Social movements need to influence decision makers, not just build networks. A $45-million SAP project at Deluxe Check Corporation shows how: a $140k change analyst created 24 touchpoints with eight executives over three months, demonstrating that faster decisions would save $1 million monthly. The result: executives aligned quickly and allocated 23% of the budget to change management.
Chapters
Today's topic, drum roll please. To start a movement, your community requires decision makers. Decision makers. This is a little different than the network. This is like who's making policy around these things. If you're in a social movement, you know, there's people in my Wisdom Councils that are in Washington, D.C., helping people change policies for education, for child welfare, for housing in the world. So you can talk about the collaborators, but, but also part of this is who are the decision makers? And so we're going to dive into this. So when we talk about decision makers, here's a story that you guys can relate to, I am sure. So early in my career, I was a senior manager, and I can say that was early in my career 'cause I was there a lot longer than that. So I was a senior manager and we were at a client. I can use the name now 'cause it's so old. This is like last century. I was at Deluxe Check Corporation and they were implementing SAP. Actually, they weren't implementing SAP. What they were doing was doing this, the first phase was a software fit assessment. They're gonna choose between SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, 'cause those were three different things at the time. And so I got on this project and it's 2.5 years before anything's getting implemented. And I talked to the partner and I said, you know, this is my plan for this, for the 5 months, it was January to May. $45 million project for implementation was the estimate. So in January, I told him I needed a change management, I needed a change analyst. He said, we're 2 and a half years away. You guys do documentation and training. You don't need a change person. And we got you 3 days a week. You're good. It's like, no, I need this. It's like, give me a rationale why. And I told him, I said, you think, and he was a technology partner. I said, you think this is a technology project, don't you? He's like, yes. I said, it's not. It's a decision-making project. I want you guys to think about that with your movement, about the decisions. It's a, you know, you're helping people make decisions. So I said, well, he said, describe this to me. I said, in May, the— there's going to be like 8 people sitting in a room deciding, making a decision. That's what this project is. You're not actually coding anything this, this, this time. You're going to have this project that people make a decision. They're going to decide on 3 things. They're going to choose a platform. They're going to choose a business case that makes sense. And they're going to choose an implementation plan, which includes, you know, us as like further in the work, and there's going to be money involved with that. And I said, is that right? He's like, yeah. And I said, well, there's these 8 executives. So basically I'm gonna say I need 24 touchpoints over the course of the next, uh, few months, uh, because I have 8 executives, 3 months to get it done, 24 touchpoints. I'm gonna plan 24 authentic interactions and I need 3 because I need to present to them the platform, the business case, the implementation plan. And I can't do that all in one. So what I need from you is I need to, I need to space that out. And so he is like, okay, that sounds interesting. And I said, so let me ask you, if the decision isn't made in May, what happens to the team? It's like, oh, well, we'll have to hold the team cuz the client will want the same people. All, can you all relate to this? Right? They'll want the same team. I said, what's the burn rate on the team? Yeah, it's about a million a month. 'Cause it was like 25 people or something like that. It was a million a month. I was like, what if I told you if you gave me an analyst for $140 grand, that that decision gets made in May and you don't have to burn a million dollars per month? He's like, you're on. I'm like, great. This is putting the value to change management, which so many people like, change management is good for the people. It's like executives don't listen to that stuff, but saving a million bucks, he's like, absolutely. Part of that is being, you know, uh, uh, creative about how you think about value, you know, cases. So we did it. I literally, uh, pulled this together, and this is all about decision makers. This is a decision project, right? So, I had 8 decision makers. I literally, for the last person with the last point, like a week before the meeting, the guy was flying on the private plane to California. I threw the analyst on the plane with the deck to walk through with the controller on the way to California. It was like, okay. And she went through it with him and she did a great job. And he's like, oh, I got it. They got to that main meeting and wondered why they were having a meeting. They're like, yeah, yeah, I mean, here's the implementation, this is the business case, we're choosing this thing. It's like, great, stamp, um, rubber stamp, boom, done. It was done. And we started the next Monday with the next phase. I got from that project Uh, of that $46 million project, I got 23% of the budget for change management because he was just like, and, and there was other creative things. I took on the testing team and the business readiness. I mean, there was more to it than just the change piece, but it was like, because that was buy-in by the company. And so, um, the whole point of that is I focused on 24 interactions. Those were the business, that's, those were the decision makers. That we're going to make this big $45 million decision. So, uh, let me stop there with the story and say, what are like one or two takeaways from the story? Take, take 30 seconds, write a couple things down, then we'll share.
