Start by Designing the Future (Barry Goldberg On Leadership)

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This month, I visited with a project team preparing to lead a very large change initiative. The scope and scale of the project are reminiscent of the major enterprise resource planning projects of decades past, and the program office had been engaged in planning for six months.

We had very productive conversations right up to the point that I asked to see a copy of the project plan. I received a bound volume with more than 200 pages of information printed from its project management system, which produced a very large Gantt chart and a formidable budget for new systems and organizational change. But there were two things that were surprisingly missing.

First was that, much like the large enterprise automation changes of the early 2000s as well as Y2K projects themselves, there were a large amount of preparation, new systems investments, organizational recasting and such, but pretty much all of the value anticipated by the project team showed up at or near the end of what would be a two- to three-year rollout.

Second was that there was little or no data about interviews or thoughts from those whose jobs would be most impacted by the initiative.

There was a time when that kind of project planning would work. Certainly, a tech issue like Y2K set it up. Clear deadline. No way to push it out. Several technical strategies.  But a huge amount of work and expense that could not be avoided.

That was then. This is now. And there are neither technical reasons nor organizational tolerance for large change initiatives that are conceived and planned behind a curtain. So, here are a few thoughts on planning for major process and organizational change more suited to our current decade.

Plan backward from outcomes. Save the workflow and budgeting in early planning and build a clear, detailed and compelling vision of the future you want to create with a project. How specifically will the experience of customers and employees be different? What value will that difference bring to the company and the bottom line?

Engage stakeholders from all groups that will be impacted. Customers’ experience matters and most companies understand that today. But in an environment where competition for employees is serious, a process that does not plan for where to find and how to attract, reward and keep those people is doomed from the get-go. Similarly, a new initiative that needs special skills that are scarce in the market needs a contingency plan.

Plan the change in stages that deliver value along the way. Many an ambitious project stresses organizational systems so badly that despite early success there is little energy for the rest of a longer, more ambitious initiative. Stage the work so that training, technology, data, suppliers and other key dependencies are grouped to be able to pause or even cancel further development at key waypoints in a project. If each of those waypoints is its own comprehensive phase of a project, then even an early need to cancel the project will have contributed value for the time, effort and money invested.

The best way to develop a major change initiative is to design the future. Start with that end in mind and stage all the work streams so that there are places to pause or even stop that still deliver value. If your project plan is based on a big return at the end of a long and challenging effort, the risk of failure is both high and expensive.

I. Barry Goldberg is a credentialed executive and leadership coach and coach educator with a global client base.