Welcome back and a brief note; these challenges are not in any particular order, they are all vital to be addressed for SIAM success. Each of the challenges will be different and affect organisations differently. Challenge no two the people – is no different. It depends on your organisation, your culture, leadership group and more. So many organisations have attempted SIAM, but have not yet succeeded and or are still trying. The thing that holds some organisations back is they have forgotten about the people. Yes, the people thing is back again! My favourite quote;

“Whatever the problem, it’s always a people problem” Gerry Weinberg

What is not addressed?

• WIFFM – what’s in it for me? For the organisation? For the service providers?
• Why are we doing this?
• How I and or we feel about this?
• I’m impacted and my concerns are not addressed or my ideas received or I am unable to provide ideas
• Leadership and or Management Buy-in – all round actually
• Service Providers reluctance
• Complexity because we’ve made it complex
• Empowered people to make change
• Is our organisation change ready?
• Have we thought about Human Change Experience Design 
• Do we have enabled, empowered change agents, leaders, managers in place?
• Have we distributed and talk about the vision, is it shared, known and agreed?
• Do we want to do this?
• Do we need to do this? Is there a sense of urgency
• Do we have a sense of purpose?

The Organisational Change Management (OCM) Strategy

The Organisational Change Management (OCM) Strategy describes the high-level approach, activities and deliverables to deliver a successful business change. OCM, is vital to ensure you consider how the change needs are addressed, communicated and expectations managed and;

•   Understand the impacts of the change on each stakeholder group and implement a plan to lead the people side of change,

•   Engage regularly with each stakeholder group to keep them informed, manage their expectations and increase the readiness for change, and

•   Ensure people impacted by changes have the knowledge and ability to do their jobs.

In this OCM landscape mapping out stakeholders, impacted teams, roles, included in this are the executives. It’s important to have communication plans, sponsorship program, and resistance management mapped as a risk and how to deal with these issues — everything from coaching plan, training, awareness sessions and more. It’s the people element that is difficult; management, team leaders, people, vendors, service providers…… they all need to included and helped through this. More so some of the more new thinking I love reading, researching and using in programs, projects. However, it does not work everywhere, and sometimes there isn’t time, so I like sharing with the OCM professionals onsite. So lots of topics and things to think about enjoying the read.  

People needs

• People Needs not just customer needs – we need to understand:
• How they feel about the change
• What should change, how we should change
• What about our needs?
• The famous song resonates: “what about us” Pink….

Generational needs

Well today our great challenge is that we have multi-generational people in the workforce. By 2020 we have 5 generations within organisations. That means traditionalist, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z will co-exist in the workforce. How does this work or does it? We don’t mix and blend well, but we will need to learn. Fact: By 2030, the face of Australia’s workforce will change because 54% of the Australian workforce will in their mid-30s or younger. How are leaders, managers going to or are dealing with the complexity of five generations being represented within their respective teams.

An opportunity or challenge? I say opportunity that presents a competitive advantage! This is the future workforce challenge. You will be faced with diverse talents, egos, and of course different drivers what are those individual and what are they generationally? What makes them tick, what do they want? Skills will also be diverse, experience vs youthful enthusiasm. It would be ideal for those skills to complement each other and not compete. This is a people challenge for all; customers, service providers, Business and IT. 

People Engagement

We have all seen witnessed or participated in various successes with ITSM, PMO build or transformation of sorts, and some have failed. Some spectacularly and others only bringing some of the promised articulated benefits defined within the business cases. Those that have failed forgot to bring the people on the journey from the start, during and more importantly after all the new stuff great stuff is in. Those that have succeeding are focused on their culture, embracing the risks, fully commitment to changing siloed mindsets, and a relentless focus on the delivering services to their customer base with leadership group with the vision communicated to the front lines. 

“Everyone in the ecosystem is on this journey’ – Lana Yakimoff

There needs to be a solid foundation to build upon work upon and involve. There is a need to ensure buy-in, an understanding of the business need for SIAM, a willingness and desire to do this. To understand why, how, when, and the benefits for starters. There needs to engagement ensuring involvement in design, what works and what would not work, their opinions matter. That it will be a challenging journey and it’s not about the destination at first. How we work together, how we will build this capability together where all the work begins and that it’s ongoing. End to end there is a need to engage the people on your SIAM journey. So who are those people? Well for a start:

Engaging thesuppliers, customers, all people in the ecosystem…. Everyone should have a role to play. Whether it’s helping in the design phase, strategy validation to then develop, tactical and operational execution plans. They all should cascade to ensure alignment, don’t spend 2 years crafting this, because something else will come along. You will never reach utopia, you’re not meant to you meant to build and then incrementally improve if it makes sense to.

Involving everyone in any way shape of form can bring out:

• Collaborative effort
• Teamwork, team spirit
• It can Increase the likelihood of success
• Work together, support each person, team, vendors, supplier, etc.
• Allow the relationships to grow, foster them, harness them, encourage cross-functional and to succeed in collaboration

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much, Helen Keller

So to finish part 1 I’d like to leave at statistic with you,to see if you still think People and Culture do not impact the success or failure of change initiatives, digital programs, transformations, SIAM and soon:

70% of projects still fail to achieve the desired results.

There are many topics I’ll cover next in part 2, because they are vital in greater scheme of things. Ethos of SIAM is:

·      Collaboration

·      Cooperation

·      Coordination

·      Comradery

·      Clear Communication

And more….. Check back soon! Thank you for reading our little blog, do you have insights you’d like to share? We have lots too, happy to collaborate and exchange ideas. 

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