If you’re relatively new to a company’s IT group or a senior role within IT, how do you break the news to your CEO or Board of Directors when you discover that a major IT transformation is in order, even if it’s on the order of five years or more from start to finish?
Here are a few tips that have worked well over my career.
1. People have to take their medicine. You’ll never get any credit for sugarcoating the truth in IT. It’s always a best practice to tell your board that this is where we’re at, that it’s going to take this long, realistically speaking, and that we’ve designed the process so that we go through the painful but necessary steps early and limit the spread of that pain to the business wherever possible.
2. Take it in phases. I like to roll things out in phases – or what we call programs – and only go into specific detail on the current phase at the beginning of that process. The metaphor I use in my head is ironing a shirt. If you go too quickly you’ll end up with a bunch of wrinkles. If you slow down and take it in logical stages, you’ll end up finishing faster – and have a nice looking shirt.
3. Never deliver a negative without a positive. If I tell my board that we are going to undergo a major change within a system or business area, I always stress the value of what you get on the other side and that it comes with an ongoing, repeatable process to maintain it in the future.
4. Present the process. Each employee uses your system differently, so any major upgrade will be different for each individual. Therefore, there will be a significant change management component that must be built in, and you have to clearly explain the process you’ll use for success up front – not as you go. And certainly, do not wait until the end.
5. Align your message with the business reality. If you build in the ability to throttle up or slow down your upgrades and/or implementations, you’ll always be able to move at the speed that the business can support. It’s a good message to send that if your business dips, you can pull back a little on spending but still make progress – albeit a bit slower
So whether you’re upgrading your underwriting, claims, trade management systems, lay out the honest truth, and then show how each phase is going to drive more value to the business, how long it might take, and what the journey looks like. Then, you will have those who will sign up to both passengers and most importantly, drivers!
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Brian Beams joined Pharmavite in June 2010 and is responsible for determining the strategic direction of the company’s IT solutions, infrastructure and technology operations, as well as the company’s customer and consumer-facing technologies. Brian began his career with 14 years as a technology consultant with Andersen Consulting’s (aka Accenture) worldwide technical services group, rising to the level of Associate Partner while based in Chicago, IL.
