Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 344: In the Dynamics Corner Chair: Technology, Business, & People: The Role of Change Management in ERP Implementations
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐄𝐑𝐏 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬? 📐
If you guessed, "people", you get a free Dynamics Corner T-shirt (maybe; we'll see).💃🕺
Jokes aside, if you've ever struggled with a Business Central implementation, or any ERP implementation — whether you're a partner or an end user — you need to tune in to this episode.
Kristoffer Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast sit down with Nelly Jebran in the Dynamics Corner chair (quite literally — watch to the end and see for yourself) to talk about all things change management and why people are at the heart of a successful implementation.
Some topics we cover:
🎯 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦?
🎯 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺?
🎯 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴?
🎯 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘧 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵?
🎯 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦?
🎯 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳? 𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦?
Get ready to challenge the way you approach your next implementation project. Tune in to the full episode.
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner, the podcast where we dive deep into all things Microsoft Dynamics. Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting your journey into the world of Dynamics 365, this is your place to gain insights, learn new tricks and answer. Of what is change management, I'm your co-host.
Speaker 2:Chris, and this is Brad. This episode was recorded on September 29th 2024. Chris, chris, chris, we're already three quarters of the way through the year. I can't believe it. Don't remind me man.
Speaker 1:It went by fast, Lots of changes.
Speaker 2:Soon lots of changes. Speaking of changes, did you update your phone to the new iOS 18?
Speaker 1:I did last week.
Speaker 2:I 18? I did last week, I did, I did last night and I also updated my Mac to the latest OS 2.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have to do that.
Speaker 2:You have to do it Because the two of them together is amazing. There's a lot to it.
Speaker 1:That's a change.
Speaker 2:A lot of changes into your behavior. The iPhone mirroring is my favorite. I wish I had a.
Speaker 1:I learned how to change management that process but you could demo better now with your mobile device. Right, you can do everything better with it's.
Speaker 2:You can open up apps on your phone, on your mac it's amazing a lot of changes all new changes. I'm learning to figure out, but speaking of changes. Today we had the opportunity'm learning to figure out, but speaking of changes. Today we had the opportunity to speak with Nellie J Brown about change management through an implementation.
Speaker 3:I heard the countdown, good morning.
Speaker 2:You heard the end of my countdown.
Speaker 1:You came in 3, 2, 1.
Speaker 3:That's good, yes, yes, good morning.
Speaker 2:Wait 3, 2, 1. Am I recording?
Speaker 3:Yes, you're recording. You tell me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know we're recording. We just had to give you know we did our little exercises.
Speaker 3:What are they actually Like? What do you do? Or is that a secret trade secret?
Speaker 2:it's a trade, it's behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:That's exclusive you do the turkey gobble don't tell anyone, chris, it's an all, it's all the turkey, it's just that's just one, uh one process, right, just a turkey gobble and then that's a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 3:Okay, I was trying to picture stuff. Yeah, I was trying to picture what you guys were doing while I was waiting no, it's uh, we're going to have, uh an exclusive, all-access vip pass okay for like behind the scenes what happens before the episode what does one need to do to get one of these vipassos?
Speaker 2:it's, it's arbitrary, okay, that's helpful?
Speaker 3:I think really helpful it's really helpful.
Speaker 2:Uh, good morning good morning for taking the time to speak with us. I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time and what's interesting is how this came about, because and Chris, I don't know if I shared the story with you or not uh, with how we lined up speaking with Nelly here, and I always want to start singing. Which one do you want to sing? Do you want to sing Nelly Fatayo?
Speaker 3:Or Nelly the rapper, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. Give us a verse, Nelly.
Speaker 3:Give us one of them. I'm like Give us a verse.
Speaker 2:Nellie, give us one of them. I'm like a bird. Okay, I fly away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not going to sing. No okay, if you want your listeners to leave right now, I will sing.
Speaker 2:I think, listening to Chris and I will leave anyway, but that's okay. The interesting point with this was that I'm a big advocate for test automation as well as source control source code, depending on what you're talking about management which, in essence, is change management for applications. So I had come across some information shared by Nelly and I said, oh, this is a great topic to have on the podcast. So we started talking back and forth about change management.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The whole time. I'm talking about software application change management, and she wasn't. No, so then finally after we went, we exchanged back and forth, you know, talking about the podcast, talking about what we could talk about, going on. She goes. Wait a minute. I'll tell you what did it, but yeah, no, you can tell me what did it Go ahead?
Speaker 3:Well, he says something about C-A-L-A-L extensions. I know roughly what that is with Business Central Online, the new whatever, and I'm like I don't think we're talking about the same type of change management, Brad, but it's still interesting. So I mean, I don't know how interested you'd be in-.
Speaker 1:How long did that conversation go it?
Speaker 2:went for a bit until it was like, okay, yeah, but it was fun, and then we realized we were talking about two things.
Speaker 3:Which is important. It's important to distinguish between those two.
Speaker 2:It was important and it also brought light to me and ever since that conversation, I don't know if it's like when you buy a new vehicle, yeah, everybody on the road has that vehicle, yeah, but now all I hear is change management from the implementation side, which I never put a term on it, but we all speak about and I'll talk about because it's an important part of an implementation so it's, someone will either go through an upgrade or uh implantation damn it, I was gonna do it first, oh see implantation.
Speaker 2:That's the other part, because you know how my old eyes I don't know who had the typo was it me? The typo was you yeah see, I don't even notice these things because my eyes at this point uh, we did a typo, or shouldn't miss.
Speaker 3:Nelly did a typo for implantation yeah, and then I realized it, and then I was like, oh shoot, I'm an implementation. And then it was like no, actually implantation makes sense, because you're sort of implanting a thing into an organism which is the organization. So now it's implantations. There you go. I'm just going to say that I'm going to coin that. Yeah, I'm coining it.
Speaker 2:It makes sense it makes sense, but to take it back. You know, this is what we talk about often. Is you know and I don't even know if the word is proper, like you know, user adoption, or what an organization has to go through as they migrate to a newer version of an ERP application or any application?
Speaker 2:I mean the change manager is not just ERP that's the focus for what we talk about but anything that you're introducing new to an organization. It's not only the application that you need to manage the changes, for it's the business. And how can you implement that within an organization to make sure that you have that? Is it user adoption? Is that the proper term?
Speaker 3:I don't like that word so much because I mean I always use this example when we went from an older ERP that nobody's heard of to Business Central online, we had 100% user adoption because we turned off access to the old system. I mean that to me is like okay, I can say it was a success because 100% user adoption.
Speaker 2:You forced them into it.
Speaker 3:I forced them into it, we forced them into it, but how do they feel about using it? What were the challenges, the struggles? All of that is not captured in, I think, adoption rates. So I like to say, like embracing, or you know something along those terms, how are people embracing the new solution? And that's what you know, really the focus of the type of change management that I'm interested in when we're implanting new solutions.
Speaker 2:And it's a vital part of an implementation. I think it's even more important than the application, because without the user acceptance, user adoption or the users being able to use the application, it can't be successful. Because if a user cannot do what they're tasked to do in their job, then it is not a successful implementation. At the end, if you look back at it, the application may work perfectly, but if it doesn't work perfectly for a business or the users don't know how to use it, then you have a problem.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a change formula that I always refer to. This was coined or developed by General Electric when they were developing their change management practice or philosophy in the 90s. So it's E equals Q times. What is it Q times? The effectiveness of a solution is equal to the quality of the solution times the acceptance of that solution. And it's multiplicative. It's not addition. It's not like the quality of the solution plus the acceptance. It's times the acceptance. So if you have zero acceptance, the value of your solution is zero. It can be an amazing product and an amazing solution that nobody uses. Then what's it worth?
Speaker 1:that nobody uses, then what's it worth? Yeah, I like the difference. You made that adoption and embracing and accepting it's very different. Adopting you have to use it right. You're adopting to it. Do you like it? Was it successful? Did it do exactly what you want it to do? It's different Because a lot of people tend to, you know, be upset for a couple months and eventually they'll embrace it. But it's a tough, you know, couple months that you have to unravel.
