Considerations for Change - Goals & Aspirations

In our previous post we introduced this series of short publications which we think will help you when embarking on any program of change. We took a high-level view at some of the key elements that, from our years of experience, we feel are critical considerations on a change journey.

In this post we are going to explore a little more the importance of having clear goals and aspirations at the foundation of your change program. The idea of having clear goals and aspirations set out at the start that have been agreed and universally communicated will help drive the following stages of your program.

In any instance we have found the goals that are most effective in driving the program are those which have been devised by business users (end-users), customers and are owned by those in senior positions.

Creating clear goals and aspirations about your desired state at the start of your journey will help people to work towards a common goal. This will support the collaboration between teams and help drive the organisation to work towards a shared outcome. From our experience the most successful change initiatives are driven from clear goals which are communicated and understood around the business and owned by those in senior positions.

Clear goals and aspirations will support an organisation in later stages when you start to look at your high-level designs, requirements, solution options and planning activities. Taking a holistic view of your organisation when creating these goals and aspirations will allow you to look further than the immediate problem and assess what your aspirations are at a higher level. In any instance we would highly recommend looking at creating these goals and aspirations taking into consideration the people, process and technology elements. This will help you to create a holistic view and identify early where the inter dependencies are critical aspects are.

Considerations

Working with our clients and having seen successful implementations the following aspects are elements which we feel you should consider then looking at creating your goals and aspirations. This is by no means a fully comprehensive list but is designed to help and guide you;

• Take a holistic view point: Don’t focus on technology or solution replacement improvements, both elements are key, but you will only realise the true goals when you consider the processes and the people which operate them;

• When you are faced with “Complex Problems” don’t focus your energies on solving that problem in its current state. Take the time to break the problem down into manageable chunks, this will likely remove a lot of the complexity and help you arrive at a solution;

• Take the time to really understand your senior stakeholders, these are the people who will help drive your initiative so having them onside and supportive will be critical. However, challenge where necessary especially based on your user inclusion data;

• Understand your users, these are the people who will be interacting with you as a customer and those who you expect to operate within your future state. Ensure these people are consulted and feel included in any decisions, this will help you when it comes to user adoption;

• You have taken the time to complete a comprehensive view of your organisation, you have agreed goals and aspirations and have started to communicate these around your business. Make sure you use the correct channels, media and presentation style for your intended audience.

• A key consideration that we have identified is to understand that your transformation in not a deliverable. It is a journey made up of multiple components. Understand that your goals and aspirations to evolve, this is a positive thing and something we see as highlighting an organisation is engaging with change effectively;

As with anything there will be the option to get carried away with what you would like your organisation to look like in the future. The danger with this is that your goals and aspiration will not be achievable, and you will see, at best, limited success. Some key elements to look out for include, but are not limited to;

• Aligning your goals to a specific technology or solution. This will be a lot easier said then done, especially where you have a corporate standard. The key here is to understand there is a technology that will full fill the need but not focus on which one – this can be considered later;

• Balancing between innovation and delivery. This does not mean you should take the easy or safe option but you need to consider how confident you are in being able to deliver;

• Having goals that are more aligned to a specific individuals’ aspirations than those that are beneficial to the organisation as a whole;

• Use your knowledge. This links to the consideration of stakeholder inclusion, you know your organisation better than anyone, within your organisation you have expert domain knowledge – use it.

• You stakeholders are miss aligned to the change or even the need to change. As above you need to ensure your end users are consulted and your senior managers are responsible. Miss alignment in the goals will make it difficult to deliver universally accepted value;

• The goals should form the backbone of what ere organisation is doing. They should be regular considered where big decisions are concerned.

Where Have We Done This?

A leading non-profit organisation engaged The Crown Consulting Group to help define and deliver a comprehensive digital transformation strategy and associated road map. The problems being some of the organisations critical infrastructure was hosted off legacy technology posing significant risk. There was little universal direction towards where the organisation should go in terms of digital. The organisation wanted help to define a strategy that would allow them to deliver services in innovative and cost-effective ways and would improve customer service. Additionally, the strategy needed to help the organisation realise its saving targets

The Crown Consulting Group worked across the organisation to complete a comprehensive simultaneous bottom-up and top-down analysis. This allowed us to seek the front-end knowledge and aspirations of operational staff and the high-level goals of senior management. Where appropriate we challenged the status quo to illustrate a journey that would complement all viewpoints. A critical element to this engagement was illustrating how ‘Digital Transformation’ is an ongoing journey and not a single deliverable, it is not something you can really consider done. We highlighted the fact that it was a journey made up of multiple deliverables, this approach allowed us to focus on key elements and helped break down some complex problems.

Once this vision was in place the Group then worked with the organisation to illustrate the findings in a number of ways. In total the same data was presented in three ways. The aim of this being depending on the audience the right materials could be used to present the same message.

The outcome was a universally agreed digital journey document and corresponding road maps presented and adopted by the organisation. Throughout the engagement the Group worked hard to share the skills and thinking we used with the client, this was well received.

The Crown Consulting Group went on to work further with the organisation, we will cover this in later articles.

In Summary

In the post we have explored in more detail the importance of having clear and universally agreed goals and aspirations. They will help unify an organisation to deliver shared and sustainable value.

Our key takeaway consideration from this step needs to be considering your ‘Digital Transformation’ as a journey.

In our next article we will take a deeper look at the design phase and how you can start converting your goals and aspirations into a high-level design and ultimately reality.