Field Notes from the Transition: Tip #9
The Red Shirt Transition Check
The Observation: I have walked into operations where the project team has officially transitioned out because the system is technically live and hypercare has ended. The leadership is wearing a new company shirt that celebrates go-live success. On paper, the implementation is complete. On the floor, however, the old way of working is still very much alive. Supervisors are quietly double-checking system output against legacy reports, and a few critical users are still logging their work in the same shadow spreadsheets they have used for years. The system has changed, but the behavior has not yet transitioned. They are still wearing their "old shirts" underneath the new one because they trust their survival habits more than they trust the new technology.
The Tip: Build a formal stabilization phase that measures behavioral adoption rather than just technical system activation.
The Executable Step: You must treat the weeks immediately following hypercare as a dedicated window for behavioral alignment. You are looking for three specific indicators that your operation has truly transitioned to the new way of operating:
First, identify and decommission all "parallel reality" tools such as shadow spreadsheets or manual trackers that allow the team to bypass the new system logic.
Second, observe the execution of critical tasks across different shifts to ensure that every associate is following the same documented workflow rather than relying on individual workarounds.
Third, evaluate if your leadership has shifted their decision-making behavior to rely on system-generated intelligence rather than returning to tribal knowledge or informal communication channels.
I can help you define these behavioral milestones so that your project does not just reach a date on a calendar, but actually achieves a stable operational state.
Why This Matters: Systems rarely fail because of a technical glitch at go-live. They fail because of a slow erosion of trust in the transition period that follows. When organizations declare success based solely on a go-live date, they often overlook the behavioral gap where old habits reassert themselves and the new system loses its credibility. True transition success is not defined by launch activity, but by whether the organization has finally stopped operating as if the old system still exists.
This post is part of the Field Notes from the Transition series. You can review previous Field Notes in the series on my blog site. Stay tuned for my next observation from the middle of the operation.
