Don't Manage Change. Design it.

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.