Speaker 3:And I still hear it's been four years since we went on Business Central Online and I hate this system, I hate this piece of stuff, you know, but that's, I think, because we did change management wrong in the beginning. A lot of that.
Speaker 2:Before we jump into that and continue on talking about that fancy formula as well as the topic of change management, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, okay, I don't know. It's been a winding road. I was kind of in the academic world and I did a master's in political science and then I was doing a PhD in bioethics and I just kind of got jaded in the academic world. It was just not where I wanted to be and I ended up in a business development role, which is where I'm working now. Um, and it was nothing that I ever imagined I'd be doing.
Speaker 3:I grew up thinking like ew, business, ew, it's gross, it's like icky, I don't like sales. And then I fell in love with that and then, and just the whole psychology of sales and interactions with people and that whole piece of it. And then, um, I think you know things really turned around when we were we were acquired, we were a distributor for my current parent company and um went through an acquisition. We were on the acquired side and that came with a whole slew of changes, one of which was the new system, but it was compounded and embedded in a much bigger change, a cultural change, branding change, um, you know, like how we our processes, all of it, and one big piece of it was the business central implantation.
Speaker 3:It was hard and that's how I got involved in change management because I was responsible for the for a team that was going to be adopting and using this system, and they hated it.
Speaker 3:And we got a lot of pushback, a lot of questions and I, you know, like, what are we doing wrong? And that's when I started researching and I didn't even know there was a thing called change management. And then I got certified by, like the leading change management certification organization, prosci, and that was kind of the start of it, and I've been researching and looking at different ways to do it and really I think the conclusion I've come to is that it's common sense A lot of us do change management and just don't even really call it that and it doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to consider complexity, because people are complex and systems are complex. So, anyway, it's just this whole thing that I fell in love with and I started applying those principles actively in my organization and my team and also outside of our location, and it makes a difference. It makes a huge difference in how people feel about using the system and the success rate, however you want to define that.
Speaker 2:It is, it's a huge part of a successful implementation. And to hear that someone's not happy with the system. I take a lot of those comments with a grain of salt, as they say, because you can't please everybody. But if you have that much dissatisfaction, misery breeds company. I guess you could say so. If you have someone who's dissatisfied, you have to figure out why. And is it that they weren't properly trained? Is it that they're just somebody who doesn't understand what they're doing, or what they need to do, or why they're doing it? It's important to find to it. But when it comes to change management, how would you define or explain what change management is for an implementation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so usually I refer to two quotes and then I'll elaborate on those. So you're familiar with project management. There's a quote by um Justin Belaski. He's really cool, he's on LinkedIn, he's um, he does these uh posts on his page um, ideally. And so he says project management is the tasks to be done and change management is aligning everyone around the tasks to be done. So it's getting everybody aligned around the same vision, whether it's the people implementing the solution or the people who are going to be using the solution.
Speaker 3:That's one kind of brief intro into it and how I think of it. And the other one is this is by Sharon Connolly. She's down in Australia and she says something along the lines of we moved the bread from aisle three to aisle 13. Change management is making sure everyone has toast the next morning. So think about everything that has to be done to accomplish that, so that it's seamless, so that we still get the value that we're looking for. But who was involved in making that happen and what had to happen? All of that, it comprises change management.
Speaker 3:So I think of it as the practices, the approaches, the mindsets that enable a solution to be successful and enable the acceptance of a solution and there are many different ways to go about it and lots of tools, but I think for me, context matters the most. You have to be aware of the context that you're in, who you're working with, what you're doing, and there's no one size fits all approach. I mean, if there's anything I would stress is that you can't just like take a model and plop it into every situation. You know it, working with people, and things change as you're going along, as you know, like things come up that you have to accommodate for. So you have to be aware of context and be flexible.
Speaker 2:No, it's often overlooked and I know sometimes, working with the implementations, individuals think that oh, it's just because we have a new system, everything will just work, without what has to go behind it, and I like the point that you brought up. There isn't a one size fits all to an erp implementation or to any implementation. I think there's not many things that a cookie cutter, I think, even cooking cookies in an oven. Depending upon the oven you're using, it, may be a slate.
Speaker 2:You can have some similarities, but it may be a slightly different process when you're making your dough like all of it yeah, so you could have a standard there, but it is, and that's one important thing to realize is that you can have a standard that you can follow, but that standard isn't going to apply to everybody uniformly. You may have some variances along the way, and also the users that are using it are important. So, with the change management identifying what change management is, which is more on the talent side of an organization or a business that they're working with it how can you effectively, what can effectively be done to go through this process of change management or managing changes? What type of process should someone follow?
Speaker 3:Can you hold that thought and remember the question, because I forgot to do our game.
Speaker 2:Oh, hold on, Remember the thought.
Speaker 3:Remember the question that you just asked, because I forgot it already.
Speaker 2:I will probably forget.
Speaker 3:The process is something. No, I will remember the question. Remember the question that you just asked, because I forgot it already. I will probably forget.
Speaker 2:The process is something of a no, I will remember the question.
Speaker 3:Okay, I asked you to have your papers and pens and notebooks.
Speaker 2:I have my handy, dandy notebook and my pen.
Speaker 1:Chris, you got yours, yep.
Speaker 3:Okay, so in very few words, like three or four or five words, a short sentence. Write down how you feel about business central implementations. Very briefly, just write a short sentence. What does it make you feel? That's hard, I know.
Speaker 2:That is tough.
Speaker 3:You should play some hold music while you think, or like a couple of words that you associate with an implementation. Two, three words.
Speaker 2:With what aspect?
Speaker 3:Just in general, With the first thing that comes to mind. Whatever, anything. That's not the point of the exercise.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Okay, chris is done A little done. One second gosh, I'm at a loss of words. Believe that, believe that one how I feel about a business central implementation did you?
Speaker 3:did you put something down? No no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Okay, I love exercises.
Speaker 2:I like this too, but now see, I take it so serious I put you on the spot. That I need to.
Speaker 3:It really doesn't matter what you say. That's not the point.
Speaker 1:See, brad, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, play it, but it doesn't matter, do it. It's like adoption right, you gotta adopt, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:It's like adoption right, you can adopt, it doesn't matter, just do it, because I told you to Done. Okay, chris goes first.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make sense, but I put the words down.
Speaker 3:Would you mind sharing, Chris, what you wrote?
Speaker 1:Sure, what do I feel when I do a business central implementation, being in this space for quite some time I I show I'm sure Brad has as well. I think what I get out of it is the joy um that it brings. Okay, so I'll just read what I said.
Speaker 3:Yes, I enjoy that yeah.
Speaker 1:I enjoy the value it brings to an organization for their future growth.
Speaker 3:Okay, cool Brad.
Speaker 2:Mine is similar. It's strange but different Because I was pressured. I put down, it's a positive journey for success and efficiency within an organization.
Speaker 3:Okay, very nice. So next part of the exercise pick up your pen, Okay, Got it. Can I see your pen, chris? Okay, I'll put it in the other hand. Okay, and I hope you're not ambidextrous because you're going to ruin my exercise. Now you're going to, on a piece of paper, write down two words, three words that describe the biggest challenges you've had with the Business Central implementation. With your non-dominant hand.
Speaker 1:With my non-dominant hand.
Speaker 2:Non-dominant hand. Write down three.
Speaker 3:Two or three words, whatever you want to say. No, I'm just repeating for those that are playing at home. Oh, people are playing at home. Okay, write down two or three words for A challenging aspect of an implementation. Don't cheat, use your dongle.
Speaker 1:This is like you know.
Speaker 2:I mean these are big words that I'm writing, chris, you can't use big words.
Speaker 3:It's gonna be hard.
Speaker 1:Okay, two, three words. Okay, I think I have two. Okay, I'm good.
Speaker 3:Okay, so so hold hold until Brad's time.
Speaker 1:This would be a fun one.
Speaker 2:Resonate listen, I wrote this with my non-dominant hand okay, can I, can you show us like?
Speaker 3:can I just see what they look like? Okay, kind of sort of.
Speaker 1:Okay, chris, can you?
Speaker 3:read what you wrote. Oh, I mean, that's not bad, chris.
