Thursday May 05, 2005

S10, JDS, Email and washing dishes

I've been answering JDS and Solaris 10 feedback alias questions all day and I am reminded of washing dishes. I read Shane Nickerson's weblog. I really enjoy his writing. In a three part story called The Corner of the Kitchen he talks about a job washing dishes for an Italian restaurant in L.A. He says " I did find a certain masochistic pleasure in conquering the dish pile each night. There is something very liberating about a job which has a definitive, simple goal. In this case, the goal each night was to wash all the dishes." To me answering a whole pile of emails with questions about JDS, Solaris 10 or our strategy is similar to attacking a pile of dishes. It gives me a certain masochistic pleasure. Of course in my case I not only clean out my inbox but I also gather valuable information that we can use to improve the product and the roll out. And by doing so I am building support for our efforts.

What we are doing by seeking feedback is really the engaging support and resistance step of Sun's Change Acceptance Process (Sun CAP). I honestly believe that the personal responses to the 400+ emails we have received since November were a significant part of the success of the JDS Preview roll out.

Companies and organizations are understandably very hesitant to put a personal face on their support. The fear of being buried or attacked is very real. We have been debating recently where to send users with feedback about the S10 roll out. We started with an alias but the problem is that an alias doesn't allow us to easily track problems and their resolution. Now we have decided to send users to our internal help desk. That will guarantee problem tracking but we know users are very skeptical about the abilities of the help desk to resolve their problems and many users would rather solve problems themselves than submit a ticket. Ideally users would get thanks and feedback about how useful it is to us for them to submit a ticket and they would get their problem resolved and we would identify all the issues that make the transition less than flawless. Those personal and authentic conversations with our users will augment the team to make the roll out a success. But creating the dialogue is not an easy task.

I've been thinking about how this applies to external support. Imagine the loyalty and community that would be created if when you sought support you had a conversation with a real support person, you got your problem resolved, you believed that your feedback was appreciated, and you knew that your feedback ultimately resulted in product improvements. The challenge of course is volume and cost but I do believe that this kind of support is possible.

I believe more and more that authentic, real conversations between individuals and the relationships and community that result are an extraordinary tool that can make a big difference in the success of a company, a product or a change.

Wednesday March 23, 2005

Customer visit

I was part of a customer visit today at our executive briefing center. The customer is getting ready to convert to StarOffice. We talked about change acceptance and what we have learned about successful change acceptance for groups moving to StarOffice. The person who was presenting talked about how users feel they own their desktop computers, when of course the computers are corporate assets. At Sun I don't think people feel ownership of the SunRay they use but they certainly feel ownership of the their desktop environment. That is why upgrading to JDS is so traumatic for some people. By the way we are now up to 75% of our Sun Ray users running JDS preview.

But to get back to the customer visit, I used to do a lot of visits and I have always enjoyed them. It is so much fun to work with customers and hear real feedback.

Wednesday December 15, 2004

Sun CAP Virtual Workshop

Tomorrow (December 16) I am doing a couple of internal conference calls to talk about our experiences using the Sun Change Acceptance methodology for JDS so far. I'm looking forward to talking about some of the lessons learned that I talked about in this blog back in October .

Since then I've added three more lessons learned to the list. They include:
Resistance is the wrong word to use. It is not so much engaging resistance as it is finding out why people believe they can't make the change.
Change is a long term process. We have only just begun.
Change acceptance work is internal Public relations in the best sense.
I might talk about these more in future blogs.

If you are a Sun employee reading this and would like to join the conference call just look at my calendar in Namefinder for the call in number.

Monday November 29, 2004

Change Acceptance and PR

Browsing through blogs I came across a very interesting blog by Richard Edelman who is president of the Edelman Public Relations Firm. I never thought of change acceleration as Public Relations (PR) but reading Edelman's blog entry on Ethics in PR I realized that Change Acceleration work is in many ways just PR internal to a company. Of course I am talking about the kind of public relations that builds a market for a product and facilitates the conversation between a company and its markets.

In his essay Edelman says “ we should demand a seat at the decision making table and not simply accept the role of mouthpiece for legal counsel. We have a unique sense of the potential impact of a given action on multiple stakeholders, from Wall Street to employees and consumers. If we are limited to a classic, small box communications role, we are unable to fulfill our broader mandate of advice and counsel.”

