Current State vs. Future State: How to Embrace the Change

It is no secret that change can be uncomfortable. You know — there are countless quotes and sayings around change and its inevitability. We have decided that change is a negative thing. Instead of working hard to embrace it, we end up working even harder to fight it. However, change doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. It can help you gain a greater understanding of where you currently are (your current state), as well as where you are headed (your future state). Embracing this ultimately helps you and your organization foster excitement for change and opportunities to improve your organization.

Educate and Prepare through Current State Process Improvement

With any challenge or test in life, the best way to improve comfort is to educate and prepare. Change is no exception to this rule. Through exposing your organization’s pain points and preparing to move forward, your organization will gain great value. We can further understand what we do through mapping the current state. This includes what we do, why we do it, and the pieces of our process that hold us back from achieving our goals. Too often, stakeholders in current state workshops don’t understand how their actions impact an organization beyond their immediate role. On top of this, they don’t even fully understand what others in the organization do. Through further conversation, we can identify pain points, as well as their fixes. Some of these pain points are able to be fixed immediately, while others require more identification of what opportunities exist in the ideal future state.

Think Ahead with Future State Planning

Once organizations have identified pain points in their current state, the next step is to begin planning for their future state. This is done with an understanding of where you came from, the pain points and opportunities for improvement that currently exist, and the ideal manner of using the functionality of new technology to optimize your business processes. Future state mapping is a realistic representation of opportunity, growth, and area for improvement for an organization. The ideal future state is not ‘wishful thinking’, but a balance between need, resolution, and realistic thinking. These things all adding up to a positive transformation.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Communication Is Key

Using the total functionality of technology in your organizational processes will make embracing the change even more worthwhile. This may be difficult, as users can see technology as a threat to their job or out of their comfort zone. However, the objective of new technology is not to replace anyone, but make processes more efficient. This efficiency leads to more time, resources, and attention to value-adding activities. Clearly communicating the added value to users, the need for change, and a unified message can help to ensure buy-in towards successful change. This holistic approach to communication lends itself to success in implementation and powerful organizational change management.

Embracing Change and Technology to Create Future Value

What value-add activities will you be able to focus more of your resources on? Overall, understanding your current state, planning for the future state, and embracing change and technology make this value-add possible.

As your organization evaluates its current state, as well as plans for its future state, your team must be on the same page. As we discussed earlier, there can often be a disconnect in teams in terms of roles, expectations, and pain points. Take our Change Readiness Assessment and discover if your team is ready for this change. Beyond this, learn more about our offerings to determine your organization’s next step.