The People Barrier

By Linda King, G2G3

A recent survey from the Industry Analyst group Forrester looked at barriers to change when implementing ITIL. European organizations who had undergone an ITIL implementation were asked what barriers or negative elements, if any, did they encounter during an ITIL implementation/upgrade process. The results were surprising - it was not the more ‘expected’ barriers to change that were most prevalent. Among these organizations who were implementing ITIL, internal resistance to change occurred in more than half - and in nearly a third, the business and internal customers were simply not prepared to be involved in the new process. These people and cultural elements overwhelmed all other barriers to change including financial and resource by at least a factor of 6, showing that the most significant barrier to successful cultural change is undoubtedly people. 

People are complex beings - it’s not enough to just tell them what to do, and traditional training just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. People need to really understand the ‘whys’ and ‘what fors’ - or even better, ‘experience’ the change first hand in order to really embrace the positive benefits it can bring. Otherwise, change will be resisted, rejected and left out in the cold.

What Do Your People Do All Day?

by Mark Sutherland

I try as hard as I can to spend time reading with my children, both of whom are under five, and every night, particularly with my oldest who is four and a half, I dread the “read me a Richard Scarry book Daddy”. For those of you not familiar with Richard Scarry, he was an American author and illustrator who published over 300 books, and according to Wikipedia sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. His books are full of 'anthropomorphic' animals', basically animals that have been given human characteristics and generally inhabit 'Busytown'. Within the pages of these books children are introduced to many complex processes such as how roads are built, how fossil fuels are converted into electricity and many, many more. My children are seriously transfixed by them. The dread that I mentioned is simply because I have had to read them on such a frequent and constant basis for almost five years, I’m Scarried out! 

Within these books many complex processes are clearly and easily depicted in one or more pages in a way that people, not just children, can clearly understand and relate too. They see the end-to-end process in a way that they can immediately understand and in a big picture kind of way. 

In our work, and particularly in the enterprise IT environment, we seldom see clarity and understanding communicated in a way that people can easily and quickly understand nor indeed relate too. People don’t get the story, they are like a cog without understanding what the machine is doing. They go round and round all day not really knowing why they do it, what the business does and their part in the value chain. Mountains of flowcharts and visio documents abound, which are often difficult to understand and navigate and they certainly don’t communicate in an easily accessible way.

Start thinking like Scarry and maybe your people will start to understand why they do what they do and how they make a difference to your business. Infographics therefore have a very real value to bring to todays business especially the enterprise IT environment. 

We are constantly thinking of new and varied ways to tell the story and paint the picture and in January we are heading out to San Francisco to attend the Viz Think Conference 08 where some of the best and brightest will be hopefully giving us more bright ideas. 

What do your people do all day?

Realism makes for a better simulation experience

by Linda King

We believe that games and simulations are a fantastic way to accelerate learning and drive business results - but, before you rush off and roll out a program of Doom or Monopoly across the business - think carefully about what games work, as not all business games and simulations are created equally. The best, the strongest simulations are based around authentic and realistic scenarios to which people can completely relate to, can understand and can totally immerse themselves in.  Although tempting to consider games with high hypothetical and out-of-reach content such as space or war games more interesting, this can be a mistake - if simulation participants cannot see how the learning scenario impacts them personally, then they are much more likely to forget what they have learnt. For maximum impact and learning retention, games and simulations must be contextual and relevant.