has anything been changed as a result of the hiccup.

Hollow laugh. No.

Tilt the board in your favor.

So how can we go about making a change and really making it stick. Here are some ideas.

I'm assuming you have already identified the reason for change, got a team together and defined how you would like teams to behave in the future (Phil Kotter). But how do you go about driving persistent change?

Take a leaf out of the gamification book.

Step one - Build the standard.
Define the process for content creation and track it closely to ensure it's working as intended.

Run this phase for 45-60 days to fully elaborate the process and exception conditions and a critical mass of templates.

Most importantly align metrics with creation of content - for example standard change templates.

Step two - Use the standard.
Roll out the new process with role based training, user acceptance testing and usage of the content.

Run this phase for 45-60 days to bed in the process with the new templates and execute exception conditions.

Significantly the metrics should change to match usage of the processes - tracking the number of incidents and changes recorded, the number of completed successfully, and the reduction in rework.

Step three - Improve the standard.
In the third phase focus on continuous improvement. Track the use of templates and enhancing them to drive higher usage.

This phase can run for 60-90 days to show the benefits of continuous improvement, look for improved throughput, higher quality and reduced backlog of activity.

Shift the metrics again to track updates of existing templates and expansion of coverage with new templates.

                                                          

If you've  driven cultural change in your IT org please share what worked (and what didn't) in the comments.

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