Speaker 1:People, community involvement okay, I couldn't fit it there, it's communication so people yeah, people, yeah the right people um communication and uh Not bad and Brad yours.
Speaker 2:I put. The three words that I chose are a lot deeper than the words, because there's meaning behind them. I put time.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Training.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And training covers a lot.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:As well as testing. Okay.
Speaker 3:So how did it feel doing something that you're not used to? I mean, I assume you don't write with your non-dominant hand.
Speaker 1:I'm comfortable using my left hand as much as my right hand, so it's just a matter of trying to fit it. But you know I'm not ambidextrous in any way or form.
Speaker 2:I wrote it on the other side. I didn't move my pad.
Speaker 3:What about you, Bradley? What was your first reaction?
Speaker 1:when you said switch hands.
Speaker 2:No, it's something that I'm not used to doing. Obviously you can tell by the lettering and the penmanship that I have your chicken scratch. Yeah, I write chicken scratch anyway.
Speaker 1:Now we have, whether right, yeah, dominant or not, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:I have my chicken scratch is a little more chicken scratchy and did you have to think a little bit harder, like just kind of as you did it, or just I?
Speaker 2:was thinking more. This is my opinion.
Speaker 3:I was thinking more about the words that I was choosing, yeah, yeah, the exercises in this exercise got it. Is there anything that I could have done to better prepare you? Um, anything I could have said, or the way I said it, to do it with the other hand?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. I think the instructions were very clear. It is a little bit more challenging. It took me longer to write. Yeah, um, but I knew what I needed, like right I, I envision already the words that I need to write. It's just the physical part of that.
Speaker 2:Is you know, in time, execution, I guess yeah, yeah yeah the only thing you again, depending upon what the we're this on having time to practice writing with my non-dominant hand could have made it a little easier to write.
Speaker 1:I have one. I wish you told us the purpose of why we're writing this stuff down.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And not just ask questions or tell us to do it yeah, so you see where I'm going with this I see you're going yeah, like that's the point, when we're trying to implement a change or or, uh, roll out a new initiative, lots of factors that could make that better and go more smoothly that we can think about in terms of how people feel about and how you prepare them and how you engage them, all of that. That was the I wanted to start with that as a segue into change management, but anyway, so that's that.
Speaker 1:No, that's, it's a good point because you know, we start, we just started writing it down and we, you know, uh, we should have asked why are we doing it?
Speaker 3:well, neither of you said no, I'm not doing it because I mean you could have and we've. We've heard that before, right yeah?
Speaker 1:right, yes, I see what you're going there. We would. We should have asked. I should have asked, at least it's like, what's the purpose of this exercise?
Speaker 3:and we don't right like I mean we, you know we're going on a new system. Okay, boss, Like okay, and yeah, this will lead into a whole slew of things, but that was to warm us up. No, I see where you're going with it.
Speaker 2:It just it's you look at, I mean, it's Business Central itself is such a great application, right?
Speaker 3:you think so?
Speaker 2:And it's a powerful application and it has so many features. But to me it's a tool to do a job, and I'm not saying anything disparaging about Business Central. But if someone doesn't know how to effectively use a tool, then it doesn't matter what it is. I've always said this before it doesn't matter. For years I used to say it doesn't matter if you spend a dollar on a new system or a million dollars on a new system, if you don't implement it properly, do the same, because it's not the dollar value that matters, it's the value that you get out of it in the end as a business that matters and that often gets overlooked. And then I don't understand why sometimes an erp implementation has to be painful.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be painful it doesn't have to be painful and I think it's because it's there's an under.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go on a little tangent, I'm sorry that's an underestimation of what it takes to get it done, and it's not because it's arduous. It's like we talked about. It's the time, the training to make sure people understand what they're doing, why they're doing and, frankly, to make sure they know what their job is, because sometimes individuals will do tasks and they don't know why they're doing or what they're doing or how it impacts others, and they just I click a button, I click a button and that's all. They don't know what's the result of it.
Speaker 1:They don't know what's the result of it. Yeah, I think you know, for people who lives, you know, implementing Business Central a new system, new ERP it's easy for us to say that, right, it's easy for us like it's easy. For me, it's like. I enjoy implementing Business Central. I enjoy the change it brings, because that's what we do is, uh, something we've done for years, decades, uh, but but from an organization that's been consistent, or maybe their process is very consistent, and all of a sudden you throw a wrench and say, hey, now we're changing a new system that is that could be detrimental, not from not just from an organizational standpoint, but also an individual as well, because I've been in implementations where the change was so much and they weren't prepared for it that they quit, they leave.
Speaker 1:This is not for me. It's crazy to think that it's nothing to do with the work, there's nothing to do with the organization and, of course, getting paid, but the change is so much that they couldn't handle it and they leave. So it's, it's very important. Sometimes those people that leave you're, you're like subject matter experts, the ones that actually knows the company, that knows the process, and it could be very detrimental to a project. But yeah, it's hard. It's hard Cause you're asking me or ask Brad. You know what do we think about it? I mean, it's what we do every day, it's what we live off of. Business central implementation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think, brad, I mean you started with kind of that question of value, what the value is for the business, and Chris, you took that a step further and what's the value for the user? Because if we don't have that, I mean, what do I care how this benefits the business? If I'm the user, right, like, how is this going to benefit me day to day? How is it going to make my life easier? How is it going to make me more efficient, like all of those things, you need to be convinced that what you're doing is beneficial, sure, to the organization, but also to your day to day, and I think that's where we miss it sometimes. And the so, going back to the question of, like, the processes and tools or things that you can do I think that was your question, brad like how do you go about doing that?
Speaker 2:Yes, how do we go about managing change and implementation?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, lots of processes out there. I'm you know lots of methodologies that I take bits and pieces from each. I lean more towards something called lean change, which is, I mean, people can look it up, but it's a lot. It's very visual and it really focuses on involvement, like very, very, very early on. So before we even decide that we're implementing Business Central or whatever it might be, have a conversation with the people that are going to be involved in that or that are going to be impacted by it, and sometimes that's hard to do. Just having that initial conversation is who should be in this conversation. So let me step back a little bit.
Speaker 3:If you've seen my LinkedIn, I've talked about this as, like the five C's of change that I think are crucial, no matter what methods you use, and I'll show you some actual like tools, but five C's. First, context. I think context is I mentioned this earlier very, very important Know what you're working with, know who you're working with, what you're doing, know the background, the history of the organization, like where are these people coming from? Be mindful of context Co-creation.
Speaker 3:When you are involved in the implementation early on and when people have a chance to contribute to what that looks like you're a lot more likely to get people to be committed to it and to um invest in it, and so that leads to the third c commitment.
Speaker 3:You want that commitment from people across the board, from your sponsors at the top, from the people doing the implementation on the technical side, and then the people who are using it and conversation, um. So first I framed this as communication and then somebody um kindly suggested that I use the word conversation, because communication can feel very top down in like one way, and what you really want is dialogue and conversation so that you have a chance to get feedback and ask questions again from the people who are going to be impacted by the change. And then complexity, because it's not cookie cutter and we have to be conscious of the nuances of whatever situation that we're in. Do you want me to show you some of the tools that allow us to do this sort of thing and to get all those elements kind of in place before an implementation or during?
Speaker 2:I'm always interested in learning. I think this is such an important part of an implementation. So anything you have to share yeah, that can you know spark something to help other others that are going through a business. Central implementation is important yeah because to me, this is one of the areas where I see most implementations. I don't know how you define success or failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question, you know it's one of those things is you know? I asked the question, someone said we want to have the system, the quote, the system, the system needs to be running by January 1st, right? So if it's running by January 1st, is that success? Or is your business being able to do this a measure of success? Or is your users you know? How do you measure success or failure with this? So anything you have to help track that. I'm so full of questions for change management because I see this is where I've come to realize.