The same is absolutely true for change acceleration. I've found that if someone in IT just wants us to do communications it really doesn't make sense for my change acceleration team to engage with them because we can't achieve the full potential of change acceleration. In contrast for the JDS change acceleration effort our learnings on issues like support needs, bugs, performance perceptions and the transition process helped improve the quality of our JDS Preview deployment. On projects where the developers really just want us to come in at the last minute and help write some emails it is really not worth our time.

I think there are other lessons to be learned about how to do change acceleration if I think about it as a form of public relations. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. (2004-11-29 15:25:24.0) Permalink

Friday November 12, 2004

JDS and Change Acceptance

As Jim Grisanzio has already pointed out, John Loiacano talks about Java Desktop System in a very interesting Linux World interview. He says " Sun's Linux desktop strategy is that we are in it for the long haul. I have been using JDS for a year now. I don't have a Windows environment. It is not perfect by any means. It is a solution, however, that is working in the enterprise environment. For people who are in call centers, rental car agencies, etc., it's an ideal environment. "

I talked in my blog yesterday about how Jonathan Schwartz addressed the very same point. It is nice to see the alignment :-)

I received a few comments from skeptics who doubted that using our own products would improve them. One of my strong points has always been that I can see both sides of every question. Of course that isn't always a strong point. It sometimes makes it hard to be tough when you need to be. Anyway, I do agree that using Java Desktop System internal to Sun in order to improve it may not be all that compelling a reason for us to use it internally. So I thought of a couple more reasons to use Java Desktop System at Sun. One is that using it saves us bundles of money. And the other is that it is part of Sun's strategy for success. I am not saying that we should do something just because the boss says so. And I am not slighting the importance of having a compelling business case. But change acceptance work is not about selling a solution to our employees. It is about engaging the employees to understand how we can be even more successful in going the direction we have decided to go.

The comments also got me thinking about what I believe is a very important function of change acceptance work. It is certainly something I observed as we did the change acceptance work for JDS Preview. Which, by the way has now been successfully rolled out world wide.

We often talk inside Sun about the equation: Quality (Q) times Acceptance (A) equals Effectiveness (E). The thing I saw in the JDS Preview roll out was that the Quality work and the Acceptance work create a feedback loop. First we communicated the vision and strategy. Then we engaged users to help us understand concerns and issues. Then we worked to fix those issues and improve the quality of the deployment which resulted in better Acceptance. So doing the Acceptance work resulted in improving the Quality of the product and the deployment. I believe on a much larger scale that is exactly what we will do with Java desktop System. We are in it for the long haul and we have only just begun.

Monday October 18, 2004

The View from outside of Headquarters

My youngest daughter is studying and living in Paris right now as a part of the Sweet Briar Junior Year in France Program. Living in France has been a great experience for her. Her French is getting much better and I really believe that getting a perspective on the U.S. from outside the U.S. is very important.

No matter how hard I try to not have a California-centric view of the world I always do. It can't be helped. I have to remind myself that getting input from outside of headquarters is so important. It always improves the quality of my work. I know it. I've seen it again and again but it is so easy to think you already know the answer.

I've been calling VPs to tell them about JDS preview and JDS on their laptops. Just today I learned that our European staff get their laptops in a different way than we in the U.S.do and I got a totally different slant on our vision statement from a service guy in Canada. Thanks!

Friday October 15, 2004

JDS - Change Acceptance Review

We had our third Change Acceptance Review (CAR) meeting for JDS @ Sun this afternoon. There are several things that are cool about these meetings.

The first cool thing is that these meeting are not the kind of review / tollgate that you dread like you dread an exam you have to pass. One of the key tenets of the Sun Change Acceptance Process is Focused Leadership. So the CAR meeting allows us to bring the two VP's who are our sponsors up to date but more important it allows us to ask them for help and guidance with a couple of the issues we are facing. The CAR allows the focused leadership to remind the team of their support and it allows us to use them to help get things done. (Thanks Eric and Linda!!)

The second cool thing is that the CAR allows us to get out of the trenches for a bit and focus on the big picture. Even though we still have an enormous amount of work in front of us we actually have made a lot of progress. Putting together the presentation made me feel really good about what we have accomplished.

