Case Study

Topic time estimate: 1 Minute

In today’s rapidly evolving global marketplace, the capacity of an organisation to adapt and evolve in the face of challenges is crucial. The following case study explores the journey of a multinational organization, highlighting the essential roles played by a growth mindset and a commitment to learning in successfully managing change. Inspired by insights from Tim Ferriss’s “Tribe of Mentors,” we learn that each setback provides three key opportunities: identifying what we can control, recognising areas for improvement, and encouraging the open exchange of ideas.

A multinational organisation went through a decade of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation projects across all its global locations. At the start, the organisation decided to implement the new system one location at a time to allow time for learning from failures.

After a completed implementation at location A, the organisation realised that the utilisation rate started to drop 3 months after the project consultants had rolled off the project. An investigation showed that whilst the changes appeared successful at go-live, people reverted to old habits.

The strategic sponsors at the executive level learned from this million-dollar failure and implemented changes for the next iteration.

The following project improvements were put in place for location B:

• A higher percentage of involvement of people from the business units was initiated via secondments.
• A skeleton team of critical project consultants was engaged for 6 months post-go-live.
• Training and documentation were checked for sustainability from the get-go and the time post-go-live was invested in creating self-paced learning resources for all process and system changes.
• Business process coaches were engaged to continue sustainable training and coaching where needed.

The utilisation at location B achieved an improved outcome over location A and some of the materials were then made available to A. Nonetheless, the organisation discovered further room for improvement after the second rollout. We will close this case study with a famous quote from Winston Churchill and the knowledge that every further rollout profitted from the organisation’s Growth Mindset and Learning Culture.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

• Winston Churchill