One of the more intriguing lines of inquiry at a recent meeting of the AIIM New England Chapter had to do with my assertion that there is a connection between analyzing your business problems and engaging in change management. Though on the surface these appear to be two completely separate exercises, I believe that your ultimate success depends upon inviting the people who will be affected by the change to participate in the initial articulation of those business problems.
The reason is that people are much more likely to embrace change when they feel they have been part of the process leading up to it. Otherwise, they tend to resent whatever instructions are issued to them – even when they make sense – and that resentment can be a real drag on, if not an outright barrier to, system adoption and use.
This sounds so obvious when stated this way, but it takes a certain patience and commitment to process to achieve this outcome. Too often, organizations rush through the analysis phase in order to get to the implementation, and in so doing, they frequently leave people behind. In these cases, the result can be an unhappy confluence of misdirected spending (on a solution that doesn't solve the only partially-defined problems) and disaffected workers (who quickly come to the conclusion that the solution simply doesn't work). So it is in your own best interest to forge the connection as early and as solidly as you can – and the key to this is to invite as many perspectives to the party as possible.
#businessanalysis #changemanagement #BusinessProcessManagement #strategy #EnterpriseContentManagement