Life comes before health

When organizations run a project to implement technology they expect a healthier organization as a result.  However, many organizations experience worse performance with the new technology than they had with the old.  With Organization Ontologics (O2) it is apparent that life comes before health in any organization.  The life of an organization can be measured by the number of people, their relationships, and their commitments to the health of the organization.  The health of an organization can be measured by the level of O2 Intentionality, which will be introduced in a future blog post.  A project to implement a new technology takes the organization on a journey of change from the current configuration enabled by the legacy technology to the future configuration enabled by the new technology.  For the organization to be healthier after a project is run, the people must be willing and capable of performing the assigned work using the new technology according with the defined requirements.  The future organization requires both life and health.

 

To give life to the future organization the project must involve  the people who will be working in it in the development of the requirements, the configuration, and the technology.  The project must respect  that the people of the organization have relationships that are intertwined in its current configuration and workings of the legacy technology.  The project must prepare the people and their relationships to move their allegiance from the current organization to the future organization.  The current configuration of the organization and its legacy technology is familiar to the people.  By nature people will do what they know and follow the path of least resistance.   For the organization to be healthier after the project than before, the people must know and understand the future configuration and the new technology, which must provide an easier path to performing assigned work for better results than the current configuration.  The people of the organization must be shown respect and asked if they would be willing to embrace the requirements of the future configuration and the new technology.  They must be shown that they will be educated and trained so they will capable of knowing and understanding the future configuration with its new technology.  They will need to be informed of the reasons for replacing the current configuration with the future technology.   Finally, the people of the organization must be asked to commit to the future configuration and its new technology.

  

Life without health has no place to live.  Health without life is just a pile of assets.  Life and health, both are required.