The third cool thing is that it reminds me what a great team I have and how much a focused team can accomplish. Thanks Team!

That's the latest chapter in the continuing story of our drive to have everyone at Sun running JDS everywhere. It represents Sun's Future! Stay tuned :-)

Thursday October 07, 2004

JDS Change Acceptance Lessons Learned - Part 2

In an earlier Blog entry I started to talk about the lessons I have learned from the project I am leading to build acceptance across Sun for the Java Desktop System. Tonight IT Operations will begin to install the JDS Preview on our SunRay servers. We are testing a few sites this week and next and then the following week we are planning to install it on SunRay servers world wide. That's thousands of desktops. CDE users will be impacted by the change when we change the default desktop to JDS Preview a few weeks after that.

Building acceptance for this change is a big project but we are making progress. Here are a few more of the things I have learned as we go through his process. The first 5 are described in my blog entry.

1. It is hard work
2. It is about the conversation
3. Don't assume that people understand the product and the details of the change
4. Segment the user base
5. Regular Change Acceptance Reviews are imperative.
6. The work of change isn't about the tools. Just as using the tools in Norm Abram's workshop isn't the same as building a piece of furniture so using the powerful set of tools provided as a part of our Sun Change Acceptance Process isn't the same as doing the change work necessary to move people from resisters to active supporters. The kind of work we have been doing includes things like getting JDS Preview running in our Global Resolution Center, Meeting with Sys admins to understand their concerns about the change, and calling executives to make sure they know what is happening and are talking to their people about it.
7. Understand the behavior you want. We are asking our users what category they consider themselves in. An active supporter is running JDS on their laptop and JDS preview on their SunRay, they are urging others to convert. A passive supporter agrees with JDS in principal but is skeptical about whether it will work for them. The neutral and negative categories are fairly self evident. It helped our team a lot to understand exactly what we were trying to achieve - We are trying to move people to active supporters . It also helps with getting people to change when we can tell them what we want them to do and ask them why they are not an active supporter.

   That is enough for today – More another day

   (2004-10-07 17:27:11.0) Permalink
   Monday October 04, 2004

   Change Acceptance Lessons Learned

   As my JDS CAP (Java Desktop System Change Acceptance Process) team takes Sun through the change to Everyone Running JDS Everywhere I am trying to keep a list of lessons learned. Sun has a lot of expertise in Change Acceptance and I would like to be able to help our customers who are changing to JDS by apply what I am learning in our JDS CAP effort. I am still struggling some with how to effectively do this but the lessons learned is a first step. If people have other ideas I would love to hear them.

   CAP Lessons Learned
   
   1. " It is Hard work ". On the surface it seems easy. But building real acceptance requires a lot of the hard work of change acceptance i.e. talking to people., listening, addressing areas of resistance, and continually going back over what you have already done. You can't just send out an email and then check off that you have built a shared understanding of the vision or the roadmap for getting there. And you have to address the issues that people bring up you can't just make a list of them.

   2. It is about the conversation Change acceptance is about two way conversations it is about listening to what people are concerned about. It is about asking for input. Change acceptance work can't be done by sending out emails. You have to talk to people and a lot of people are very hesitant to talk to people they don't know.

   3. Don't assume that people understand the product and the details of the change. Our JDS CAP team spent a lot of time asking questions and going over what exactly was changing. I'm still learning and people's questions have helped a lot. The team members were very unwilling to go out and seek input until they had a concrete understanding of what is happening and in fact they required a presentation they could use in the discussions. (With their help I created one.)

   4. Segment the user base When your goal is build acceptance of a change that impacts several thousand people you have to be able to figure out a place to start. We decided to focus on groups that are key influencers within the company. (System administrators, Sales engineers, Resolution Center staff, IT and Executives and their Administrators.) the change acceptance work for each of these groups is different.
   5. Regular Change Acceptance Reviews are imperative. Not only do they allow us to keep our sponsors informed but they also help the team to experience the focused leadership. One other advantage of Change Acceptance reviews is that they impose discipline. When we know that our progress in moving our key stakeholder groups to active acceptance will be reviewed it helps build a sense of urgency.

      I have several more but that is enough for now

      (2004-10-04 13:17:22.0) Permalink Comments [2]

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