Barkun Consulting

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS: THE AFFECTED EMPLOYEE The people who are expected to change may present the biggest challenge. For the most part, these are the employees that make up most of the people in your organization. They have very little control over what happens, but will be greatly affected. Making this change can be very challenging for them for a variety of reasons: 🗺 They may not understand why this is needed 🗺 They may not have the skills to do it 🗺 They may have a heavy workload and not have the time to dedicate to learning 🗺 They might be stressed and not have the mental energy to put towards skills development 🗺 Their supervisor might not be reminding them of errors they are making If this sounds a lot like the ADKAR model, you are correct. When it comes to changing behaviours, doing this requires more psychological energy. It involves a different pathway in the brain than simply doing things the same way, and that takes up more energy. If we want our people to succeed, we need to provide them with the resources they need to make this happen. Employees generally want to be part of success, but they need help doing it. If you are embarking on a change journey, make sure to help your employees along by putting these principles into action. If you are struggling to make it happen, reach out and I can help.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS: PEOPLE MANAGER ROLE If you manage people, and have struggled to get them to learn new habits, read this post! When it comes to successfully delivering change, everyone's direct supervisor has a lot of power and influence. At the same time, believe or not, supervisors are the ones that staff members want to hear from when it comes to change. Prosci calls this a 'Preferred sender.' The message comes from the right person, it will be more likely to be heard. This sender has a very challenging and important job. They have to both learn the new way to do things, and get others to do it. This is why I like to call this group the 'meat in the sandwich' People managers must simultaneously learn the new tools and behaviours and teach and reinforce them. They are kind of squished between two pieces of bread. This is an incredibly difficult role to fill; probably the most difficult of all. People managers need constant support from sponsors, change practitioners and other technical experts to carry this out, all while still delivering all of their usual output. Constant reinforcement will go a long way to delivering successful outcomes. If you are implementing something new, be sure to pay special attention to this group as they will make or break the result. #changemanagement #proptech #innovation

Did you know that you can turn a panoramic photo into a video using ChatGPT? I just learned this today. A lot has been made about this trendy tool, but it can be hard to conceive of how to actually use it, and what is possible. I was unsure of this as well, so I decided to see if I could find a short, free online course. I found the one below. It is very short, about 30 minutes and helps give you some ideas about how you can use it. It also gives some insight into how things can go wrong and what to look for and think about so you can spot these issues. Spoiler Alert: It makes an error very commonly made by humans. The biggest theme is experiment, experiment & experiment some more. Happy prompting!!! https://lnkd.in/gz4CRTzY

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS: THE CHANGE PRACTITIONER You might think it is odd that someone has the job of managing change, but if you have ever been through it, you know how tricky and challenging it can be to deliver. Humans are fickle beings and getting them to change their ways is often difficult. Hence, we task a person with helping manage the emotions and challenges of people as they go through this sometimes disruptive process. The role of this person is to identify and facilitate the path to success and #coach others on how to help make it happen. They might evaluate various people's digital literacy to determine how capable they are of learning a new system. They might measure the amount of change a particular group is going to go through so that we do not overload them with change. They might also lend an ear to some people who are struggling to adapt and recommend personalized resources to help them get over the hump. Whatever the activity of the day happens to be, all of this is to optimize the probability that we can get to the finish line in an orderly and effective manner. The change practitioner may have had some formal training and may even be certified in this function by Prosci. If you are going through change and seeing it work well, you might ask yourself if there is someone filling this role. Chances are, there is and they have helped craft a deliberate plan you help you succeed. Erin Khan Shane Worman Corey Makus Janice Besner

This week Justin Trudeau announced a series of initiatives to help build homes faster. One key concept here was to take advantage of #innovation to drive this forward. #Construction has sorely lacked in this domain for a long time, and we see that construction takes longer and gets more expensive. This industry has failed to innovate in a similar fashion to manufacturing or other industries. I really believe it the private sector's job to innovate on its own, but clearly this has not worked, and I truly hope these new initiatives by government will act as a catalyst for transformation. Some of the key elements include: 🏘 Launching a new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund. Tanner Uzzell maybe there will be something similar here to the CDAP Team - Équipe PCAN program to help companies plan and implement the innovations that come out of the program. 🏘Delivering $50 million to modernize and expedite home building through the regional development agencies. I am honestly not quite sure what to make of this. Maybe Adam Cseke will have a better idea of its potential effect. 🏘Launching a modernized Housing Design Catalogue. I am not quite sure how effective this will be, but apparently it was done last century and a low of homes got built quickly, so maybe it will work again. Here in Kelowna, we see a lot of those. Ian Grannary might be able to provide some thoughts on this. 🏘Top-up the Apartment Construction Loan Program with $15 billion. Construction financing is always a significant factor in getting projects built, so I can definitely see this helping spur more projects, but Konstantin Seroshtan can probably provide some more wisdom on this point. Do you believe this will make a dent in this key challenge facing Canada?