Speaker 2:I see this is where a lot of attention is not paid. A lot of attention is paid to let's build this amazing system, throw all the bells and whistles and get all this great fancy stuff in there. I use some loose words here, but if you don't train the users or get user feedback see I'm going on a tangent See, you guys got to pull me in.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:It's because it's or get user feedback. See, I'm going on a tangent, see, you guys are going to pull me in. Well, it's the same thing. It's because it's like user feedback is like ask the right people. Sometimes you talk to someone about how something needs to work and they are not the one who understands the way it works. I say that loosely, because sometimes things may work a certain way due to an existing limitation, so someone needs to have a comprehension or has to be able to comprehend why they're doing what they're doing and what the results need to be, not necessarily the actions they go through.
Speaker 3:And how you determine who the right people are. How do you do that? This is what I'm asking you I know that's an important question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a little bit of building blocks of at least the foundation for change management. I mean, a couple of weeks ago I was reading a little bit of statistics for our listeners here that, if you think about I think Gartner did this survey that 73% of employees affected by change say that they're suffering from moderate to high stress levels primarily has nothing to do with anything else but a simple communication. Brad and I you and I talk about just proper communication, not just any communication, but effective communication, because we are designed as humans to keep ourselves safe. So if you don't know what's going on, we tend to worry and feel a little bit more anxious.
Speaker 1:I always believe there's a book that I read I can't remember the title at this moment, but it talks about if you look at thousands of years when we were hunter and gatherers and you stay in the village.
Speaker 1:So anytime you go outside the village and you kind of look around and you see movement, a slight movement into the bushes, either that's a fight or flight situation. So it's kind of embedded in us that any change into our safe space we get spooked, we get scared and we run away and say I don't want this, I want to be safe. So it totally makes sense that it still lives in our day-to-day lives. When there's a small change in our life, we like freak out and like what, what are we doing? Um, because we don't know. And I think if you plan a little bit ahead, it's like, hey, that movement is just maybe a rabbit or it gives you a little bit more preparation, and how you would react to those changes makes a huge difference in general. So that's, I think that's a good thing to you know. Remember that there's a foundation behind some of these change management.
Speaker 3:There's a psychological foundation too. And that reminds me of another book who Moved my Cheese? That Brad knows.
Speaker 2:Maybe you could tell us about that book. I read that book every year, once a year.
Speaker 3:What's the premise? I mean, I think that's helpful to share the premise of that story.
Speaker 2:There's a premise yeah, there's four mice, they're in a maze with cheese or two mice, two little people. Or two little people, I call it four mice, but Okay, yes. And then it's, you know, they think the cheese is going to be there forever.
Speaker 3:But it's not. One day they wake up and it's not there.
Speaker 2:And what do you do?
Speaker 3:What do you do? So, scurry, and what's his name? There's Scurry and the two mice Hem and Haw.
Speaker 2:Hem and Haw, that's me and Chris. No, I'm just kidding, we do do that.
Speaker 3:And Scurry and what's the other mouse's name.
Speaker 2:Anyway, now you put me on the spot I'm trying to. I wrote.
Speaker 3:I wrote it. Some sniff, yes, sniff, sniff and scurry. They. They're always sniffing and scurrying and they know kind of. They have, um, their feels out for what's going on all the time, and when the cheese is gone, they just sniff and scurry and find other cheese because they're, you know, they're adaptable, and then hem and haw are just. Why is this happening to us? Well, you know what is this not fair?
Speaker 3:folded arms right and then haw gets like okay, you know what, maybe this isn't working, maybe I need to go look for other cheese, and haw begins to adapt. And anyway, it's a cool little metaphor for it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's a good book, very fast read. I think you can read it in an hour yeah depending.
Speaker 2:I think it's 90 pages with pictures, if I recall, but it has. It's a powerful point and it's what you stated. It's where you know some people can get irate. It goes back anything with chris, what you were saying. It's my safe space. So now I get all angry and upset if my safe space gets challenged, and it's always somebody else's fault or you know it's this the system isn't working, or this isn't working because I lost my cheese and I don't know enough how to go find new cheese in the maze.
Speaker 3:And I think we also need to be careful not to box people into like everyone is afraid of change or everyone hates change. I forward to change. I get bored easily, so, like when something new comes along, I'm excited. Um, so it's not, but. But it's thinking about not just people's resistance has changed, but like their responses and being conscious of how each individual is taking this news and what they think about it.
Speaker 2:Um, it's very much a personal endeavor, I think that's why there are four characters in the book, because not everyone looks at change the same way, which, again it's. That's why it's a great book it's.
Speaker 1:Is that a learned behavior, though, like you have to get yourself to do that because yeah, or is it something that's natural to many? Because now, it's natural for me, like any change is like let's figure out what's going on and what can we benefit out of it. But it took me a while to get there, you know, throughout my career, and it's like, yeah, this change is good. Um, I don't know, is it, is it a learned trait or is it a natural trait?
Speaker 3:I think it's a bit of both that it can, absolutely. I think the important part is that it can be a learned trait and that's something like on a personal level both work and in my personal life I realized, okay, I'm always changing, like we're all what's. You know, that's the, that's what's always happening and you know, when you stop changing, you're dead pretty much. And so just just having that reflection like I, I've always changed. I've changed in this area. Changes are going to happen.
Speaker 3:Things are outside my control, some things are within my control just having that like the internal, the internalization of change as something that's part of life, like really helped me and I try to communicate that like, okay, we've, we've done system implementations before. You guys remember it was nine years ago, but it was similar things, we had similar struggles and you don't even remember what the old system used to do, because now you're so embedded in this new one and now we're going to change, you know and and just kind of having that dialogue about those fears, but also that you've been through this before and you can do it and you have survived change before.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of it has to do with that mindset and enabling that mindset and the people that you're working with that is true, and and you also have to consider any of these big changes in your organization, and not just erp is one of the big changes that happens in your organization, but, um, I think it's also important that, uh, leadership has to really step up and and and create that narrative of what this change is coming. You know what isn't. It wasn't it for earlier. We talked about what isn't it for yourself, but also what is it for the organization and what does it mean in the future, once we implement this, you know how is it going to affect you. I talked about earlier that you know you may have people afraid of change and they end up, um, leaving I happen to.
Speaker 1:I happen to pull up uh, some statistics here from oak change. Report talks about 18 of your employees consider leaving their job when a big organization uh change occurs. So, and I've seen that firsthand I don't want anything to do with this, I'm out of here 18% is pretty big. So if you have a 10-people project that's involved and typically that's a representative to each of your departments, 18% is a big number. I mean two out of your 10 people at least ends up leaving and it could be detrimental.
Speaker 3:your project can get pushed out because that key player is no longer there yeah, especially, like you said, if they're smes and like you really can't do about them. But I mean, so what could we have done to prevent that from happening? Really is the question of change management.
Speaker 1:I think yeah oh yeah, I think for me it's got to be the leadership. It has to come from the very top. It has to be some involvement Um it. You know they. They talked about um some of these uh reports. I mean either Gardner or Oak change report. It talks about the fact that, um leadership, it's usually a lack of trust towards the leadership because they're not involved.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So if they're not involved, they're not invested in it. Why am I, why am I invested in this? You know it affects, should affect, the organization as a whole, as as the the sponsor, executive and leadership. But if they're not involved, how are you going to expect everyone else to be trusting of this change? So, again it it there's a lot of things that you have to consider that you're building this foundation of what does a good change management looks like yeah, and back to brad's earlier point.
Speaker 3:I mean you said like you or I forgot who made the point but both of you, I think, um, you, you are seeing more of this language in your space and I see it. I mean, chris, in your presentation at dinocacon last May, I mean you had those elements there and I was like, yeah, that's change management. And there were a lot of sessions that I attended that weren't explicitly about change management. But have those considerations, because the people are the heart of your implementation. It's not the technical solution that's important, of course that is what you're implementing, but it's not the technical solution that's important. Of course that is you know what you're implementing, but it's the people who are going to use it and and so we're seeing, like, more explicitly, sessions that summit, um, that are going to be explicitly about, explicitly about change management, because it is an important, uh and crucial piece of the implementation puzzle. So I'm happy to see that. It's exciting, it's a lot of learning opportunities, I mean for me anyway, you're muted, brad, but uh, but, uh, yeah, it's a lost.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you have a lot of good things to say so everyone is so funny this morning.
Speaker 2:That's why. That's why no one was listening to me.
