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How can future change be delivered at the same speed as when lockdown hit?

How can future change be delivered at the same speed as when lockdown hit?

Has the COVID-19 lockdown slowed your business down?

In the life after lockdown webinar that we ran in May, we spoke about 4 key thoughts. I have tried to cover these in blog posts since then. The first one was in relation to Understanding your Total Cost of ownership. The second one covered measuring the value of IT and that linked into redefining the services that you offer and making them fit for purpose.

In this last blog post of the series I wanted to talk about the speed of change and that links very much into the other areas we covered on the webinar? Which were: “The service you will offer will need to change more frequently, and the speed of response will need to be flexible and fast.”

In the life after lockdown webinar, I ended with a statement that said CRISIS = FOCUS = DELIVER.  I realise we are still in the middle of the COVID-19 situation and whilst many across the country are in differing states of lockdown, and some may well argue that we are still in crisis, I wanted to tease out and explore why can’t we switch to a model of NO CRISIS = FOCUS = DELIVER.

Why do we, as humans, step up and deliver when the ‘going gets tough’. In our discovery work that we deliver, we often hear clients talk about a ‘hero’ culture when things are broken or systems need that extra push in terms of support or out of hours working or emergency response. The lessons learned document often opens with statements such as ‘ICT stepped up and they were brilliant’. ‘It was all hands on deck and we made it work and ICT saved the day’.  The quote by Reid Hoffman states :

In crisis times, it’s actually not more difficult to motivate your staff, because everyone gets much more focused on how they control their own destiny.

The bottom line is that people step up in a crisis, they become self-motivated and just get on with it. They adopt a Nike mentality ‘just do it’. Is it because this is the only focus required, the most important and only job to do, the save the day hero culture? One or all of these? Plus many others that are situation-specific?

What we do know is that for many organisations the COVID pandemic triggered a focus and crisis response. Clients achieved results that, in almost every scenario we have come across, were impressive in terms of delivering change and making workforces available to work away from the office. Clearly some were more prepared than others, and whilst everybody had challenges, they achieved what was deemed by many as impossible.

So if we are to adopt a new mantra of NO CRISIS = FOCUS = DELIVER then what are the principles? I have concluded we have four to follow :

  1. Less is more – focus on the must-do and critical projects and deliverables. 
  2. Prioritise requirements and what people work on, adapt to succeed. 
  3. Short term focussed approach, linked to outcome-based projects. Deliver 3 well instead of 10 not so well! 
  4. Daily stand-ups and progress reviews enable the ability to adapt.

The destiny in your own hands quote above, I think, allows people to see they are achieving something and it gives them a purpose to carry on rather than aimlessly trying to hit a different target all the time. Ultimately the four principles above focus minds on a common goal and get everyone on board with that goal, creating focus through vision and goals aligned to that vision. In our work, we often see these missing in many organisations that we work with.

Moving forward I want to explore these with clients and I am hoping that over the coming months we see the NO CRISIS = FOCUS = DELIVER mentality prevail. It will be great to get your thoughts and get more insights over the coming weeks and months. Please feel free to comment and provide your personal views. 


CoStratify – Forming strong evidence for change

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