Consolidating change

Most business change is enabled by the implementation of appropriate technology: IT.

Although most enterprises undertaking significant change - business process re-engineering (BPR), for instance - usually retain consultants, it usually falls to business analysts and systems personnel to manage implementation. It often follows that IS personnel organise - or provide - training and performance measurement.

When it comes to performance measurement, IS people are often prepared to take on the new ways of working, and the new ways of measuring, more readily than, say, those with accounting or business administration backgrounds.

For these reasons, most of the major consultancies recognise that bringing people from the IS function into change management teams is an essential ingredient of a successful project. So, as a systems professional - if that is what you are - you should analyse your own change management talents and try to build your change management skills. Having good business analysis skills, solid technical background and well-honed change management skills is an unbeatable cross-disciplinary combination.

But implementing change - especially if consultants are there to assist with the forward progress - is only the beginning. Consolidating that change and ensuring that benefits continue to be taken from it are another area altogether. The IS function is probably going to be at the forefront in designing and developing reports which monitor the new ways of working and their underlying business processes.

It's not enough to produce performance figures on a regular basis: The performance measures must be right - they must measure key aspects of the business process - and their magnitudes must be both realistic and understandable. It's great to now that profit has doubled in the last quarter but it is more significant to know that it improved from £2.20 to £4.78 - The company's still in serious trouble!

It's also important to realise that performance measures affect the way people work: If a salesman's bonus is paid on the basis of beating budget targets, the salesman will tend to submit low budgets; probably smashing the planning department's forecast accuracy and production efficiency to earn it. If the bonus is based on units sold, the impetus may be to shift large volumes of low-profit product at the expense of better profits through lower-volume, high-profit lines.

And performance measures themselves shouldn't be seen as set in stone. The measures must balance the effects of the real world beyond the office:

WHAT YOU MEASURE IS WHAT YOU GET!

Implement only a few key performance measures that the business will recognise and trust.

But if performance begins to fall, first review what is being measured and how

EXTERNAL FACTORS	INTERNAL FACTORS
PROCESS MEASURES	RESULTS

What might, at first sight, seem to be similar issues can be measured in quite different ways, need completely different measurement techniques and require quite different actions when they begin to fail.

For instance

Quality issues can lead to falling market share and the cause of the quality issues themselves may be difficult to identify.

Measuring results seems like the ideal monitor: But when market share falls, marketing may come up with ideas for new, budget lines: Low cost but low quality. At the same time customers may be turning away because they are looking for a higher-quality product than is currently available.

Was the quality once good enough? Has the new planning regime pushed throughput beyond effective quality control? Is production failing to meet standards because of the higher throughput or another reason?

The measures must, therefore, not only return precise information but they must measure the right parameters under present circumstances.

EXTERNAL FACTORS

Customers demand higher quality of same product

INTERNAL FACTORS

Planning require much higher throughput

PROCESS MEASURES

Production cannot achieve minimum quality standards

RESULTS

Market share is falling

Change is difficult but successful change has a cost of its own: Complacency.

A change project which goes on too long may fail because it runs out of steam - The participants loose the desire the make it happen.

A change project that doesn't hit its targets will wither, die and disappear.

But, when the change process is a resounding success everyone wants to sit back and bask in the glory of it all.

The performance measures tell us whether the business has reached the targets set in the project brief and whether the business has continued to meet these criteria.

	Be realistic
	Continually review and update
	But don't embark on a lifetime of change for the sake of change
	Review and modify; don't throw it away!

	Projects should be launched with comprehensive discussion and agreement
	A strong plan should support strong implementation
	Train personnel ass part of the implementation then let the processes settle in
	Review and respond to successes and issues through genuinely-responsive feedback
	Give change leaders the tasks of refining the processes and delivering more benefits

HOW GOOD ARE YOU CHANGE MANAGEMENT SKILLS?

Measure your own performance!

Try the change manager's metric

Remember also that change projects change people as well as organisations. In the bigger projects - certainly in the best - everyone's achievement and development objectives will be clearly defined. Skills targets and associated training schedules will ensure the objectives are met.
	But whether this is a formal process in a major change process or an implied consequence of a smaller, maybe more closely-focussed project, the heroes will be the change leaders.