Speaker 3:Were you actually talking.
Speaker 2:I could hear his mouth move.
Speaker 1:I was curious what he has to say.
Speaker 2:I forgot what I was saying, but you all had some great points is how can we effectively go through a change management process so that we don't create disruption to the business process? And what I mean by disruption is it causes fear in the talent you know, create unneeded stress because, as you go through these implementations, there's a job that needs to be done and a lot of talented organizations feel they need to do their job. They want to do their job, they want to do well at their job. So, going into a new system, how can we make it easier for them to change?
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, so I'll share some things. Can I share screen here? Yes, I can.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's right under brand. I see it, I see it. There should be a I see it, I see it thing yeah, um, I'll do that in a sec.
Speaker 3:But so typically I mean you think of a project rollout. You've got, like this, lots of documentation, project plan. There's a write-up gets emailed to people. Um, lots of documentation right about how exactly we're going to do things, from a lean change approach to kind of help with that collaboration bit. There are things called like strategic change canvases that we would do early on.
Speaker 3:I'll show you what, like one of those examples looks like and I've built them, the way I like them and what I like to consider. So it's about that visualization. So you have something that's visible and that you could remember, rather than like a word doc or whatever in a spreadsheet. And also it's collaborative and it's a living document like a whiteboard, whatever it might be that that people are contributing, contributing to together. So I'll show you one example of that and that's something like a tool that I would recommend that you do when you're not when you're deep into I mean, you can do when you're deep into the implementation but, like before you, even just when you're thinking about it right at the beginning. Do I share the whole screen? No, I don't want to do that. Okay, I want to share there. So I built these in Canva because canvas easy and I like it. Can you see this?
Speaker 2:yep, I see the canva.
Speaker 3:It's a little tiny, it's a little on the screen you have okay, I'll explain what it is, and then I share links to stuff later anybody's interested.
Speaker 3:But this is like my, my canvas that I built, but basically you've got all these like quadrants and an area. So who would be involved in this? Let's say, I'm moving from nav on prem to business central online. That's a project that's coming up and a lot of people are probably in that place or thinking about it. At least who needs to be in that initial discussion. We get together collaboratively. Either you have an actual physical board where you've got sticky notes up there and people are interacting in person, or we have an online meeting. So the areas that we would focus on in this discussion, the vision. So let's make this a little bigger, because I can't even see it.
Speaker 1:That's the first one, right.
Speaker 3:Vision right here, Can you see that?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay.
Speaker 3:So we ask questions like and this isn't like just the project sponsor, who's doing this, it's everybody that they think initially should be involved in this conversation. And then you build this document and you bring other people in as you discover who needs to be involved in this conversation. So the vision why are we changing? For example, what are we changing? How are we changing? We jot those down very simple terms so that it's something that we can refer back to. We'll talk about the reason for the change. What's wrong with our current state? What happens if we don't change? What are the consequences if we stay now, for example, what factors are driving the change? What are the resistors for the change? And then there's something called the change force field analysis, another template that we can use.
Speaker 3:What are the benefits for employees, for the organization, for the customer, for employees, for the organization, for the customer? What are the resources that we need? Do we need IT resources? What kind of people resources do we need? Is there hardware, software? That's related to tech too. We specifically look at the tech resources I'm rushing because I don't wanna spend a lot of time going through this. Stakeholders really important one. Who will be directly impacted by the change, who will be indirectly impacted, who needs to be informed Questions you can think about and, of course, communication how are we going to promote dialogue and engagement? How will we co-create the change? How will we communicate the change? How will we train for the change that training piece that you brought up earlier, brad and then what are the impacts of the change and different areas, different departments, and how do we define success and other crucial questions. So this is one exercise that we could do and that's an exercise.
Speaker 2:you have a board with different areas, yeah, and then for each of those areas, like, you have the vision, you have the reason, you have the the resources, the tech, the impact, the communication plan.
Speaker 3:Basically, it's your change plan and a collaborative space that people can go back to and together are creating.
Speaker 2:Do you put this all up at once or are those quadrants at certain intervals within an implementation or as far in the process?
Speaker 3:It depends, I guess, on what the project is and how big. This could be like a full day session with your initial stakeholders, or it could be like a couple hours, or it could be like a recurring meeting that we have every twice a week, once a week until we kind of map out all of these areas and I think this captures the big picture of the change. And in this exercise you would identify, maybe, stakeholders that need to be in this conversation, that maybe we overlooked and that we should be talking to to facilitate the change. And then you know we can use other tools. And let's go back home. Uh, are any of you familiar with bamses from the us marines, like it's their planning approach?
Speaker 2:I've heard of it okay.
Speaker 3:So I kind of like modified that because I I like military stuff and and they have, I think, really good, they're really good on leadership. But I modified that. So this is like a planning and execution canvas when we get down to the project team.
Speaker 2:I think you're correct, looking back at it when you're going through some of that you wonder wow, this is crazy, why is this this way? But when it comes to execute, having all of those processes in place and all of the planning and everything that's done, it almost becomes muscle memory in a sense, and things just move. I think that the strategy I try to bring a lot of it back to business as well, because a lot of the strategies that the military follows I think would benefit in a business, in using business fashions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, even I don't know.
Speaker 3:You can look up BAMCIS and it's really cool and I just I modified that to.
Speaker 2:How do you spell that BAMCIS?
Speaker 3:B-A-M-C-I-S.
Speaker 2:BAM.
Speaker 3:BAMCIS and this is specific to the US Marines. And I thought it was really cool and it would make sense in a project context, in a change context, so I changed it to BAG-RES.
Speaker 3:What does BAG-RES mean? Bag-res, it's such a catchy term. So begin planning. So these are the different phases of the planning process for an initiative Begin planning, arrange information gathering. So in the military world, begin planning, arrange information gathering. So in the military world that would be arranged reconnaissance, gather information, revise the plan, execute the plan and supervise and all these other components. So this is the more like scoped, the more detailed view. And this would be like for the project team, where we're again planning who's doing what and why, and it's a lot more detailed than the strategic change canvas, which is like a bird's eye view of the change.
Speaker 2:So it's beginning.
Speaker 3:Begin planning.
Speaker 2:Begin planning, so initial meetings.
Speaker 3:Is it too small?
Speaker 2:No, no, I just want to repeat for those that are listening, they understand what it is.
Speaker 3:So it's the beginning planning phase so this is my take on it. So yeah, it's not arrange information gathering?
Speaker 2:yeah, then gather your information, revise your plan based on the information that you gather right now. Execute your plan, then superv. So now that the plan is done, it doesn't mean that you're done. You should supervise and go back to make sure that the plan was done effectively or reevaluate to see if you need to make any additional changes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so there's a lot of I mean, of course, you know agile methodologies in the space that you're in, so there's a lot of like feedback and the emphasis on feedback loops and experimentation. So we're going to try this out, see how that works and then okay, if it's not working. We meet regularly. You have retros and regular meetings, so that it's not like, okay, here's our plan and we're going to do step it's not linear step one through 50 and that's our implementation. Let's break it down into chunks and see how steps one and two are going, get feedback from users, get feedback from the implementers, and then step back again and what do we need to change. And we do it again.
Speaker 3:It's textbook agile right right, exactly, I know, but it's useful because if the project which, if the development of the of or the implementation, is running in an agile fashion, and so should, are the user side of it, they should be involved early on and also be part of those experiments and those feedback loops. Um, another one that I think is helpful yeah, back to your comment.
Speaker 2:People should be involved as early as possible yes, because once you have that inclusive feeling or acceptance of it, they work with it much easier. Yeah, and if they feel like they're part of the decision, then if something doesn't work as well, they're usually a little more um they have a sense of ownership.
Speaker 1:Exactly yes, sense of ownership, chris. Thank you.
Speaker 2:having a sense of ownership, uh, with the project, a part of the project, helps drive, I think, for better success, because they feel part of something versus something that was dropped into their lap and they say, oh, this sucks, I can't do this today.
Speaker 3:And sometimes we have to do that and we have to look like this needs to happen and we're going to do it. But then at that point, how much involvement can I get or how much input can I get from the people who are going to? Be, using it.