CHANGE MANAGEMENT ROLE: THE SPONSOR The anchor of change, the driver of transformation, the master of new beginnings. The sponsor is the person who initiates the projects and commits resources to make them happen. But there is so much more. The sponsor role gives a change initiative credibility. The sponsor enables change to happen by giving others the mandate to make it happen. They set objectives and hold others accountable. They must also remain continuously engaged to assure credibility is sustained, and others engage in the process. A successful and effective sponsor is essential for successful outcomes. A weak or ineffective sponsor will damage the change initiative, and poor sponsor engagement is frequently seen to be a significant cause of project failure. Have you ever attempted to implement change and struggled to build support.? Consider the level of support you received from leadership and whether this was sustained? Erin Khan Prosci Peter B. Hillary Issenman #changemanagement #digitaltransformation #innovation

CHANGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS: ROLES If someone does not understand what their role is in a change initiative, they are probably going to perform poorly. Within Prosci's change management body of knowledge we see people fill a variety of roles. There are 6 main role categories that describe someone's responsibilities. If we are working with a smaller group, one person may fit into two or more of these roles. The roles are are follows: 🌐 Sponsor 🌐 People manager 🌐 Affected employee 🌐 Change practitioner 🌐 Project manager 🌐 Extend role Each role comes with specific expectations and behaviours that must be followed to give and maintain credibility to the change initiative. If someone fulfills these well, the change initiative will move smoothly. If someone does not, the change initiative will staff, lose credence and possibly die. If you are seeing difficulty in your change initiative, or about to begin one, ask yourself if you have made these responsibility clear and trained each group in how to fulfill them. If you have not, I implore you to do this, especially if you will be conducting multiple change initiatives at the same time, or attempting to implement change that will be difficult. If you are not sure how to do this, I am here to help you figure it out. #changemanagement #construction #proptech #innovation Tanner Uzzell Cristina Ventura Erin Khan Cal Jackson

If you are scaling your business quickly, you will probably find that managing payments is time consuming. When an invoice comes in, you cannot just blindly pay it. You need to do a variety of actions to validate it: 💲 Make sure the information is accurate 💲 Verify that the work was done to satisfaction, or the goods received 💲 Review the data entry to make sure it complies with all of your internal accounting rules 💲 Produce the payment record 💲 Sign the check (yes, people still do this) 💲 Stuff envelopes and send them 💲 Scan related information for permanent filing This whole process is time consuming and slow If you are business leader, and have a high volume of transactions, approving all of them will kill your day. When I talk to people about how to overcome this, I always recommend they do less. The key item is to create approval thresholds, and let other employees manage certain elements. For payments, I typically suggest starting with low thresholds so we can get comfortable with low stakes and limited risk. I know this can be scary, so I will ask you if you are comfortable with a mid level employee approving payments for $250? $500? If not, are you satisfied spending your time on this? It might cost you as much to approve the payment as the payment amount. If you are thinking about doing this, and want to talk about how to roll it out well, book a time in my calendar and we can chat. #contech #proptech #efficiency #payments Quickly Yardi RBC PayEdge

Product Feature: Robotic layout printing on construction surfaces If you have ever wondered how a construction worker knows precisely where to drill a hole, or install the edge of a piece of drywall, or something else, you are not alone. Construction site planning sometimes involves drawing lines on surfaces to indicate this. Installers also refer to plans, but it can still be difficult to know the precise location. Drawing everything on the surface would be very costly and time consuming, so the potential to automate this sounds very exciting. This is where Dusty Robotics comes in. They have a robot that will take your plans and draw lines and other markings directly on the surface to help guide installers. Thanks to Hasan Abbasi, MS for showing this to me, and looking forward to helping a construction company put it into place one day. https://lnkd.in/g55Yij4Z

Product Feature: Robotic layout printing on construction surfaces If you have ever wondered how a construction worker knows precisely where to drill a hole, or install the edge of a piece of drywall, or something else, you are not alone. Construction site planning sometimes involves drawing lines on surfaces to indicate this. Installers also refer to plans, but it can still be difficult to know the precise location. Drawing everything on the surface would be very costly and time consuming, so the potential to automate this sounds very exciting. This is where Dusty Robotics comes in. They have a robot that will take your plans and draw lines and other markings directly on the surface to help guide installers. Thanks to Hasan Abbasi, MS for showing this to me, and looking forward to helping a construction company put it into place one day.