Chapter 13Detailed Understanding of the Implications of the Change
‘There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything.’
Steve Jobs9
If you want your desired outcomes to be delivered, you will have to understand who and what will be affected by the proposed changes.
Whether this is a new strategy for the company, a new IT system or an enhancement of a recruitment process, every change comes with its own set of consequences; implications for the team, the department, the organisation and the individuals involved. Obviously, this last one is where effective stakeholder engagement comes in.
As many as possible of these implications should be explored in advance, as some of them will be so significant that the strategy itself may need to be altered.
Take the IT system example given earlier – the implications of trying to get an off-the-shelf package to do things that it wasn't originally designed to do were an explosion in costs, a multiplication of development time and incredibly slow system speeds. If, and I admit it is a big if, these could have been discussed openly beforehand, some or even all of them could have been avoided. Or, most likely, the anticipated outcomes could have been re-examined and recalibrated ...
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