Make Change Happen!

Understanding current state is vital to the change story because you need the starting point in order to communicate where you are going. Leaders often want to jump to the future state before they document the current state, which is a painful process which may require time and money. Some see this step as a waste of time; they want to get right to designing a new solution. This kind of thinking can lead to design that does not address gaps or solve issues, making it difficult to design the right solution for the future state.

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Clear understanding of current systems and processes is critical to building the future state. Whether it is documented or not, there is always a current state, even if a brand new process is being created. The current state identifies gaps that need to be documented into the future state requirements and design. Gaps indicate areas of current state process that are missing. If these gaps are not identified and documented, they will continue to be gaps in the future state. As said earlier, you cannot transform something if you don’t understand the details of what needs to be transformed.

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Current state and future state need to analyze people, processes, and products.  This is important for two reasons:

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1. From a business analysis perspective to ensure requirements for the future state are accurately captured so the new system and processes can be designed to address gaps and requirements appropriately.

2. From an organizational change management (OCM) perspective, to understand the impact of the change – how large, how small, how complex – so strategies can be developed to assist users through the change curve to quickly adopt the new systems and processes.

 

There are many important benefits to documenting current state:

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• Provides a clear picture of what is changing by identifying gaps in the current state and requirements for the future state.

• Ensures everything needed to enable the business process has been thought through and accounted for in the future state; fitting all the pieces together into the big picture. This gets everyone on the same page – leadership, project team, stakeholders, etc.

• Sets expectations for who, what, when, and how activities are to be accomplished.

• Helps identify weaknesses and opportunities to further improve your process before implementation.

• Helps stakeholders and users see and understand the change by being able to visually compare the current and future state.

• Can easily be augmented with screenshots and further details to become process-driven training, which is more digestible for employees.

• The primary purpose for organizational change management is to help stakeholders more easily navigate the transition from current state to future state, leading to adoption and increased utilization of the new processes and technology. Current state analysis provides the foundational component needed to propel the business solution forward.

 

Current state assessments require the involvement of experienced employees who use the process regularly. If there is no current state documentation, then gather employees who are the primary targets of the change to document the gaps that the future state will solve.  They are the subject matter experts – they know the pain points in the current state and can help identify ways to improve or eliminate those pain points in the future state.