Change Management – Why haven’t we solved it yet?


It is not new news that Change Management is a big deal, and all transformation projects – probably “all” projects – need to invest in it.  We knew this decades ago – and for the most part, we still fail to do this. WHY?  I have worked in various roles on ERP and non-ERP transformations.  And I have also had the opportunity to formally and informally review projects that I did not work on directly. Here are my very biased five thoughts on this topic. They are not discrete – they are all intertwined.

1. Enterprise software is built assuming that users have to be formally trained in it

Some of the newer solutions have shown us why this is not an optimal solution. If software is built assuming that user should find it intuitive, incorporating training aids and simulations into the framework, a lot of change management challenges will go away.  From a sheer usability perspective, many established enterprise vendors have made big advances – but that is true only when you compare their new solutions to their own older versions, and not on an absolute scale.  This needs to be fixed on product development and project execution fronts – and it needs serious paradigm shifts in how we do both.

2. My best practices are not the best for you if you “blindly” copy mine

Instead of using best practices as a template, a lot of projects use them as holy grail and force fit business processes into it. ERP vendors and SIs and independent consultants are all culpable. This was the big selling point for ERP – we already have everything, just make your business run according to “our” model, and all will be well.  Even though we have seen a million times why this does not work, we still do it.  There are valid reasons to take this route – it costs less project budget spend and only needs a shorter time line, it minimizes support costs etc.  We just conveniently forget that this is akin to tail wagging the dog.

3. Business is not static – things change ALL the time.

Debits and credits still show up where they showed up before we were born, but these are a minority. They are an exception to the rule, and not the rule itself.

For example, in the world of financial planning – people who run a business might change how to do planning every so often. If you always had done operating income at product line level, and gross margin at customer level – all your allocation rules will need to be changed if you suddenly need a net margin by customer. Most ERP type solutions cannot respond to such changes in real time. Is there any wonder that spreadsheets still rule the world despite an army of vendors and consultants advising against them?

Same thing for logistics – you might have always sold in a “sales order, delivery, billing, payment” order. Now the new VP wants to change it to “Get payment first and then deliver” . Traditional ERP needs time to respond to this – config changes, code changes, testing etc. And by the time it hits production – sales clerks might not know how to do the new model for sales. These same “dumb” users can figure out 5 changes in an iPhone App after an upgrade, without any one telling them what to do. Why?

My bank has changed its website features at least 10 times in last 5 years. I never once had to call the bank to find out how to use any of them. Then why is it so hard for a company when it comes to giving a system or process for employees without making them pull out their hair?

4.  You get what you pay for. No more, no less

The primary reason, I think, is that the people who control the purse strings for a project usually think of change management as a “nice to have”.  Whether it is to train users, or to communicate changes, or to make software that is intuitive – it costs time and money. You get what you pay for. If the axe falls on change management budget, then it is also falling on the chance of success.  Sending blast emails to all users, you know – the proxy-written for a big wig type mails, is not a substitute for change management. I don’t read them, and neither does any one else I know.

5. As size of a company increases, the lesser your chance of getting a representative sample to make decisions

A senior executive from logistics is probably the wrong person to address the requirements of the shipping clerk. But often, requirements workshops are usually filled with people far removed from actual business process.  As size of a company increases, it becomes very complex to get a sample of people who can make good decisions that affect all of the company.

Does a leader really succeed only if most of the followers are dumb?


My cab driver yesterday was of Bulgarian origin. We had quite an interesting chat driving from PHX airport to my home.  He was quite upset with the state of the union, and had a curious listener in me as his passenger, and we had a half hour to drive. His perspective somewhat amazed me – on two counts.

 

His first point was “The root cause of America’s problem is a lack of focus on education”. This in itself was not exactly new to me, as I have heard this from several people before. His next sentence was “And no government will do anything serious to solve this. Why? because it is easier to rule over people who are either uneducated, or who are not capable of thinking for themselves”. Apparently this guy got so worried about the system, that he sent his two kids back to Bulgaria to live there, primarily to “learn to think for themselves”. I could not help but ask him “So why are you living here then?”. He burst out laughing and said something like “because it is easier to survive here with just my average skills , unlike back home in Bulgaria”.

 

He also gave me his view on the state of his homeland. In his opinion, Bulgaria had been under Turkish rule for many centuries – and that any one who had been courageous to question the rulers have been systematically eliminated from the society over several generations. So, as a result – he thinks the remaining gene pool primarily is of people who could adapt, and get things done by going around rules, and cutting corners without getting caught.  He predicted without certainty that his country does not have a bright future.  I didn’t push him a second time on why he sent his kids there if that is the case. I am planning to do some reading on Bulgaria this weekend, and will reserve comments on this topic till then.

 

I have been thinking about this throughout yesterday evening and today “Does a leader really succeed only if  most of the followers are dumb?” .  My instinct is to say this is absurd , but the cabbie is probably not totally wrong either.

 

We don’t always question the information that we get, and as time progresses – I think, at least in general terms, we are mostly dealing with opinions and less on factual analysis.  In enterprise software space, where you would typically expect people that hang around to be not all that dumb  – often, you can see tweets and blogs along the lines of “I am right, you are sooooo wrong” about stuff that is yet to hit the market.  And if a big name fella says so – then it gets mindlessly repeated by his/her followers.   If you miss the sequence of events, it will become impossible to distinguish fact from opinion.

 

What is worse – the concept of self appointed leaders who scratch each other’s backs, and they hunt in packs. They remind me of an old story which goes like this.

 

There was this bully in a village market who used to go around asking “I am the strongest, is there any one here to challenge me?”. Well, it so happened that there was this other dude standing at a corner who had enough of this nonsense, and he stepped up to say “I challenge you!”. Next thing – the bully walks up to the challenger, throws his arms around the challenger’s shoulders and asks the gathering “Who is there to challenge us?”.

 

This behavior amongst people I follow online gets to my nerves very quickly these days, and I almost immediately remove them from the list I follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is BI losing its clout to Cloud?


Ever since I came back to work after vacation, I have been getting this feeling that there is some decrease in appetite for BI amongst customers. It is not that BI is not in the picture – it very much is, but not at the very top of the list.  Instead, a lot more interest is now being shown on all things called “Cloud”.  Apparently, some analysts and analyst firms think so too.

On one hand, I am happy that cloud did not end up the way SOA did few years ago. It is actually funny – since in the overall scheme of things, SOA had a better definition than cloud. Even today, people are still trying hard to put good definitions on cloud computing. That is usually a sign that value realization is some time away. But apparently something has clicked, and it seems to  have picked the imagination of corporations. Hopefully vendors will capitalize on this, and we will see more tangible solutions happening.

But what happened to BI? Did a lot of people attain BI nirvana in 2010? Why did it fall from the top spot?

From past experience, I have always felt that BI is popular when economy is depressing, and the moment economy picks up – BI will stop being the big thing every one wants.  If that is the case – I am not complaining. It is high time this economy showed a decent upward trend. But somehow I cannot rationally accept this logic.  I guess I have to wait and see.

BI vendors are all gung ho about in-memory computing now.  I am wondering if in-memory solutions will need to be cloud based to get traction in the market today. There are known limitations, but if the smart engineers can overcome those – I think it will be a massive tide for BI if it uses in-memory in a cloud model.  How cool will it be to have SAP’s HANA on the cloud for example? Instead of hundreds of customers, thousands of customers can make use of it, and business processes will probably see big changes in a short time.

Now that is innovation – will we see it happen ?