Three Rules for Building Successful Systems

Here's an uncomfortable truth – most new systems fail. Many derail before they even see the light of day, some crash and burn as soon as they get deployed, and others die a slow, meandering death. Over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed the widespread failure of a plethora of systems ranging from HRIS and CRM to whatnot; while just a handful of them go on to add tangible value to organizations. What’s the secret sauce? Well, there is none – however, here are three factors that can dramatically improve your chances of success, regardless of your industry.

Co-Creation with End Users

A typical systems deployment goes like this – an executive sitting on the 10th floor attends a conference, gets a bright idea for a system, pitches it to the higher ups, gets the nod – and goes about deploying the said system with the help of external consultants, developers and process “experts”. That’s a recipe for disaster right there.

Great systems are always “co-created” with it’s end users in a top-down manner. Which means that you work with the people below you in the food chain to define the problem and get their genuine buy-in into the fact that a problem exists, and needs to be addressed. You may well discover that there really is no problem to be solved, in which case you should spare yourself the heartache (and cash burn) and stop right there!

Having defined the problem, now go about taking suggestions from the same end-users about the best possible ways to solve it. Encourage ideas, let them bubble upwards freely. Reward them, don’t dismiss them even if you don’t quite agree with them.

Armed with these ideas, go about setting up your system iteratively, with regular check-ins and rollbacks if required. Leave your ego at the door and be ready to take several steps back. Remember, the more granular, iterative and participative your development process, the higher your chances of success. A “disconnected” development phase will pretty much guarantee failure.

Get out of your ivory tower and into the trenches! That’s how great systems are built.

A laser like focus on problem solving and effort reduction

Almost all new systems will have a phase which requires a duplication of effort - that is, a short period of time when the new system runs in parallel with the old one. This is a necessary rite of passage because you aren’t going to get it right the first time around, and the last thing you want is to hit a point of no return with nothing to hold on to.

There’s going to be much whining and complaining during this phase about the “increased workload” and “how things were better in the good old days”. There’s precious little you can do about it except manage it temporarily.

Having said that, this negative chatter can provide you with great insights about the pain-points and improvement areas of your new system, so keep your eyes and ears open and remain receptive. The sunk-cost bias may well prevent you from performing necessary modifications, but you must be ready and willing to take several steps back if needed.

Have a clear glide path towards eliminating the old system in a phased manner and replacing it with the new one. Communicate this plan of action regularly to all stakeholders so that they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And through it all, make sure that you keep the focus on the actual problems that your system will solve, once fully deployed. Will it save them time and/or effort? Free them up from menial tasks? Help them plan more efficiently and become more productive? Reduce errors? Automate manual tasks, giving them more mind-space and bandwidth to innovate? Something else?

Make sure that your people have their eyes on the prize, and work at double speed to eliminate the redundant system so that this duplication of effort doesn’t last longer than required. Resist the temptation of pawning off your new system to your subordinates during this stage. Control it tightly.

In a nutshell: don’t ignore the “what’s in it for me?”. The graveyards are littered with systems that failed because managers didn’t address this question due to their ignorance, impatience or plain simple hubris.

Building alignment with the big picture

Most managers miss out on this critical step. They focus so much on the “what” and “how” of their new system, that they forget to talk about the most critical aspect – the “why”.

Look, if you’re investing time and money into building new systems, there’s likely a good reason for it. Perhaps your organization is planning a huge scale up over the next three years. Or maybe you’re aiming to enhance efficiency, bring in more transparency on performance, and improve your appraisal and reward mechanisms in the process. Whatever the reason is, your people need to know and be excited about inventing this future together as a shared goal!

The worst thing you can do it to underestimate the criticality of the “why” of the system that you’re building. After all, business is a team sport, and there’s no way you’re going to get there alone. You will need hundreds (if not thousands) of people to move the juggernaut that is your organization forward with you! Command and control will work only to an extent – sweeping changes require the buy-in of your entire team, across the breadth and depth of your organization, into the grand vision.

When your people are inventing the future of your organization with you, the chances of your systems succeeding become exponentially higher.

Great systems can add tremendous value to your business. Following the principles of co-creation; effort reduction and alignment will dramatically improve your chances of success.