Speaker 2:Correct. But in that case, even explaining to them why they have to do it goes back to, I think, what, chris, you were trying to get to at the beginning yes and again, not all the cases do you have to do this. Again, situation determines the best approach for anything.
Speaker 2:But generally speaking, if someone says we need you to move this pile of wood from one side of the eye to the other because the floods are coming, we need to stay dry so we can keep warm, people are more willing to help versus just saying, move the pile of wood from one side to the other. Why? Because I said so. Usually you get a different reaction.
Speaker 3:Well, your kids ask you that, like you know, go do your dish. Why? Well, because so you got clean dishes to eat tomorrow, exactly because I said, because I said so damn it, do your dishes. Um, this is another tool that I like to use change for change, force field analysis. So we've got our change, we map out our all our drivers, like who, what is pushing towards the change, and we kind of give them like a magnitude. And what are the change resistors, whether that's people, whether it's circumstances, whether it's system limitations. And it just helps to see those side by side so that we can know what we're dealing with, so to know the context that we're in.
Speaker 2:Change force field analysis. So you're listing your change drivers which is what's driving you to change, and then also the change resistors, which the change resistors would be.
Speaker 3:Things that would make the change difficult, obstacles and sometimes you just decide to remove those entirely, if necessary.
Speaker 2:And then you put them together to come up with a change plan.
Speaker 3:To initiate a change plan, or at least to know what you're dealing with. Like are there 10 resistors and then one driver, and then maybe we don't even need. Maybe we shouldn't be going through this change, Like someone thought it was a good idea, but maybe we shouldn't.
Speaker 2:You know, I look at this stuff and I chuckle. And I'm going to tell you why I chuckle. It's not because of what you're doing here, and it's something that I see this stuff.
Speaker 3:Really it feels that way.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding no, that's why I'm saying this. I see this and what goes on in my head is, of all the implementations I've seen, if someone would have done some of this stuff, things might have been a little easier. Right, I've gone through many implementations where the planning up front helps drive the success, versus others who just go with it, just get it done, because you know it's the old thing is like we don't have time to plan today, but we have time to spend four months fixing what we realized too, late and then you have to pull in.
Speaker 2:I use it on the implementation side. I talk with a lot of partners. They don't have time to do something today but in three months they're going to have time to pull everybody off of every other project to come in to help an emergency, to solve a problem that if somebody would have had a little planning up front. That's why I chuckle, because the value of this isn't really seen in my opinion in a smooth implementation because it went smoothly and it went smoothly because you planned.
Speaker 2:Do you follow what I mean? Like it's hard to measure the value of some things because you don't feel it.
Speaker 3:And it's really hard to change manage after things are sucky Like. It's much easier to do it in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, because people don't realize. Change management also involves risk assessment and mitigation. There are going to be things that will come up. It's the way you know. Do you have a plan and how you should react to those changes? Right, you know how do you mitigate for these things to come up. I do want to make two points, though that it made me chuckle. There are some times and we feel this too, we feel this too, and even the partner side where things are like this is what we're going to do, and then they've already built it.
Speaker 1:Where things are like this is what we're going to do, and then they've already built it, yeah. And then I sit back and like, okay, what's in it for me? Like, what do you want from me, right? Oh, we just want you to like it. That's why I chuckle, because a lot of that part of the project doesn't happen, right, I know, brad, I know what you're thinking there. Number two, we're talking about in the context of ERP implementation here with business central implementation. I do want to make a point that this kind of planning needs to start within your organization.
Speaker 1:Your partner will not do that for you.
Speaker 1:A lot of partners will not do that for you. Their job is to say I want a business central, I say, great, we have all the technical people, let's go ahead and implement it. We'll tell you what works and what doesn't, but they will not tell you that you need to do change management. That is your responsibility. And if you find good partners, they'll tell you hey, make sure these are the things that you do now before we do a kickoff meeting, because it sets the tone. You know, sometimes it's not my job to chase your people down, that's an excellent point and it's something I've thought about a lot.
Speaker 3:I mean, in my personal and my experience like an excellent partner, very good communication, um, did everything that you know necessary to implement the system. But I've always like, whose job is it to have managed the, the people side of that, like the the user side of it? Would it have been the partner who, like, says you need these tools, should be using tool? I think I I tend to agree that, like it should be internal to the organization and I also I mean there's a role for a change manager, like a change manager role that would maybe facilitate some of these tools. But ultimately, I think the message has to be that every single one of you, from the leaders, especially like you mentioned, chris, has to be that change manager, own that change, commit to to it, but understand why you're committing to it, like you know, be be wise about that, and it's your job to make sure that everybody else is aligned, because if you can't do that, then the partner can't do much with you it's a partner is called a partner for a reason, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:A partner is someone that you partner with to have a change right. You're implementing. In this case, we're talking about Business Central. To me, that partner doesn't own the implementation. They're going to do the part of the implementation that the business needs.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, Not every business is of a certain size that they have individuals that can do everything. But, as Chris said, talking with a good partner, they can talk about the process that you need to go through, but a business still needs to have ownership, in my opinion, of the implementation, Because once that implementation's done right, define, done again it's one of those terms the business is still using it.
Speaker 2:The partner will move on to go on another implementation, then they'll be there to support. If support is needed, yeah, but I say that often too is I don't do this day to day. I can come up with whatever you need, but it's important that it works for you and, as Chris stated, we can say this has worked for others, this has not worked for others. This is how the application works. This is something you know. What are you trying to do? These are ways that you can do it, but again, the ownership's not that. You know. Chris decide how to set up and implement business central within an organization and then we're all just going to follow chris's ways yeah so in your plan um that, you had showcased earlier your bag rest yes
Speaker 1:right your, your partner is your partner, is your execution team right? They'll guide you there. So they'll know what you're trying, what your vision is. They'll walk you through, they'll guide you. But ultimately, your partner is your execution team right. So, but other than that, the whole process. You have to own that process, because any changes to that process it's a change, and so you have to be able to relay that to the rest of your team, to the rest of your organization, of what that change looks like and what that execution looks like. But don't put it on your partner to do all of it for you. It's just never going to work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if you internalize that and you own it internally, then you're going to reduce that support, the required support from your partner after the fact, like it's a cost savings, right, because you've sometimes I mean I've seen this from experience We'll just push it back to the partner because we don't want to investigate and see what we could do. I'm running into something business-centric. I can't do this. I used to be able to do this and I can't do it. If I am committed to this change, I will myself look for solutions, I will do some research and I'll play with the system myself. I'll give it a chance before I say can't do this, can you do this for us?
Speaker 3:So having that change management in place and having your people invested means that they'll own those questions and try to find answers before going back to submitting a ticket and like, ok, well, do this for me. Just some, yeah. And so I've got here process flow. That's another important activity or action. I think that should be taken. One of the issues that we encountered is we didn't really look at our current process. We implemented but didn't ask and didn't investigate thoroughly enough into how are we currently doing things, and that would have helped because then we could have identified the gaps with the proposed change and how we would be doing things and identify those.
Speaker 2:So you come up with a process flow.
Speaker 3:This is so simplified, obviously, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So we use a process flow for each of the processes to identify the action, then the process that you follow, and then the outcome of those actions and then how you can follow that process.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you need to know where you are, to know where you're going, like understand what you're going, like understand what you're doing now and I always say why.
Speaker 2:A lot of times the question of why we're doing something, yes, is not asked when it needs to be asked and to me I think you have to break it down, why, until you get to the smallest answer. And asking why is I think some people think is aggressive or argumentative, but it's not. Sometimes asking why you're doing something can validate, you know. I ask why. It doesn't mean. I think the idea is foolish. I ask the why to say why are we doing this? And if we can validate why we're doing it to a point that makes sense, then it's a good why? Or?
Speaker 2:if someone goes oh, we're doing that for no reason, or we're doing that because Chris 20 years ago decided to start making tags red and we just do it, or just because We've always done it that way. I can't tell you how many times I hear that. I don't know why we do this. We've always done it this way.
