Managing change the right way
April 2008 from CAmagazine and written by Michael Burns – “Many will tell you change management is critical to the success of any project and especially to the implementation of a new system. In fact, you can find consulting firms that specialize just in change management. But in my view, change management sometimes gets blown out of proportion based on false assumptions about employees…”
Labels: ERP, Project Management
posted by 180 Systems at 12:36 AM 
1 Comments:
Michael, having just read your article “Managing change the right way”, I feel compelled to take issue with one of your assertions (no offence, I hope):
There is a widely held view that employees are inherently resistant to change. I disagree. Employees are resistant to change only when it will adversely affect them. If a new system could eliminate their jobs, do you blame them? But if the change does not threaten their jobs, they are more likely to accept and even welcome the change.
My experience as a vendor suggests that there is more resistance to change than you think among employees. The problem is it usually rears it’s head not during system selection, or even during implementation planning and training, but more frequently after go-live. I see so many cases of employees doing things the long way (at our customers, at companies using competitors’ software, and at organizations where I have friends at CEO or CFO level who vent at me for some reason), because that’s the way they’ve always done it, or because they are more comfortable with their old approach.
Two recent examples:
1. My friend Mark F. recently resigned as CFO of an upper-midsize organization, 3 years after they had implemented a multi-million dollar ERP solution. His reason: frustration at how many employees are circumventing the new system, doing things “the old way”, and then complaining that the new system is “no good”. He assures me all staff were included in the selection process and there was buy-in from them until a month or so after the implementation was complete. Then they started reverting.
2. We had a customer several years ago who wanted a better way to manage A/R collections. So with her input and assistance, we designed a purpose-built Collections component and added it to the application. It is one of our selling features and points of differentiation to this day. And of course we gave it to this customer at no charge. Sadly, several years later, she still uses the old paper-based aging reports instead. Her reason: “I know I should change but I’m just so used using paper and pen when I’m on a collection call.”
I’m not sure that change management activities go very far in mitigating this, however.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, there’s some feedback.
Regards,
Mark Canes
Blue Link Associates Limited
Post a Comment
<< Home