Have you ever worked out how much it costs for you to develop the business case for change in your organisation? I have, and it’s not pretty!
The thing is, I believe that the workflow used to generate the case for change today is broken;
- It takes too long,
- Inapproriate tools are used,
- Prioritisation is done too late in the process,
- Saying yes is really scary and
- There isn’t an easy way to measure the benefits after the change is made.
Today’s approach often looks something like this:
When you consider a fairly typical approach in terms of the tools used, the people involved and the information created, managed, shared and modified to get to the point a business leader can make a decision on whether to proceed or not, the cost can balloon to around $200,000 per business case. It’s easy to see why when you model the information flow associated with this process. Take a look at this LINQ sketch to see that process.
The cost comes from the amount of rework that is needed through the process to enable information to be shared and applied. When you expand the traditional process part of the sketch, you will see what that looks like. As soon as you rely on someone to convert the content created in a workshop into a format that can be shared and validated, you are adding un-necessary cost and risk into the process.
When we apply LINQ into the process, the path to action reduces in time and cost:
LINQ enables content from the change discussion to be captured in real time. Building the current state becomes simple, and everyone can agree on it as it is being captured. This prevents an individual being responsible for interpreting what was said at some point in the future – everyone can leave the room in agreement. You can find out more about the LINQ process here.
Value is the lens which enables prioritisation to be done earlier in the process; rather than ending up with several things that may be done, LINQ helps to identify what should be done given its business value. As a result, the target “to be” state can be modelled to increase confidence in the change decision. You are now in a position to have the conversation with the decision maker wiht the evidence needed to help them say yes. Current State costs referenced to expected Future State costs, with an understanding of the cost of implementation gives all of the data needed to deliver a data-driven, evidence based business case for change. You can now “get it done”.
If you’re ready to try something new and accelerate the level of understanding of how your business works so you can prioritise your change, you can try LINQ out today with our free trial.