Lived Experiences an input into Business Requirements

In the last newsletter, I discussed the business requirements conundrum and offered Lived Experiences as an approach to better tame this challenge. The obvious benefits are the ability to close the gap between problem and solution speak, make the entire change life cycle more agile, and reduce the need for expensive organization change management programs to just list a few.??Furthermore, I also highlighted several enterprise roles that are often instrumental in adapting such change into current change program delivery practices.?

In this edition, let me share a practical and no disruptive approach to incorporate Lived Experiences into how we currently drive Transformation Journeys within the organizations and communities.?First, allow me to establish a common vocabulary so we can have a constructive discourse.?

• Change Strategy: In most companies, the change strategy is often documented by external management firms, executive sponsors are assigned to each theme, timeline, required investments, and expected outcome are skeletonized. It is a result of an implicit and one-time review of the industry landscape and perspectives of key staff members.?

Culture eats strategy for breakfast?– we can do better.

• Purpose: the Purpose describes the goals of a specific theme, direction, or opportunity. The purpose inspires staff and experts to get engaged.
• Lived Experiences: Motivated by the purpose, the staff and experts openly share anything that supports and/or prohibits the achievement of purpose as well as learning of others from adjacent industries, economies, and experiences.?
• Roadmap: The roadmap describes from current to target state (target state is often evolving) transition from people, process, systems, timeline, performance, and business outcomes points of view.
• Agile Implementation: Select stable characteristics of change and implement them incrementally?
• Innovate: select opportunities that could dramatically alter the target state for better and/or significantly improve the performance of targeted processes
• Operations and Value Generation: While changes are being defined, developed, and implemented, the business of the organization is still being conducted, each incremental change hence drives different experiences.?

Lived Experiences don’t just influence change at the start of the program but throughout the life of Change Journey.

Our Team Experience?

Over the years, our team worked on many initiatives where we integrated the Lived Experiences into the Business Requirement definition and management process. Below is a brief list of these opportunities.?

01: Improve Workplace Safety, Product Quality, and Labour Efficiency . . . your workforce is more just labour.

02: Climate Change and Financial Disclosures (TCFD) . . . help avoid greenwashing

03: Digital Transformation & Organization Inertia . . . your staff understand the need for change, don't assume otherwise

04: Make Corporate Social Responsibility a Daily Act . . . CSR needs your staff more than your money

05: Post-Transformation Center of Excellence. . . after all of these changes, now what?

06: Rethink Long Term Care in Canada . . . start by rethinking our values, not investments

07: My Anchor (manage stress, anxiety, . . . depression without meds) . . . sometimes a kind act is all you need?

08 Kawarthas as Co2 Sequester . . . use our landmass to become carbon neutral, one city at a time?

If you would like to learn more about these programs or have an opportunity that you would like to put through the Lived Experiences sausage factory. Reach me.?

Challenges?

As the old saying goes, everything that glitters is not gold. Lived Experiences approach is not without its challenges. In subsequent editions, we plan to explore strategies to overcome these challenges:?

1. How do you convince staff and industry experts to voluntarily share their Lived Experiences?
2. Availability of technology to automate the management of hundreds and thousands of Lived Experiences in real-time without adding additional human resources.?
3. How do you establish and manage project scope (three pillars of project management – scope, timeline, cost) where the scope is continuously evolving.?

Finally, ?we are not the experts, just a bunch of learners and practitioners. Feel free to share your insights.?