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Tackling Change Management
Change management is an art through which organizations keep themselves abreast vis-à-vis technology, technique, and method of working, with the least disruption in business affairs. By Pratap Vikram Singh
“The
future is coming so fast, we can’t possibly predict it; we can only learn
to respond quickly” is Steven Kerr’s words [a management guru in the
University of Michigan business school]. How effectively and quickly one can
bring a change is key to today’s fast pace business. One of the keys to
dealing with change is understand that change in never over. Change brings opportunity
to those who can grasp it, and the discontinuities of the new economy offer
unlimited opportunities. Today most of the companies are realizing they need
to handle change management efficiently and quickly so that their business does
not suffer.
Change management and training are the two closely linked elements, which are inevitable for the management of any organization, whenever they introduce something new into the organization. Change management, for some, is anticipation, facilitation and evaluation of change before and after its induction. For others, change management is the cultural environment of an organization where employees perceive change as normal progression. While for few others, it can be sensitizing the employees about their personal role in improving the risk posture of the organization.
There are no constants today—neither the technology, method of working, nor the human needs and consumer behavior. There has to be a system, which can manage, i.e., control and coordinate change induced in an organization and periodically evaluate its overall effect.
“The change management system helps in assessing the impact of change, plan appropriate actions to manage the transition and work out contingency plans when things do not go as anticipated [commonly referred by plan B],” explained Bala Giridhar Manchi, Vice President, IT, Wipro Technologies.
Overcoming resistance
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- Daya Prakash |
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"The
ability of an organization to imbibe a culture where each employee understands
clearly that change is a normal progression becomes possible through effective
change management"
"An
integral part of the change management process is to obtain unqualified
buy in from the team"Considering change management in terms of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Amit Sahakundu, Senior Manager, Systems, Infosys, said, “Change management is a vital process in ITIL framework. The first important step will be to identify ‘when you call it a change’. Having a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) will be a strong first step. Any change that makes change in CMDB or its CI (Configuration Item) should be a change and follow change management process. Your process, awareness and classification of IT infrastructure aligned to business will help you perceive change.”
According to Daya Prakash, IT head, LG Electronics, “Since change is inevitable as in today’s economy both sustainability and growth are largely dependent on an organization’s culture for continuous improvement. The ability of an organization to imbibe a culture where each employee understands clearly that change is a normal progression. This is possible through effective change management. Thus change management is a very important element of success of an organization.”
Viewing change management as one of the imperatives in today’s scenario, Sushma Rajagopalan, head, Global Strategy, L&T Infotech, corroborated, “Increasingly, as the world gets flatter and the market place more crowded and confused, it is imperative for companies to stay agile and be in tune and in sync and adapt to myriad changes. These changes can be global, economic and regulatory changes, changes in buying behavior and the list, including technology adoption, is never-ending. We at L&T InfoTech strongly believe in change management as a discipline, not only for ourselves but for our customers as well.”
At the beginning: Strategizing
To have a strategy of change management, an organization requires a culture, which may act as a source for regular improvement for employees. Additionally having this culture, organizations have specific departments headed by change managers or chief executives, which initiate, estimate, coordinate and evaluate the change proposals. Organizations also have a system to recognize and appreciate for the best changes and innovations. However, there are organizations that have external and internal consultants for assistance while deploying a new system.
The most basic element around which the strategy of change management revolves is the ‘need’ for the particular change. After this, the team in charge of a project must plan accordingly to facilitate the transition from where an organization is today and where it wants to be tomorrow.
Noting that change management is much more than training and educating the employees, indeed calling it a discipline and a culture, Rajagopalan explained that it is an ‘attitude’ and needs tremendous conviction and commitment. It starts with being aware of the changes and being discerning about the changes that we have to tackle. To begin with, you need evangelists or champions who act as the catalyst for change management. She added, “At L&T Infotech, the Chief Executive is the champion and we used McKinsey as an external consultant to seed the process and have recently hired a Head of Global Strategy who functions as an internal change consultant among other things.”
Sahakundu has some suggestions for the strategy. He said, “First and foremost is to ensure you have a business alignment to the IT services that you are delivering. While aligning business IT business should involve business and support representatives covering 360-degree view into your Change Advisory Board (CAB) too. Apart from training, clear understanding and defining your process for standard/non-standard or minor/major/emergency changes; impact analysis involving CMDB and bringing it to CAB for discussion will make it holistic.”
Prakash commented on LG’s strategy for change management, “There is a dedicated team called Value Innovation Group who takes care of initiating/ facilitating change management across organization. This group is also responsible for training and educating people on change management process/ tools and techniques. The organization has reward and recognition policy for best changes/ innovation.”
The reluctance towards change is a normal human tendency, which sometimes haunts an organization badly, since sometimes employees take a lot of time and energy to accept the new change. The reluctance may be because of the comprehension gap between the executives and the workforce.
Sometimes a challenge, change seem interesting and worthwhile to the team involved in policy formulation and decision-making, but simultaneously it may seem irrelevant and an imposition to the departmental heads.
Nonetheless, now organizations have modern tools and techniques to deal with these problems. Interactive sessions, good communication channel between the executives and the workforce leads to healthy coordination between the people at top of the organizational hierarchy and people at the lower level of the hierarchy.
Giridhar, emphasized on gaining the trust of the employees and said, “It is important to provide the background, need and advantages of undertaking the change. It is also necessary to share the approach and plan of action. It is critical to get the buy in of the people involved in the change by addressing their concerns or issues.” Anand Mecheri, CEO & Managing Director, SBT India Group, added, “An integral part of the change management process is to obtain unqualified buy in from the team. While this is easier said than done in most organizations, it is essential to go through such a process.”
