Embracing Inevitability

At work, we’re in the midst of a new business system implementation.  It’s going pretty well.  It’s interesting to observe how people function under the pressure of trying to bring the project in on time.

If any of you have gone through this experience, you know that the road to system implementation is usually bumpy.  After all, you have to clean up all your old data (which is usually in pretty poor shape), you need to load new data tables, usually assembling the information from many different (and usually conflicting) data sources.

You need to learn the picadillos of the new system – “I don’t know why but to have to click here three times before the function will work”.

No matter the software, the quality of your consultants or your staff, It’s never completely smooth..  And there’s very little you can do about it.  One approach is to whine and complain about having to run that conversion routine for the fourth time or reload that support table for the third time.  I haven’t found this approach either rewarding or satisfying.

In my experience, embracing inevitability (stuff WILL go wrong) is a much better approach.  It puts you in the mindset that if you only have to configure something once, you’ve won.  If you have to do a task a second or third time, you’ve “broken even”.

Putting a new system in place is an iterative process.  Configure the system, Break the system, Fix the system..until everything is working exactly the way you want.  Expecting things to go right in one pass is not only optimistic, it’s unrealistic.

Embracing inevitability helps you enjoy the journey and not worry so much about the bumps in the road.