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Process Change

Food for thought before thinking about the dreaded phrase -process change. Process change is not a silver bullet to solve problems. It is actually a suicide pill if you don’t want to admit you might be part of the problem.

All process changes, to be successful, need to follow a simple pattern of Observe, Analyse and Adjust. Here is an outline from a presentation I’m willing to share. If you’ve comments, please do post them.

1. Observe

• Issues
  • “Process X is painful”!
  • Try rephrasing it to “How wonderful will it be if it was like ___?”
• Incentives
  • What makes people want to do something?
  • Organizational Need?
  • Personal Satisfaction?
  • Personal Satisfaction is always better.
    • Try explaining “benefits” to them.
    • If you can’t, may be the process is a useless one.
• Inhibitions
  • Do you hear cries of despair like
    • “We tried this before”
    • “We tried lot of things before”
  • If you implemented changes appropriately, you should hear
    • “We are at X stage of doing Y”.
  • Repeat: if you can’t explain a process to people affected by it, it is going to fail.

2. Analyse

• Collection
  • Wait a minute before shouting “tracking system”.
  • Figure out what to collect!
    • Success factors
    • Factors that measure building blocks for future
• Calibration
  • Is data appropriate and scaled?
  • Or is it a data-set copied from a book discussing ideal situation?
  • It is OK to understand ideal situation never exists. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
• Analysis
  • Does it make sense?
  • Is it useful?
  • Is it too much?
• Big bang systems often fail. If you don’t know what to track, try a spreadsheet as first step.
• If you ask people for data
  • you must make it clear to them how you intend to use it.
  • you should have supporting process that they can followup on.

3. Adjust

• Perceived benefits
• Timeline
• Realized benefits
• How much time is too much time; with respect to realized benefits?
• Reality Checks
  • Often
  • Be candid
    • It is much better to realize and admit faults and re-analyze, than “cooking up success”.
    • Does the environment enable candor?
  • Continuous Integration
    • You don’t want to change things so much as to create your own secluded eco-system!
    • Change never stops
    • How agile is your process?
• Start small! Take baby-steps first before going for the big jump.

Finally, ask yourself about your track record in keeping those new year resolutions. If it is bad --except if it is about loosing weight--, you might want to find someone else to implement change for you

1. i don de here ooooooooooooooooooo mugu mugu sunny kawawa

   Posted by: sun kawawa on December 7, 2003 08:37 PM

2. You might want to add a link to http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html ... it is inspirational stuff.

   Posted by: Ravinder on December 22, 2003 06:50 AM

3. good luck and success..

   Posted by: Arielle Seline on September 1, 2004 03:55 PM