Research by McKinsey
Play the video to get some background information on the research by McKinsey.
References
- McKinsey, 2020, How do we manage the change journey?
- McKinsey, 2019, Getting personal about change
Premortem Analysis with the Project Team
In his 2004 book, The Power of Intuition, Gary Klein devised a "premortem analysis" procedure to help teams develop the ability to quickly adapt to changing situations as exceptions over the course of a project. The idea came from a study conducted at the University of Colorado that found prospective hindsight, where you imagine an event has already occurred, can increase a person's ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by up to 30 percent.
A premortem comes at the beginning of a project, so the team can anticipate potential issues that could happen and develop resolutions in advance. If and when any of those problems occur during the project, the team can quickly and easily implement the resolution previously identified.
This is how Gary Klein describes the procedure:
"Start by assuming [your] undertaking has failed spectacularly. Then, over the next few minutes, write down every reason you can think of for the failure […]. Then, revisit your plans in light of the pitfalls you've uncovered, and generate ideas as to how you can minimize their likelihood of occurring or avoid them altogether. Klein also recommends that you periodically review your premortem list as you make progress."

Resources to Support Organizational Change Management
To support a successful SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementation, SAP provides organizational change management guidance and templates in the Solution Adoption workstream of the SAP Activate Methodology to do the following:
- Conduct a Cloud Mindset Assessment & determine follow-up actions
- To assess a company's present situation and readiness for a cloud solution
- Manage Organizational Change Management (OCM) tasks end-to-end
- To support partner consultants and customers complete tasks such as setting up an OCM team, analyzing and planning activities, conducting continuous change management, and others that need to be completed at key implementation phases throughout the project (and after).
- Identify & engage stakeholders
- To identify key individuals at different levels of the organization critical to the success of the project
- Conduct Change Impact Analyses and determine follow-up actions
- To assess existing mindsets based on perceived impact of the new solution and potential issues
- Conduct Learning Needs Analysis and design an enablement strategy
- To identify training requirements to ensure all employees are fully prepared and enabled for the new solution
