Often, the best way to see what something is, is to see what it’s not. The term “change management” misses an integral and much-needed strategic component: that line of sight to the most critical work and those most impacted by it. Who keeps score on the satellite level so all stakeholders see where we are in the bigger picture?
The outsourcing industry desperately needs mavericks to pave the way. We need a provider and a client to declare, “We must do whatever it takes to make this engagement work from a holistic level, beyond the service level agreements (SLAs), beyond the project plans, at a level that can be measured by a new dimension.” We need to move from a transaction-based process (necessary to execute the plethora of details) to one that is more integrated, holistically and strategically focused on linking tasks to the larger corporate strategy. This big-picture understanding seems to get lost fairly quickly, especially as you go down in the organization, causing pain and misspent time (see: staffers obsessing about which color background to use for the communication packet).
Mavericks will need a new way of contracting engagements, centered on two major foci:
1) the outcome of the work itself in strategic context, and
2) understanding how all the people involved experience the changes at issue.
Read my entire article – May 2010 HRO Today