Speaker 3:You've got to be comfortable enough in being able to ask why. And that leads into a whole other discussion, I think, in which change management has housed this question of psychological safety at work and being able to have honest it doesn't mean confrontational, but just like I have serious concerns and I want to feel like I'm able to voice them and I see that a lot too where people are just afraid, say that I think this is not a good idea because they feel like they're going to be reprimanded.
Speaker 1:So you have to have that culture there is. I want to make a point too, like when we ask why, like Brad you mentioned, like sometimes why is a tough question to ask? Because you sound like you're being annoying, because people link asking why to children. When children ask too much why, you're like, stop asking me right? So we need to stop that connection of people asking why. You have to encourage them to ask because they're going to see insights and views, perspective that I, as maybe a supervisor, I don't typically see because I'm not doing all the work they're gonna tell me.
Speaker 1:So we need to like, unlink that of, like the, the, the emotions behind someone asking why. But also when you're answering that question of why we're doing it but you got to return it with, wasn't it for you? You know why you easy answer right. You can say, ah, we're doing this for the organization, it's going to save us money, is going to be more efficient, blah, blah, blah. But the end of the day, that person still goes back to their desk and still do their stuff day to day and you got to let them know. Why are we? You know not only why we're doing it, but what does it mean for you so let's try to answer that.
Speaker 3:Let's say, for like I mean nav to bc online, like so why?
Speaker 2:what's the why?
Speaker 3:I don't know gp, so I'm not comfortable there, but why?
Speaker 2:but gp should be going to bc so we can just sure?
Speaker 3:so let's say why. I mean like can we talk about.
Speaker 2:Why would you go from gp to bc?
Speaker 3:you tell me you're the experts. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Let's switch that NAV. Nav is no longer supported.
Speaker 3:Okay, so what does that mean for me as a user?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what does it mean for you? Same thing for GP, by the way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, why would you go from NAV to Business Central?
Speaker 3:are you asking me?
Speaker 1:why would you no you?
Speaker 3:me. Why would I? Okay? So from what I've heard, I mean so my parent company is going to go through this now because they're on nav, on-prem and terrified of going to business central online. Um, because it's not going to be supported by microsoft and eventually our partners won't be able to support it, which means if we don't prep ahead of time, we're going to be scrambling at the end and it's going to be a disaster because we're going to have to implement a change quickly and we won't know what we're missing if we don't think about it long and hard.
Speaker 2:So GP could be considered a similar boat boat, even though the end of life has been given what? Five years, uh, for the product. Uh, they stopped the major support, I think a few years ago, but again it's. I asked. I asked that why is because? Why would anybody choose anything to go to a new system? Right, there's always going to be a why. Whether it's gp nav, business central on premises to business central online or using quickbooks to go to business central, you know, there's always going to be a reason of why.
Speaker 3:That's why I was just saying and why that particular choice too, for example, like why not another correct system?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, it's not just you're forced to leave nav or gp because it's no longer supported. I mean, that's an easy decision, right?
Speaker 3:it's easy why microsoft made that decision for us exactly we have to move right.
Speaker 1:Um, that's, that's the why. But some organizations were like we're just outgrowing, like quickbooks, a perfect example. It's still well supported, but, you know, to get to the next level. This is why we're moving it to business central, because it's going to allow us this and that and this and that, and then this also. This is what it means for you Maybe more responsibility, more roles. Right, you can get promoted. Those are things that people would probably want to care about, like why are we moving to something different? Well, we're growing. That means that we need someone that's going to be a subject matter expert and gives you some growth.
Speaker 3:Those are motivational components to of what it means to you know individuals within your organization yeah, so, and and then you can think about the how right, if, when, that why is like okay, that's a fairly easy one in this situation, because we don't have another choice. Okay, then how are we going to do it, and then who's involved? And map all of that out and think about it and, again, dialogue and involve as many people as you can early on.
Speaker 1:I like that. You have to have a dialogue, not a monologue. Yep Right.
Speaker 2:These are all good points, they're so. You mentioned common sense before. I will say it. One thing I learned about common sense is it isn't as common as people think, or isn't exactly what people think?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what the joke is. It's not as common, as you know. You think Right, but you know it's. It's, I think, individual's interpretation of what's common sense, because what's common sense to one may not be common sense to another and vice versa. But I think on here it's just all of this little and I don't mean to take away from the importance of it, but sometimes that whole was that an ounce of prevention can save a pound or cure.
Speaker 2:This is what I put this in is some of these little things that you should have anyway, like process flows of your process organization. You should have your processes defined so that way you can adjust if your business changes or if something happens. You have subject matter experts that move on to someplace else, whether it's due to retirement, medical or even just to change your career. You know that knowledge you need to have within the organization, and those all help with the time to come for an implementation.
Speaker 2:Some of the best implementations I've seen have been in cases where people say, oh, they have all this information, they have us all. Why do they have all that? But it made it easier because now you're not sitting there listening to people regurgitate things from their brain and regurgitate things from their brain and regurgitate maybe not the proper word, but people pull things from their brain how they remember it. And I laugh at that again too, because I've had conversations with person A on Monday, they told me one thing. Same person A on Thursday. They said no, I didn't say that this is how we do it, or I forgot, or oh yes, we do it that way on this case, but in this scenario we do it this way and I've been in those scenarios after implementation.
Speaker 3:They're like oh, no one asked me about this yep, well, you said this and I heard this, and we never confirmed that.
Speaker 1:We actually said like understood each other and I think I think that goes back to your comment earlier about that agile approach, right Like this can require a little bit of back and forth. That dialogue, that conversation you have to have is that you mentioned that continuous improvement get some feedback loop and then figure out okay, what you said yesterday, why did it change today? Let's figure that out. There's gotta be a reason why you changed it. And that also falls under continuous improvement, because you might implement or set up something based upon what the understanding at that point, and then you come and test it and say, yeah, actually that's not what we're trying to do, because we misunderstood.
Speaker 1:That's not only agile, but I look at it from a change management. It's called monitoring and continuous improvement. You're going to monitor the changes. Is it going to work? Let's improve a little bit more. So it's a lot of uh, a lot of back and forth. And one thing I do want to point out too, in a lot of this changement and I want to hear your, your take on this, nelly, is um, you read the book atomic habits best book I have not and I should.
Speaker 3:I'll write that down.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's um. It's a great book atomic habits and it's the small things that you um, the steps, the small steps you take, and also gives you little wins and it becomes um that's big in change management, yeah, you see those very addicting.
Speaker 3:You want the small win. I do want to make a point that it's not all about mitigation of risk, mitigation of that's big in change management.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see those things, it's very addicting. You want the small win. I do want to make a point that it's not all about mitigation of risk, mitigation of changes in the people, but you got to stop and celebrate the small wins yes, whatever that looks like, Because it releases what endorphins and excitement that hey, what we did and the effort we put into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and people's contributions to making those small wins happen. Yes, not just the win itself, but like thank you for doing that that made this possible.
Speaker 1:And then you get addicted and it's like I want more Right. What else can we do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's a true fact that Atomic Habits is a great book.
Speaker 1:Chase too.
Speaker 2:I can share some other ones you yes, uh, deep work, stolen focus, all great books.
Speaker 3:Okay, that, uh, we'll talk about a lot of this as well and and something actually I wanted to ask you guys about, and it's one that I recently heard about. It's called open source change management. Um, I'm sure you know about open source, like in software. What does that actually mean? Can you explain? Explain what that means to me?
Speaker 2:Open source- Open source is in software in general. It's more or less, where the software that's developed to drive something is made publicly available and the community whomever or the public can contribute to that. Usually there is something or someone who manages that to bring in some of those changes. But, it's an essence Open contribution.
Speaker 2:Well, it's an open contribution and open source might be a little bit different. But open source means that anybody can see the source code and then also make changes or propose the changes to that source code to make improvements. It's a good lot. We'll follow with the process. Some don't like it because if it's a business that drives off it if you think of like Linux and some of those other operating systems.
