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78 CHAPTER 7 Assess

Tips for Success

Often, business or technology executives that have not engaged in formal business change programs
will resist performing this step. In fact, a lot of the Road Map and Sustaining phases are spent dealing
with resistance. It will seem “squishy.” However, any root-cause analysis of the failures of large
technology efforts over the decades shows the reoccurrence of a number of significant factorsdpoor
communication, no alignment with the business on what is to be delivered, ineffective training, and
lack of business sponsorship, to name a few. These change-management issues have cost organizations
millions of dollars in failed programs. If you want to do better with your DG program, you must
formally manage the changes required.
The standard change management tasks used to support implementation of DG can be taken from
any number of prominent organizational development industry sources or authors, including Prosci;
Change Guides, LLC; John Kotter; William Bridges; or Daryl Connor. Please see the footnotes and
bibliography for these sources. There is an enormous amount of material available for very little (if
any) cost, and it is easily adapted to DG.
Activity: Collaborative Readiness

A specific area of cultural readiness is the ability to collaborate. This activity measures the amount of
collaboration or other cooperative behaviors in existence and, in some organizations, may include
Facebook-type constructs or even Twitter. This assessment is important when content management,
document management, and workflow are within the realm of the DG team. Additionally, the
assessment is handy if the business has picked up on social networking as a possible enabler of
business goals. This assessment is usually done via examination of the technology available, its extent
of deployment, and its usage. Additionally, a brief survey, similar to the “Change Capacity,” can be
used to see if the organization even wants to collaborate.
This is not a trivial subject. As organizations become more sophisticated in their ability to reach
across organizational boundaries, the need to leverage and manage the collaboration increases. There
is also an opportunity to improve how an enterprise makes decisions by instituting and managing
collaborative and social technologies. If anything like this is on the enterprise radar, then this
assessment should be considered. Lastly, often companies have a situation where SharePoint or Lotus
files are out of control. This assessment offers a chance to zero in on this issue.
Activity Summary Table

Objective Determine the capability and/or the need for an
organization to institute collaborative elements into the
use of data and content.
Purpose If there are elements such as workflow, document sharing
(e.g., Notes, SharePoint), document management, and
social networking-type facilities, then there are significant
resources being used. These can present as much
“information asset management” opportunity as any
database.
Inputs Most of the time, the IMM or “Change Capacity” surveys
will trigger the need for this. When planning the entire
FIGURE 7-8
Activity Summary Table.