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| Don't Manage Change. Design it. |
“The effectiveness of a change management strategy is greatly
enhanced when it leverages and adopts methodologies
from human-centred design.” – Justin Balaski
For too long, Nigeria and Nigerian have been propagated to
always hope but not act, see but don’t talk and hear but don’t blow whistle.
Corruption became the order of the day, with massive looting and diversion of
public fund and common wealth of the nation Nigeria. Are we cursed with fund
misappropriation? Do we understand the tool required for the new change to
come? Is the change mere fallacy or a new hope for the people? However we view
this present administration, we cannot remove totally the incident of the past
administration during democracy and before democracy, all have come short and
deserve trial by the people, from the people if true patriotism can begin its
course.
Change is here! This is the present song of this administration,
but I must advice that for change to take place, it must be human centred with
the right inspiration, ideation and implementation. Days of show me how you
roll and lets roll together should be abolished from the implementation of our
yearly budget, and project implementation taskforce must consist of
technocrats, public and private sector driven. We are as a country over 50years
old meant to have executed 70% of all infrastructure required for the next
generation.
At the heart of human-centred design is the belief that the
people who you are designing for are the ones who hold the solutions
for developing desirable products and services. By starting with people,
their hopes, fears, and needs, human-centred design uncovers what’s most
desirable. The benefits of collaborating with stakeholders in the design of
change management strategies are well known. However, what is often lacking is
a guiding methodology to ensure that the process of collaboration adds value
for all parties, and that the solutions surfaced are addressing the correct
issues. This is where the change management profession can borrow and learn
from human-centred design.
Human-centred design is broken down into three fundamental
phases: Inspiration, ideation, and implementation.
Inspiration
In this phase, human-centred designers learn how to better
understand people by observing their lives, and listening to their hopes,
fears, and desires. Gathering this information requires immersing yourself in
the population that you are designing solutions for. When you think about it,
change managers are also creating solutions that address people hopes, fears,
and desires. Planning an effective change management strategy cannot be done
from behind a desk. Go out into the organization, talk to people, observe their
daily routines, and make a genuine attempt to truly understand and empathize
with the stakeholders. Document your findings in preparation for the ideation
phase.
Ideation
Human-centred designers next make sense of everything that they
have heard, generate ideas, identify opportunities for design, and test and
refine their solutions. They do this by sharing the huge amount of notes,
photos, impressions, and quotes that they documented during the inspiration
phase with their design team, and together they generate hunches, and capture
ideas and stories. Physical prototyping is used to share concept design
solutions with the people they are designing for in order to elicit their
feedback. Change managers who immerse themselves with stakeholders will
generate abundant notes, documented discussions, and collected information
from surveys and interviews. It’s time to make your findings visible using
whiteboards, post-it notes, and other physical materials. Next, sort through
it, identify themes, and begin formulating your theories as to what the key
issues are for you to address in your change management strategy. Prototype
your design, using a process map, or materials such as Lego and Play-dough to
present your concepts. Iterate a refine your strategy design based on
stakeholder feedback. It is only in Nigeria, that idea origination is absent,
as people’s idea are converted to mass utilization with recognition of the very
first inventor of the idea. For instance, irish potato discovery can be traced
to Ireland and to a particular family, same can be said of Guinness, Coca-Cola
etc. These are significant as it
encourages research and development if they’re adequate protection by an
Anti-Corruption Administration.
Implementation
Duplicating implementation system with the economy is a
continuous occurance in Nigeria, once such is reduced and averted, and then
Nigeria is poised to become a developed country amongst the world.
In this phase human-centred designers bring their solution to
life, and to market. They build partnerships, refine their business model,
pilot the idea, and eventually get it out there. They are confident that their
solution will be a success because they’ve kept the people they’re designing
for at the heart of the process. Change managers who have followed the process
until this point can also be assured of success with increased buy in and
support for the change. Build partnerships with key stakeholders and change
agents, launch the strategy and then monitor what works and what doesn’t work.
If unforeseen issues arise, repeat the cycle of inspiration, ideation, and implementation,
to design new solutions and iterate on your strategy.
Like change management, human-centred design isn’t a perfectly
linear process, and each project invariably has its own challenges and
character. But no matter what kind of design or change management challenge
you’ve got, you’ll progress through three main phases: inspiration, ideation,
and implementation. By taking these three phases in turn, you’ll build deep
empathy with the stakeholders you’re designing for and you’ll figure out how to
turn what you’ve learned into an effective change management strategy. In
the process, you’ll build and test your ideas before finally putting them out
into the wider organization.
