Being in business of making the TIME, sounds like a fiction, but most of our SAP consultants are under pressure to produce exactly that: TIME.
Often we see that consultants experience client's or employer's pain points more painfully than that should be the case.
We turn back to our ASAP methodology and practice and our Business Transformation Management with add-on BTM2 and all other practical and current methods "in use", and we continue to find that there shouldn’t be any room for pain points to continue to work its way out and to act as the “live organisms” through every organization that is trying to grow and adopt the change.
We know that if we follow our own best practice and fine ASAP methodology proven to deliver over and over again to its very fine point, that we will be successful when helping our customers and our internal organizations and projects.
However, we cannot take for granted that our customers would adopt the methods and practices that we have to offer on our every engagement, especially if requirements are short in nature and demanding that “fast fix”. In such cases we simply observe and know from our own experience that it is neither always practical nor possible to use such best practices and methods. In such cases we are left on our own, and most of the time, the “fix must be fast” because our client's don't have the TIME for those issues.
Even though we’ve shifted our requirement from Expert SAP deliverable to the TIME and “fast fix” delivery that could mean entirely new creation, we understand that none of us are skilled to deliver the TIME and the MAGIC and that every new creation takes exactly some of those ingredients: time and creativity while our customers need to remain happy and still fascinated with our products and services and our managers need to bill more for the same.
How do we prepare ourselves neither to be ready for using the OCM that is not even planned nor to be considered, and there is no time to even talk about it? How do we take the pain points but don't feel that residual and “viral” effect of the pain when we are directly involved with completely "shifted" and misspresented requirements?
One way or another we will experience the symptoms of such pain by obtaining a not so good review from our customers as they are in the critical need for more TIME and MAGIC creation to takes them out of their current "pain", but they were not considering the OCM as a pre-requisite and readiness for change, and enablement for change to take the place.
Therefore while we are attempting to please our customers and stay billable to build our internal practice, in many cases we are just taking and transfering that pain upon ourselves and becoming the owners of burden and debt that is not ours but we would start reporting and defending the reasons that are associated to us based on client’s or even our own manager’s next steps and view points.
Furthermore, the client’s “not so good” feedback completely inadequate to their needs and our recommendations would go even more “viral” with further assistance of (in some cases) our own SAP teams and managers that had shift in their views and are possibly also adopting that new phenomena of change for no-change, as they also begin to experience the “no-time” motion to completely prepare and execute our own organizational readiness for our internal OCM to take the place. Therefore, the burden is again moved over to the same consultant to holds-on to the pain from our internal impairment as well as our client’s continuous spins.
How far we can push and transfer this “viral pain” or "not having the time" for executing the proper change and steps that need to go with it? Do we continue to affect others with it and to label their achievements as failure while they are already in process of executing the so much needed change?
Why even do the change if we don’t have time for it?
Instead of making a full circle of processes that will fail, and looking for the candidates that would continue to hold "empty bags", how about don't even start the rotation and spins of processes until we are ready?
Continuously, we are pressed with timeline and critical deadlines therefore we continue to pass along the "hot potato" around as realizing that we need more time or tools and in some cases more magic to truly address these types of failed change and lack of OCM in place accross the board.
What if consultants can deliver the TIME? What if the entire delivery of our expertise is the TIME? If that is the most valuable key ingredient and pre-requisite for “fast fix” or the process change, then why don’t we address this step within our methodology as the most essential component so that no project should begin until SAP consultants can deliver the TIME as pre-requisite to the “fast fix” or any fast process change.
Who would like to join me in creating the TIME prototype?
What would be our next step if let's say we've successfully created the TIME?
Would the TRUTH be our next pre-requisite to address with our next step of "creation" model?
Thank you.
Alexandra Weber
IBC Senior Delivery Consultant
SAP Certified Application BPX, integrating SAP technical and functional implementations since 1994
