Organisation

Are you ready?

Much has been written about organisation transformation. There are always references to the newest, hippest methodology out there and if companies implement these things through massive change programs, it is going to save business life as we know it.  There seem to be whole professional services organisations out there dedicated to selling services to companies to implement these things.  Whether it be the newest flavour of ITIL for service management or Prince2 methodology for project management, big money and a lot of time and effort is spent on these initiatives.  Unfortunately in my experience, the only outcome of many of these well intentioned, well thought out initiatives is a lot of very pretty coloured spreadsheets and possibly one or two mid-level executive fatalities who have tragically passed away due to a very real killer that haunts every board room I’ve ever been in. Death by PowerPoint.

So that being said, what is the reason for this?  Well after many conversations I believe its because that the key component of these new processes or methodologies is never addressed sufficiently prior to kicking these initiatives off.  Its actually the same component that these methodologies only pay lip service to…. the people!

Your processes are only as good as the people that implement them.  If they are not willing or ready to accept change (for whatever reason and many of them are valid), then the cause that you feel so strongly about is dead.  The people are even more critical if you are trying to drive change from mid level up, because they are the ones that will champion your cause to senior management when senior management may not understand why its important, or worse case scenario, even care.

If by chance you are fortunate enough to have the full backing of senior management another problem that can potentially scuttle many well laid plans is the fact there may very well be a disconnect between how management perceives the culture of the organisation (and its readiness to accept change), and how it actually is.  The larger the organisation, often the larger the disconnect.

So its critical that you test the water before diving in. There are many models and toolsets for doing this. Whatever model you choose, its critical that this is done, face to face with as many of those that will be affected by your changes as possible.  An email blast announcing the latest important opinion poll to asses org culture will end up in the trash.  Get out there, find the mood, understand why people feel that way and put positive steps in place to ease their fears.  While you’re there you might discover a few potential champions for your new initiative.

So next time your company engages you or you come up with a brilliant new idea to implement a change, ask yourself…are the people ready?  Because if they are not, you maybe wasting a lot of your time, emotional energy and a large amount of company resources for absolutely no reason.  One things for sure, you won’t know until you go looking. In this age of emailing and IMing people that are sitting next to you, actually talking to people that you wouldn’t ordinarily can be one of the most satisfying things you can do!