Speaker 2:People are like, oh, I'm fearful that someone will take it and make money off it or something. Others look at it as if you have Chris and Brad doing development of an application. We're only going to see one small area of it, but if you open up and you have many eyes on it, if there's any security risks or any feature risks or any functionality, people can make it a better product for the community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could see how that might parallel into whatever open source change management is. I need to learn more about it. Someone brought it to my attention. I just wanted to kind of know the origins of that. And then you, Brad, came up with like something mind-blowing in your blooper on LinkedIn when you said testing change management without a comma. So I thought testing change management was a thing. But you meant testing comma change management and I was like, oh, I'm intrigued, what is testing change management? But it makes sense because-.
Speaker 2:It does make sense.
Speaker 3:Yes, let us know why.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you tell us I'm on the other side now I'm being interviewed.
Speaker 2:No, I think, testing change management. As we had gone through this, we talked about all the process that you would go through to implement change within your organization. You need to test that process to make sure that the process is going to be effective for your organization, the process that you decide to follow. There's many options available, Similar to what we said. There's not a cookie cutter approach earlier to anything. In essence, there isn't a cookie cutter approach to change management. Therefore, you need to test to make sure what you're going to follow is effective for your organization.
Speaker 3:You should trademark that.
Speaker 2:It's been recorded now. Thank, you.
Speaker 3:I did go back and fix it, though, because I intended it to be separate, but I like the point. I should go back and unedit it. I edited it, I should edit it again. Yeah, I love that idea because, like you said, we need to test what works in the situation that we're in, because I can use this model in this organization, this system, and it may not make sense here. So test what works and then recalibrate, because that's what experimentation is about, and change management.
Speaker 2:We talked about a lot here, change management, particularly implementations. If you had to, you know you can write it down on your notebook if you want, and then tell us, or you can tell us here. Chris, maybe I could ask you too. Okay, what are the key points you would like someone to know about change management, or take away from the need for change management, or what change management does?
Speaker 3:okay, um, change management makes, uh, your life easier. If you implement on all sides from a partner perspective, from a leadership perspective, from a people perspective it will make your life easier because you will be able to point out where things are going wrong and fix them as soon as possible and you will make people feel valued, be valued actually not just feel valued, be valued in the changes or the initiatives that you want to implement. And I've said this from the like, this is kind of what drives me Business development is people development. There's no business without people. You develop your people and part of developing your people is this change management bit, involving them and valuing their insights, and your business will thrive.
Speaker 3:And I guess the other takeaway is change management should be the responsibility of everybody and you need to own that and make it everybody's responsibility. That doesn't sound very change managing. Make it everyone's responsibility, but encourage it, encourage that you are important and your insights are important and we want and value your opinions. That doesn't sound very change managing, make it everyone's response, but encourage it, encourage that you are important and your insights are important and we want and value your opinions so that, whatever changes we put in place.
Speaker 2:we've considered your perspectives and we're grateful for it. Great Thank you.
Speaker 1:Chris, did you have any thoughts? Just small, I think we made, I think we did a lot of talking points here and I think we can. I think we did, we had a lot of Talking points here and I think we can Go on for another episode, because I do enjoy More of the preparation aspect and change management Is part of that preparation, not only from an Organizational standpoint but individualistic as well. Whether it's supposed to be teamwork or not, at the end of the day, you know people work for themselves, um, so they have to know the benefits. But I look at a change management as it addresses like I think now you you made a point here um, it's, it's not so much as a technical, it's, it addresses the human and organizational elements of any transition and I think it's key.
Speaker 1:I mean again, there's a lot of things that makes up change management. At the end of all of that, it's just assessment, strategy and very good communication and involvement, and I think I wrote that three things in there, because that's the most common things that you know we've done implementations. It's always like people don't have time, which Brad mentioned. He had, you know, time. The leadership wasn't involved. They come maybe once every two months in meetings and communication.
Speaker 1:People misunderstood of why they did it this way. So there's a lot of that, but the end of it all take a lot of time and spend that time investment to plan and strategize and put this change management together before you even break ground. It like building a house, right, like building a house. Some, a builder, could do it in six months or less, but it takes a lot of times of planning and you know getting um the appliances, you know uh, blueprints and permits all that stuff takes months and then the house can be built in three months and ask yourself, your wife, what you want, to ask your husband what he wants, and you know, consider the kids?
Speaker 1:what kind of floor do you want?
Speaker 2:it's a good analogy that you have there about building a house. It's similar to what I was talking about, like building a deck or a project or something where it's much easier to move a wall during the planning phase than when the house is up, yeah, because you realize that somebody misunderstood or spoke something. So your analogy your analogy, chris, is perfect. If you do proper planning up front, you can put the house together quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the bathroom that's not where I want the bathroom, brad.
Speaker 2:If you don't know what you're looking for and you're constantly moving. It will be costly because you have to tear down the walls and create new plans and put them up and make sure things work properly.
Speaker 3:So sometimes it's just a conversation that needs to be had.
Speaker 2:That's it and you know it's a great, great analogy. I like it. I'm going to steal it. I like it too, so you can steal it too.
Speaker 3:I'm going to steal it.
Speaker 2:Well, nellie, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. We appreciate all that you have to share. I definitely would like to continue this conversation, yes and I'd like to hear, like viewers, inputs too, because I know there's a lot of thought around this oh yes certainly a lot um, and with that, how would someone be able to get in contact with you to learn more about change management and your approaches to change management and all of the other great things that you do? Bag rest.
Speaker 3:Yes, bag rest. It's just so catchy, you're never going to forget it.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to forget it. I'm going to be like bag rest.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I'm creative, sometimes it's like what did I do there? But anyway, I mean I consider myself a student of change management and of everything I guess of life, and so I'm still learning and I'm always trying to learn from others. So I appreciate any input. But easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn. Just search my name. I should be there and oh, I wanted to show you guys something. So I didn't realize you were celebrities in the business central world before I got to know you and I watched a few episodes. So I'm like, oh, they're actually like people know who they are. So I'm very I'm sorry, but I'm honored and wait, I didn't know who you were um anyway, and that's a compliment.
Speaker 3:I'm just just wanted to say thank you no, thank you for having me in the Dynamics Corner chair and I made a sign.
Speaker 2:Dynamals Lorna Lair.
Speaker 3:My C's look like L's, but they're meant to be corners.
Speaker 1:I was trying to be clever.
Speaker 2:I should have done like yeah, so I'm in it. Look at that. You're sitting in the Dynamics Corner chair. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:My Dynamics Lorna. Oh, that's awesome. My Dynamo's Lorner, dynamo's Lorner, whatever that is, we have to get it, Chris.
Speaker 2:That has to be the cover photo Screenshot.
Speaker 1:The cover photo.
Speaker 3:Okay, here you go Get a good one there you go Get it, chris.
Speaker 1:I got it, I got it.
Speaker 2:You got it Good, that has to be the cover. Now, what is on the back of your wall? Anchorage and Coro.
Speaker 3:Amparo, that's my tattoo.
Speaker 2:And Coro.
Speaker 3:Amparo, it's Italian for still learning. I don't know if you know the story, but Michelangelo, the famous Michelangelo the painter, Sistine Chapel and Creation of Adam.
Speaker 2:He wasn't on the podcast, so we don't know him yeah ass, so we don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're buddies. I talked to him uh, yeah, I do love, I do love um that you're a student and and that's a good mindset. I I've always had that mindset. I know brad has I. I call it, uh, white belt for life I was going to say it.
Speaker 2:You took it. That's chris. I was going to say it's still another one of chris's sayings white belt for life white belt for life.
Speaker 3:I'm a'm a literal jujitsu white belt for life, because I have to stop and I like I just stayed at like one stripe for like two years, but you know, yeah, white belt for life and you always have to be a student.
Speaker 1:I mean, you have that mindset. You do well in life.
Speaker 3:But Michelangelo. They asked him when he was like 80 something about his skills as a painter, and he said I'm still learning. It's true.
Speaker 2:I learn something every day. I really do Something about life, and when you get to the point where you don't think you need to learn something or you have nothing left to learn, that says something else about.
Speaker 1:I'm underground at that point, six feet underground, you know if I stop learning, all right, nellie, thank you very much.
Speaker 3:This was fun.
Speaker 2:I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you again. Bye, take care, bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-Ecom, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at matalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is matalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. No-transcript.
