Despite the dot-bomb of the late 1990s, technology remains the alchemy of the age.  And, today's technology, being binary, is created through very prescriptive methodologies that work well for the specific purpose of creating digital tools.  But, human beings, also known as the users or clients of the technology, are not binary.  Motivated by an array of non-binary drivers, humans seem to be constantly changing; they might be characterized as fluid.  They cannot, therefore, be simply programmed or controlled as easily as a silicon chip.  When considering technical change to any environment, both planning and deployment methods must respect and center upon the human client audience and what that audience presents as relevant to their relationship to the intended change.  Can this idea really be that important?

These statements about the difference between human beings and their digital tools may seem all to obvious and hardly informative yet most ERP and other technology deployments derail or encounter significant cost and schedule slips or fail to achieve full functional adoption because somehow the difference between technology and humans is ignored or completely forgotten. And where this 'forgetting' is most painfully obvious is in prescriptive methodology and the zealous adherence of its followers to its process and decision points - specifically prescriptive Project Management (PM) and Organizational Change Management (OCM) methodologies that center on various metrics and activities at the expense of the human client audience.  Not surprisingly, human clients often feel that there is a generalized apathy, within the execution of these methods, towards their relevance in the planning or deployment stages; their participation then reflects the limited interest shown towards their perspective.  Is it possible for methodology to be as fluid as the human client audience?

To make matters worse, most prescriptive methodologies are neither self-reflective nor self-correcting.  In the absence of the required human or client-centric focus, prescriptive methods actually limit individual and organizational fluidity.  This is equivalent to asking your human client to ignore reality.  This causes a reduction in morale, participation and performance.  In short, prescriptive methods fail and moreover sponsor failure by viewing the human client as merely ancillary (as opposed to central) to planning and deployment activities.  Evidence of this is readily available during Project Management Office (PMO) project review meetings where metrics considered to reveal the health of a project have little to do with the issues at play in the environment.  Prescriptive approaches essentially ask the human client to conform to unrealistic control catalysts, obtuse expectations and cryptic success/failure metrics. It may surprise the reader to see OCM methods also featured as an example of what does NOT work and, if this is difficult to consider, remember that the point of this message is that prescriptive formulas for controlling human clients will never work regardless of their intent because humans aren't digital.

Departure from these methods is ultimately recognized as a necessity but how to do this and what is a suitable replacement interaction method is usually unknown.  At this stage, the organizational clarity may be generally stifled or cloudy.  A Corporate Facilitator is needed. The task of the Corporate Facilitator is to help an organization get back to reality.  And, this generally means re-establishing an engagement with the human client as central to success.  Keep in mind that the definition of the human client includes the executive leadership, functional management, PMs and OCM staff as well the recipients of the technology.  To move in this direction, a fluid approach, one that is respectful of the human client, is required.  To be fluid, one's approach or method must be adaptive to the needs of the client's environment.  A Corporate Facilitator essentially intervenes as the human advocate on multiple levels guiding deployment and adoption leadership and the recipient client audience towards their original or a newly found genuine interest and appreciation for the intended change.