The right implementation team

Only a few of the individual interests are extremely important for the overall process. But only if you manage to turn these few – regardless of their status – into implementation heroes will you develop a dynamic that will really move the project forward. You will certainly very rarely experience the ideal situation in your team composition, but you can at least get close to it.

Kolbusa’s rules for implementation staffing

1. not all, but the right ones

2. no compromises

3. more potential opportunities than threats

• Not everyone, but the right people:Don’t try to convince as many employees as possible of your implementation project or even involve them. Think about who the few really decisive “players” are in terms of implementation and how you can bring them and their personal spheres of interest together with the goals and requirements of implementation.
• No compromises:
  Compromises in the implementation team always lead to poor results. Even if someone is not currently able to take on (partial) responsibility, take them along on the journey, but not into responsibility, so that this person can develop. But don’t assign projects or sub-projects to people you don’t really support or have a bad feeling about. Don’t delude yourself or talk yourself into things. I experienced this myself in a project: the establishment of a shared service center was not entrusted to the most competent program manager in the company, but to an HR manager who was very competent in his field, and the whole thing turned into a disaster because he neither understood what was being talked about nor really knew the management process of such an undertaking. There was a lack of management experience and specific expertise, without which there could be no progress in this case. As a result, there was uncertainty in the management, lack of clarity in the structure and therefore tension in the project. As a result, the HR manager personally suffered more damage than benefit from the project.
  

  Don’t make any compromises when filling your key roles. Keep checking until you have the right team that you are really convinced of. If in doubt, it is better to compensate for deficits that cannot be made up with external resources, whereby you must ensure that the responsibility for results remains 100% internal so that the interest in implementation remains undiminished. Too much external compensation is not ideal, but it is better than internal compromise solutions

  
  
• More potential opportunities than threats:
  Most implementation projects are seen as more of a threat than an opportunity. As much as these doubts and skepticism can be a driving force and can be used accordingly, you would do well to ensure that the few relevant players see opportunities. Hold out the prospect of concrete recognition for successful implementation: the MBA course, the six-week training course at Harvard, the management of a specific area – this will give you security and create real incentives. What you should definitely stop doing is working with bonus payments. In my experience, people cannot be bought and monetary incentives only have a very limited effect and are often counterproductive, especially if they are promised in advance.
  

  Of course, the envious will not be long in coming. However, if you do without this approach, you leave success to chance and create a culture of uncertainty in which nobody really pushes ahead with implementation.

  
  

I have experienced implementation projects that were initially hardly supported by anyone in the organization and that were only driven forward by a very small number of committed individuals, not least because of the incentives described above. They brought so much momentum to the process that suddenly the majority of the workforce concerned embraced the change, not always enthusiastically, but supportively. Basically, this is a completely normal process if the right people have been skillfully networked in advance.

When restructuring a service provider sales organization, I feared that a key account manager would not support the new structure as he did not agree with the new management constellation or the new sales management system and did not see any potential for himself in implementing these new structures. Due to his lack of leadership qualities, a management role in the new structure was also ruled out from the outset. The risk that he would take a key customer with him by switching to the competition could not be allowed to counteract the many advantages of the new structure and the associated opportunities for real key people.

The consequence: the key account manager was immediately released from his duties and, with the support of another senior account manager and the management, the customer was progressively transferred to this senior account manager and actively integrated into the implementation process.

This turned a threat into genuine customer loyalty, which the customer greatly appreciated.

The learning curve: Wherever you see disasters approaching, you should take action yourself as early as possible and try to use the energy involved to your advantage.

It almost always works if you really make the effort to think about it.

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