Imagine you are a senior operational manager. It’s six months or a year since you cut over to a new system, and the executive team is asking for an update on the business case – how’s it going with the faster / bigger / better targets that were set?
You’re tempted to pick up the phone to the IT team, but they formally handed the system over to you several months ago, and they’re all now busy off-shoring their applications and trying to get the company to standardise on a single platform for mobile computing.
It’s all down to you – and the lunatics in the asylum.
That’s what we fondly call the people who are now using the system that was so carefully designed by the project team, and who may now be moaning about how well – or otherwise – it meets their needs. An alternative way to describe them is ‘gold dust’ – they know what the business processes need, they know what’s working and what isn’t, and they are the people most likely to bring a fresh perspective and have ideas for how to release a whole lot more value than the business case ever imagined.
They are also often champing at the bit to be asked for their input. So what is there to lose? We’ve found that positioning the work is the most critical step to get right, to focus people on continuous improvement – and not bashing the technical design team. This is not a post-implementation review, but a compelling and engaging exercise that helps you find ways to maximise the value of your investment.
To get people engaged in this way, these are some of the techniques that we’ve used to really good effect.
- Use insights to encourage people to adopt an open mindset – how would Apple think about ways to get benefit from the system and processes? Or Doctor Who? Or your biggest competitor? What would make the biggest difference to your biggest customer?
- Adopt a “yes, and…” philosophy. This encourages people to build on what’s already been suggested and be much more positive than the “yes, but…” approach that’s more common. It turns the thinking into a game and promotes team-working, as well as eliminating the sense that the project is a critique of what’s gone before.
- Support the team to operate really effectively as a team. Ask them to consider other examples of great team-working and achievement so that they can agree their own team ‘charter’. Examples that might be particularly compelling are Live Aid – a team that put its heart and soul into the project; or search and rescue, and international relief teams – doing a fantastic job with limited resources.
There’s no question that post-implementation is where the real opportunity for releasing value can be grasped by business managers. I’ve set out a few ways to mobilise the new team and position the work as an important new project – because the real key to success is tapping into users to fully understand the opportunities to squeeze all the value out of the investment you’ve made.
What have you found works to transform the lunatics in the asylum into gold dust?