Sahakundu added that we say, ‘change is only constant’ and at the same time we all know that ‘change is painful’. If you can make your team agree that you have a problem, I am sure that your team will come forward to work towards resolution of the problem. One needs to highlight, what could be of concern if the organization fails to follow the change management process. As those will be the pain points, employees will be ready to adopt. Initially there may be confusion, what is a change or everything has some change or the other to consider. As you mature, you will find maturity in your process too.
According to Rajagopalan, “At times their [internal employees] reaction is often not related to ‘change management’ but to the specific issue that needs tackling. At L&T Infotech and in the IT industry, the awareness levels of employees are extremely high and the receptivity to new concepts is high. We use informal sessions called Strategy and Samosa to explain some of the changes across the organization. We are careful to ensure that our new efforts are ‘sustained’ efforts and not perceived as a fad or a knee-jerk reaction.”
Parakash added, “We at LG strongly believe in change management and there is a high level of commitment from the senior management towards innovation and change management. High commitment from senior management and HR focus has made it possible in LG that each employee appreciates the change management. In fact, innovation is part of our KPI (Key Practice Index) and it makes a part of performance evaluation.” It is possible only if the employees has strong buy in, in change / change management he added.
Justifying change usually, the need itself is the key justification for the proposed change. The concerned department evaluates the present system, estimates the outcome of the proposed system, analyze its strengths and drawbacks, and correlate it with the workforce and give its presentation to the CAB.
Sahakundu elaborated that whether it is a business need or business supporting need, it will be driven by requirement (i.e. need), improvement, justification. A change manager plays a key role here and involvements of CAB members are important too.
Sahakundu commented, “If the change can bring in value, everyone accepts it. Your process and matrices will speak for yourself. Improvement initiatives are important contributor here.”
Organizations justify and induce those changes, which drift them closer towards their goal. According to Rajagopalan, the changes taking place are those that will get L&T Infotech closer to its goal of touching $1bn in revenues by March 2010.
She added, “The changes we justify are the ones that get us closer in the leadership position we aspire for—be it in the organization structure, operational excellence, go-to-market or corporate branding. The facilitation is done by a working steering committee under the leadership of the Chief Executive.”
Process transformation
Often implementing the new tools and techniques, systems or work process takes time and hence completing the whole process may be a good challenge for the managers and the change agents. There is also an unknown fear or say doubts in the minds of employees regarding their compatibility with the induced change. They may fear that it may not adversely affect their efficiency and create new hurdles with the already existing ones.
“Some of the other challenges faced during controlling and coordinating change are Scope Management, Schedule Management, Cost Management and Quality management.” This dealt with the help of periodic meeting of steering committee with respective teams working on change. The adherence of which is monitored by Value Innovation Group and a presentation made by them to senior management every month,” said Prakash.
L&T Infotech considers other key challenges as—managing employee expectations, ensuring that change management is a sustained effort. Wipro technologies categorize reluctance to change, fear to unknown and unanticipated roadblocks as other challenges faced while facilitating change.
| Projects can fail due to technical issues |
| Let us understand now teething problems [refer technical
issues] can lead to fail of IT projects. For this, we will consider why
ERP implementations fail. According to experts, information technology managers
identified three primary reasons for the failure of all IT-related projects:
poor planning or poor management, change in business goals during the project,
and lack of business management support. Since ERP is an IT-related project,
the above are valid reasons for explaining ERP implementation failures.
More specifically, ERP implementation failures fall into 10 categories:
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Conveying the benefits
Prakash said that the results of the change management operations are high. He continued we recently finished one such change management in retail chain business wherein order is procured from a centralize location (corporate office) of the retail chain but the supplies are to be carried out from all India basis. Since LG operates with multiple branch offices across India, each branch is independent from their operations management (Accounts Receivables, Account Payable etc.) standpoint. “The new module rolled out takes care of offsetting of Accounts Receivables for a retail chain across branches and helps in centralize tracking of payment receivable. This has helped us in timely reconciliation of accounts with retail chain store thus resulting in saving of approximately Rs 5 lakhs per annum on account of timely and efficient accounts reconciliation,” said Prakash.
Elaborating on her experiences, Rajagopalan said, “We have introduced a new Enterprise Model, where we have transformed to a vertical-driven organization. We have created multiple business units that operate like independent companies. This change has helped us to position ourselves competitively and has helped us to align ourselves much better with our end customers and to provide them IT service offerings that address their business problems.” Another recent example is the change in mindset that we have brought to the support functions said Rajagopalan. It started with the conviction that better-run support functions such as corporate marketing or finance or administration can result in higher efficiencies across the organization. We now have every support function (we call them Business Enabling Units) that has Service Level Agreements with its internal customers. We have a senior person leading this effort and we have declared the year as The Year of Service Function.
Enunciating the results of the change management operations, Sahakundu said, “I think we can use the word ‘effective’ here. Your business goal for the change has to be measurable. Feedback through post implementation reviews and measurement against business driver would bring in clarity on effectiveness and efficiency of the change.” While citing an example of inducing change, Sahakundu stated implementation of CAB involving business representatives itself is a change.
For the effective implementation of change, Mecheri suggested that a clear time schedule with assigned actions points, milestones and clear responsibilities. To implement organizational change activities such as status reviews and quick executive decisions to deal with consequent issues if any. He however cautioned, “Never start the change management process without adequately thinking about the resulting consequences—determine if the organization has people with the right skills, processes and tools work effectively in the target environment created by the change.
