Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hours in a day

Ever found that you have run out of hours in a day/week/month?

I seem to have that problem at the moment, and I wonder if it is due to the approaching summer?
Or maybe it is the culmination of some projects? Whatever it maybe, I have lost my focus...

On the upside though, this week has been highly successful. Today I submitted the web version of a Change Management Guide for the entire organisation. Some of you who follow me on twitter may have heard a mention or two of it.

As a project goes, this was a hard slog and entirely different to the day to day breadwinning, so to speak. Whilst this was a properly commissioned project, I only ever saw it as a think tank exercise to deliver a resource that left our organisation a little better off than without it.

The product was essentially a Change Management Guide which well and truly surpassed the intimidation point at 10,000+ words and 14 steps to success... Not to mention the language!

Actually, to mention the language is better... My own engineering/project management background combined with a colleague with a business/logistics background coupled with a particular academic interest in Change Management. If it is not obvious, we spoke diametrically opposed dialects which when painfully combined resulted in some indulgent verbosity. 

But why am I happy about this? Well there was a moment in the project where we introduced a second gateway. Like an Index to a Table of Contents, this second gateway offered a set of questions rather than a designed and stepped approach. The real bonus of this is its ability to embrace the power of the cynic, as noted by Dave Snowden as being so vital.

This is where the website (intranet only at this stage, unfortunately) comes into its own... although I still think that there is a need for a low-fi pamphlet for people to hold in their hands... With both of these in place, Change can be about improvement despite the best effort of some folks to make it about the process. 

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