Introducing the stakeholders,

Following the meeting with Valerie

Nancy Bobbi returns to her desk and takes a moment to relax.
Bobbi A lot has happened over the last two weeks…. That preliminary meeting with Valerie , two weeks ago, has set the tone for many changes ahead.

The urgency in Valerie’s voice was echoed by Farouk.  He expressed great concern regarding the financial impact of the lagging shipments. Interestingly, he also expressed concern over the mental health and wellness of Cara, Chang, and the rest of the staff that have to respond to customers complaining about their late deliveries as well as Sullivan and the Supply Management Team.

I’m glad I took the time to visit with William, Sullivan, and Rachel in the warehouse.

 Analyze Current State

Bobbi reflects on her visit to the warehouse

 Nancy Following the initial meeting with Valerie, Bobbi went to the warehouse. She wanted to see what was it was really like.

She opened the door.  Normally the shelves were stacked with books.  One couldn’t see from one shelf to the next because they were so full,  but now she could see  through many rows.  The shelves were empty.  And where there were books, there are only a few in a stack.  She had never seen it this empty.
William Bobbi, it’s nice to see you again, so soon.
Bobbi After our recent meeting with Valerie, where you explained your challenges, I wanted to come here a take a look at things for myself.  No wonder you’re having troubles fulfilling orders.
William Yeah, it’s rough.  That just-in-time management theory that we started about 6 months ago has been an absolute failure.  We haven’t left enough slack in the system.  If a supplier is a day late with a shipment,  I could be a dozen books short for the day. Analyze Current State
Bobbi That’s interesting.  Say, if you were imaging a perfect world, how would the supply chain work?

How many books would sit on a shelf at one time?  How often would we receive shipments from suppliers?  How many books would come in a shipment… anything… sky is the limit… paint a picture of how you wish things would be.

 Define Future State
Nancy William and Bobbi talk for some time.  Bobbi notices Sullivan approaching.
Bobbi Hello Sullivan.  I haven’t seen you in a while.
Sullivan Yeah, I’ve been busy.  Those darn suppliers are not  keeping up with the terms of their contracts.    I spend all day, on the phone, talking with them.  Confirming what books they are going to bring, when they are going to deliver them, and how many will be in a shipment.  And  even when I confirm the order the day before, they still don’t bring what they committed to bring or when they committed to bring it.  Some hours my receiving bay is standing idle.  Other hours, there are 3 trucks idling, waiting for a bay to drop their shipment.

We send them our order via the B2B (business to business) API (Application Programing Interface) that was set up a few years ago, but they never send an acknowledgement, so I don’t know if they received the order or if it is lost in the ether of the internet.  My team and I are spending time chasing missing shipments rather than working on identifying inventory for next season.

I’m at my wits end.

 Analyze Current State
Nancy Bobbi knows that paraphrasing is a great way to confirm understanding and show support.
Bobbi It sounds like there are couple of different issues at play here 1) lack of an interface between inventory management, 2) poor B2B interface, and 3) our partners are not fulfilling the terms of their contract and 4) not enough slack in the just-in-time delivery timing…. which is putting everyone on edge.  Have I understood you correctly? Analyze Current State
Sullivan That’s right.
Nancy Bobbi asks more open ended questions to gather insight and perspective, regarding the current state and the future state.
Bobbi If these issues were resolved would that make things better?  Is there anything else that you need to make your job easier? Define Current State
Sullivan Resolving the B2B communication challenges, and working with suppliers that actually meet their commitments would certainly go a long way to making my life easier,  easing the tensions within the customer service team, and making the company more profitable. Define Future State
Nancy William, Sullivan, and Bobbi continue talking.
Nancy As she prepares to leave the warehouse, she meets Rachel.
Bobbi Hey Rachel.  How have you been?
Rachel Not good.  The mood on the floor is tense.  Everyone is working reduced hours. Analyze Current State
Bobbi I’m sorry to hear that; but I’m working on a project that will, hopefully, make things better in a few months.  Shall we go for coffee?
Rachel Love to.
Nancy Bobbi realizes that it is important to remember the people she is working with and keep her relationships with her colleagues warm.

She think about the tools, people, and processes changes that are coming.  Changes related to one will affect the others… and in this project all three are important.

Bobbi does some creative thinking

Nancy Following her visit to the warehouse,  Bobbi visits with Chang and Cara from Customer Service.  They were feeling the pressure too.

Bobbi realizes that she needs to come up with some possible solutions.
Bobbi Based upon the  preliminary elicitation sessions that I have had with Valerie, and Farouk, the IT Team, the warehouse team, the supply management team and the customer service team, I am beginning to formulate some possible options.   Everyone has shared their ideas.  Some are similar. Some are novel.  I’m sure that there a few reasonable plans among them.

I’ll prepare some rough notes that identify each option, and add a simple set of pros and cons for each option.  It won’t be a detailed analysis, but just enough to gather some additional input from the stakeholders and do some preliminary risk analysis.

 Assess Risks
Nancy Bobbi presents her ideas to William, Sullivan, Farouk, the team from IT, the team from Customer Service, and a few other stakeholders.

She is surprised by the amount of consensus within the group.
Bobbi I’m sure glad I spoke with all the stakeholders about the possible options.  Although there was general alignment regarding the best option, there were a wide range of opinions and thoughts on the nature of the risks associated with the approach. Assess Risks
Bobbi I’m going to run this assessment by Patricia.  There is probably enough information here to begin developing a high level organizational change strategy and project plan.  The conversation will also help me to identify if there is anything else we need to consider.

Developing a change strategy

Bobbi Patricia, thanks for meeting with me.  I’ve met with the stakeholders we identified.  I’ve collected some preliminary requirements and we’ve done some preliminary brainstorming on possible solutions.
Bobbi There was general consensus regarding what the organization needs to do, but there were various thoughts regarding the risks, the manner in which to mitigate those risks, and the  best way to accomplish the rollout and integration of a new system.

I suspect that the warehouse team and the supply management team  will be those most directly affected by the change, but there are several groups that will experience minor changes in process.

 Define Change Strategy
Patricia You are proposing a rather significant change.  How can we make the change easier for the organization to complete the transition?
Bobbi Breaking the change into small, digestible chunks and providing plenty of communication is the most effective may to reduce pressure on the individuals…

As for the system change,  I suggest doing a gradual cut over, some suppliers on week 1, more suppliers on week 2 , more suppliers on week 3… and so on until all suppliers have been converted.  This will give us a series of intermediate milestones.

And we’ll need to make sure that the communication team and the legal team are in sync with the IT changes as well as ensure that our internal teams and the suppliers get the right information at the right time.

 Define Change Strategy
Patricia That is the start of a great plan.
Nancy Bobbi and Patricia keep working and  refine a few more details regarding the plan.