Monday, March 29, 2010

implementing change and the potential of “Migration” days

Thunderbird (which I use for email) has a new software upgrade, planned for mid-April. I know this because they have just announced Migration Day, a 24 hour period when volunteers will provide real-time support to users via a chat room.

Now that’s a simple, yet stunning approach to change management isn’t it?

You know that change is disruptive. You know that people have different timestyles and lifestyles. You know that most people don’t like change. You know that change will be messy. To be honest, you do want to manage that change by encouraging people to kick tires and iron out kinks.

So why not give some time to the actual process of implementation.

A Migration day does this, signaling change, making time for it, providing expert help in it, building community around it.

I can think of so many ways a church or teaching place could use this concept

  • a migration morning when you are introducing a new powerpoint system and the main tech people hang around with great morning tea and people who have been, or who might be interested, are invited to pop in
  • an community open week if a church has a new building project to display. Community given free coffee cards and volunteers to show them around the building, explaining what has happened and how it could effect them, or people they might know.
  • a change in a degree system, so a day in which people can gather to talk about teaching implications, tutoring demands, administrative implications.

Change is disruptive. I’ve seen lots of creative ways put into managing the the decision-making process. But there’s also the actual execution which takes time and effects morale. Migration days could be one highly effective change strategy in this regard.

Posted by steve at 08:02 AM

1 Comment

  1. what a fabulous thought. I’m hoping to implement a change within the congregation in which i have been a student, and might just take this idea of a migration day on … to help people move with the change, not feel like change is happening around them / forced on them … cheers!

    Comment by Sarah Agnew — March 29, 2010 @ 2:38 pm

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