30 Dirty Truths about SAP & Organizational Change

Here they are , in arbitrary order:

1. People don’t want to change. Not for the worse, not for the better.
2. Things will get worse before they get better.
3. Automate your project administration, not your project planning.
4. We think we see the world as it is, but in fact we see it as we are (Stephen Covey).
5. Change is in the details.
6. The real purpose of change management is to help people make sense of the change-pains – not to avoid them.
7. HR is not an agent of change but an agent of stability.
8. If integration is the destination, then make it part of the strategy and reorganize before you deploy systems.
9. The more accurate I start to plan, the more precise co-incidence will hit me (aka: ‘death by detail’).
10. Software does not replace discipline (aka: ‘the Debby rule’)
11. Legacy systems will always be better – from a rearview mirror point of view.
12. A good project manager is like a good parent: trustworthy, predictable and unpopular.
13. Real change takes time because it requires perception shifts.
14. The purpose is to make agents of your targets.
15. Uncertainty is worse than bad news.
16. Trust is the currency of change.
17. Communication will happen anyway, so better be at the steering wheel.
18. Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Stephen Covey).
19. Real participation means allowing people to have a stake in the sense-making (this includes whining and letting-go rituals).
20. The essence of communication is to create community. Any exchange of information that does not accomplish this purpose is non-communication. Scan your meeting behavior as you keep this rule in mind.
21. Approach resistance with respect because it covers people’s most vulnerable and valuable part: their motivation and inspiration.
22. We choose our responses to the world – perception is a choice.
23. A vision is the shortest path between what is in my head and what people will see or hear (Bill Jensen). Compare this to your 180 slides Power Point presentation.
24. Communication is the message sent, not the message received (Bill Jensen).
25. Change all you want – but execution happens at the speed of sense making (Bill Jensen).
26. Although Organizational Change is not mathematical science, one truth stands out: OO + NT = EOO (Old Organization + New Technology = Expensive Old Organization) (Michael Hammer).
27. The bottleneck to human performance is in the limitations of available attention and learning capacity.
28. Gathering feedback and not taking action based on the findings can be more damaging than not gathering feedback at all (Naomi Karten).
29. In order to understand a system, you should try to change it (Kurt Lewin).
30. Culture is by far the best excuse for not changing. Don’t try to understand, rationalize or categorize culture. Rather, take it as a given and learn to navigate it.