A Happy Go-Live is a Bad Go-Live
Not always. But usually.
My favourite go-live ever involved tears, swearing, and a whiteboard with people’s frustrations scrawled on it in real time. There was honestly one complaint on the whiteboard about me needing to lower my volume!
It was a hard day – and a hard week, but it led to the best adoption outcome I’ve seen in a CRM implementation.
The thought is that if everything’s chill and everyone’s happy – success.
But I reckon, more often than not, a go-live where there’s no issues, is an implementation that 6 months from now will look like a failure.
Because of how people transition through change.
Years ago, William Bridges came up with a framework that still rings true when it comes to people and change.
The idea is that people transition through change in three basic phases.
Endings – this is where the old way of working needs to come to an end properly. It's usually where there’s a bit of grief about losing that old spreadsheet or the way the old system used to remind you of the 90s in a nostalgic way.
The Neutral Zone – this is where everything is confusing and there aren’t any new habits established. The rules feel up for grabs, and nothing feels secure. This is where people doubt the project, doubt the platform, doubt themselves.
New Beginnings – this is where the value starts to come. New ways of working get established and bedded down. Heroes emerge, high fives are earned, cheers all round.
The problem with a project lifecycle is that usually, the new platform has finished UAT (hopefully a good one) a few weeks before go-live (if you’re lucky), and the first time people have their hands on the new system is a few days before cutover and go-live.
That means that even if your change and communications plan is going really well, by the time you hit go-live most people are still at the end of phase 1 – Endings. If they are really on board, they might be reaching the Neutral Zone. That’s the most disorientating time of all when you are working through a transition.
So Go-Live won’t be happy. It can’t be, if you want people to transition.
They have to find it frustrating, and confusing, and there’ll be blow ups and tickets and all kinds of human error. It should be that way – if you want people to move towards the goal of new beginnings.
Don’t avoid it. Lean in. Get a big whiteboard in the workspace where people can walk up and write how frustrated they are. Get people to be honest about the things they’re finding hard. Walk the floor and beware people telling you what they think you want to hear.
And remind people...
Remind them why we’re going through this.
Keep painting the picture of the future and how things will be.
Keep communicating the plan and what’s coming next.
And share with each person their part in building the new beginning.
That’s a good go-live.
Frustrated, honest, and full of good communication.
If you're interested...
William Bridges original book was around personal change and transition. His organisation stuff is gold, but I recommend this book to anyone who is facing life change.
Completely unrelated – or is it? Agentforce hasn’t been adopted the way Salesforce thought it would. That’s weird.
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