I am, by no means, what you would call a gamer. Yes, I grew up during the height of “Pac-Man Fever,” went to the arcade frequently, played Atari at home, followed by Nintendo in the later teen years, but I pretty much left the video games behind after college. Left them behind until I fell in love with the Nintendo Wii. I now even have a
GameFly subscription.
I have rented everything from Resident Evil to The Dog Island, which I did conquer by the way. I have Silent Hill, Spore, Raving Rabbids, and all kinds of fun stuff in my rental queue. My most highly anticipated game rental by far is The Beatles: Rock Band. I love The Beatles, I like to play guitar, and I love Wii. This rental seems like my Holy Grail. It is en route to my home as I write this post.
It seems like my Holy Grail, but I have a gnawing feeling that it may not be.
I truly have no idea what this game requires. I’ve never played Guitar Hero, so I don’t even have the little fake guitar game controller. It appears that I have to go out and buy the various “instruments” (or the kit). What if I think Rock Band does not rock? Then I will have all this gear purchased to play a rented game that I don’t plan to keep.
This situation got me to thinking: how many people manage change this way? If you wanted to change the way you manage your
trade promotion deals, for example, do you go in with eyes wide open? Or, do you end up realizing you forgot to implement the Trade Spend Hero training module after the system has been deployed?
Change without foresight and planning can end up causing you a lot of grief. My tips on becoming a Change Management Hero are as follows:
- Know what you are getting into. Are there any technological barriers to success? Do you have the right staff in place to manage the change and keep the process rolling after the change is implemented? Are you ready to see what scurries out from the dark corners when the lights come on after implementing the change (ghosts of “the way we used to do things”)
- Get all the right “stuff” you need to play the game. If you are going to play, you have to truly commit. Don’t throw the new system out there without adequate training. Do create a steering committee that has top-down influence. Ensure that your users have adequate hardware, access, and help resources to go-live and stay live. Unlike video games, you won’t get an extra life for your project when you reach 10,000 points.
- Understand the impact. Just one big example from our line of work: foodservice brokers represent multiple brands, which means the potential for multiple systems to learn and maintain. How many systems do your brokers already use? Will the addition of one more thing to learn/input data into make them nuts? Luckily, for our clients, many of the brokers out there use the ContractPro® solution to manage multiple clients’ contracts. The ramp up time is shorter because they are already familiar with the system. Additionally many brokers claim our solution is one of the easiest they have ever worked with: “This is one of the easiest programs I have ever worked on!!!” is, in fact, a direct quote from a broker user.
Good luck with any change management initiatives you may have going on in your business. Now I need to go find a good deal on a plastic guitar and drum kit.
PS - as of this posting, it's Friday morning. If you are already in Friday Mode, why not take a breather and check out the "
Which Beatle Are You?" quiz at Spinner.com. Just for fun, post your results on the
ContractPro fan page found on
Facebook in the Discussion thread.