But... we know how to implement Change!
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus is on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he also writes monthly columns for The Aba Bankers Journal, Voyageur Magazine, Galt Global Review, HR Gateway and Computerworld Canada.
His Computerworld column is republished on a regular basis in New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Ireland, the USA, Hong Kong, Denmark, Finland and Mexico.,
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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I'm on the editorial board of the "CIPS Across Canada" magazine, (CIPS = Canadian Information Processing Society) and received the
note below in response to a query we sent out regarding the value of IT certification. I thought it worthwhile to use this real life experience as the basis of an article. I've added the notations as keys to the change management issues inherent in this person's cry of frustration.
"My manager decided quite
arbitrarily(1) that everyone in my group should be MCSE certified. We were given an 18-month
deadline(2). Shortly after this change in policy, an employee left and the replacement was required to be an MCSE. Soon after hiring the MCSE,
the whole idea was scrapped due to the lack of budget(3) to pay for all of the courses required for
certification. The newly hired MCSE was never assigned the responsibilities to put his training to
use(4). Two years later, he was expected to be an expert in Windows 2000 even though these responsibilities were only assigned to him well after his NT4 cert
expired."
1 - Communication
Frankly I doubt anyone, and perhaps most particularly managers, ever make any decision "arbitrarily". The problem, and it's a curious one, is that employees often believe that managers do make decisions "arbitrarily". How/why does this happen? Especially when our objection to the perceived arbitrariness is obviously central to our resistance when it comes to imposed change?
In other words, keeping the reasons behind a decision secret is exactly what employees object to... yet it takes effort to keep a secret, and additional effort to overcome the resistance generated by the secrecy.
Keeping the decision process secret
is unnecessary work,
which generates unnecessary work.
Why then do we do this? Four reasons come to mind.
Ignorance of consequence:I guess I'm naïve. I'd like to believe this is the primary reason behind this strange behavior. I'd like to believe that most of the managers, who fail to communicate the whys behind their decisions, do so because they just don't realize how important it is to employees to understand why, and how, a decision is made.
If this were the case, then their behavior is easily modified by bringing this information to their attention. Based on the resistance I've encountered over the year to the notion of "Full disclosure of decision making process", I am forced to conclude that "Ignorance of consequence" is NOT the primary reason behind the lack of communication we've all experienced.It IS arbitrary:
If I were cynical, I'd suggest that managers do sometimes decide with dice, the direction of their companies and the lives of their staff. In fact, like myself, I'm sure every reader has a perfect example of a management decision, where the only possible explanation for its overwhelming stupidity was a random roll of the dice.
While it is tempting to believe this, I believe people are basically rational. We all have our reasons for doing things, even if others fail to understand or don't agree with our reasoning.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that our reasoning is always sound, just that we do reason our way towards our decisions.Insecurity:
I suspect that this is one of the more prevalent reasons for secrecy. If our reasoning process is secret, no one can criticize it (or us).
If you're not a programmer, then talk with one to determine the validity of the following...
Programming is an interesting way to make a living. It involves putting down on paper exactly how you would go about solving a problem. In a sense, a computer program is a visible construct of how the programmer's brain works. It is hard evidence of how well someone can think.
Because a program is such an accurate representation of our ability to think, programmers, myself included, find it very difficult/disturbing/unsettling to let someone else examine our code. Yes! We all agree that we gain many benefits when we allow someone else to examine, and "critique" (a weasel word for criticize!) our programs.
I don't believe that programmers are that different from the rest of society. We are all protective of our ego. To find fault with someone's reasoning is to find fault with their intelligence and in turn, with them. Secrecy is a defense mechanism.Control:
Another popular reason, must be our need to retain control over the decision making process. If I share my thinking with you, I am at the same time inviting you to comment, and through that input, to participate in the process. If I believe it is my responsibility to make decisions, then communicating how I make them, shares that responsibility with you.
2 - Deadlines
It is tempting - once again - to suggest that any deadline set, without the input of the people doing the work, is by definition "arbitrary". Yet to do this generates nothing but disrespect for the person setting the deadline.
Admittedly, if someone wants a task done, then the person most capable of determining how long the task will take, is the one doing the work. Unfortunately that isn't always feasible or even possible. Y2K was a good example. The deadline had nothing to do with either the size of the task or the amount of resources you could throw at the problem. It was, from that perspective at least, totally arbitrary.
That's the key. The judgment of "arbitrary" depends entirely on your perspective and, your perspective depends entirely at the information at your disposal. The more information available, the less likely the term "arbitrary" is hurled around as an insult.
3 - Planning
Not all Change problems arise out of poor communications, sometimes the flaw originates in the planning stage.
In a hopeless attempt not to sound too simplistic... Change isn't free, it requires, at the very least, an investment of effort, if not finances.
Nor is it easy to predict all the consequences of a particular change.
First order changes are relatively easy. If you have 100 people on staff, and demand they are all certified within 18 months, then you must absorb the financial cost of certification over that 18 month period. Or... you need to impose that cost on the staff.
There are other first order consequences. How long does it take for certification? How many people can you remove from the office at a time? How much buffer is built into those 18 months? How will certification affect service and productivity levels?
The Second order consequences are much more difficult to predict. Will the certification policy increase salary demands over the next 3-5 years? Will the benefits gained justify such an increase in expenditure? Will the certification policy lock you into a computing standard? Was this the intent?
When implementing Change it is imperative that first order consequences are taken into account, other organization enter into needless wheel spinning. Stopping a certification process mid way through the implementation phase because no budget was allocated to facilitate the change is, unfortunately, evidence of incompetence.
Miscalculating second order changes, requires more thought and is more prone to error... Could anyone predict that the automobile would disrupt the family unit to such a drastic extent? The ability to travel, erodes the ability to form community.
4 -Waste
To hire someone with a skill, and then to let that skill expire without use, is a waste.
There is however a second order consequence to this type of waste. Employees do have opinions of what is right, and what is wrong... and when they operate under what they perceive as wrong behavior, then morale, enthusiasm and loyalty suffer.
This article started with an e-mail I received in response to a non-change related query. I decided to wrap an article around it, because it summed up the failings of many change projects... they are implemented without visible reasons, framed by deadlines out of context, aborted due to bad planning and waste valuable time and resources...
The sad part about all of this, is that every participant in these wheel spinning exercises knows exactly what needs to be done... but fails to do it. And... we all know the solution to the problem, we know it so well it's the lead into an old joke:
Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this!!!
© 2005,
Peter de Jager – Peter is passionate about change, how it affects both
individuals and organizations and allows them to grow and prosper. To contact him, and
host internal seminars on Change Management visit www.technobility.com
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