Trapped In Comfort Zone, People Are Averse To Change

All CIOs invariably face the issue of change management at some point in their careers. I too have had to deal with it, and have over the years learnt my lessons and found ways of handling it.

Personally, I have always found change management issues to be very challenging, and hence very interesting. My earliest recollection of first encountering change management was during my first job during the mid-1980s. The wave of computerisation had just begun and organisations were looking at getting basic processes computerised. We had a simple task at hand: To computerise the billing system.

Soon after the proposal was made public, there was stiff opposition from the employees. They just didn’t want to change their ways, which is also one of the biggest hurdles for change management, I soon understood. The manual system had been working fine for the users for years and there was no apparent reason to change that. They had become so accustomed to doing things in a particular way, and had moulded in the routine so well that nobody tolerated any changes in the way of doing things. Moreover, they also convinced the management that the computerised bills thus generated would not be acceptable to the legal authorities for accounting for sales tax and income tax purposes. And, the Indian management is usually afraid of getting implicated in any legal hassles. Much to my surprise, the management sided with the employees and halted the simple process of computerisation.

To resolve the stalemate, I took into confidence the tax consultant of the company who also understood the problem practically. It took us about 3-4 months to convince the management and the entire lot of employees, and make them understand that the project was ultimately for their benefit only.

Many years later, I carried out an important ERP implementation in 2000. And, I was a little surprised to see the same issues cropping up again, though on a much larger scale. People were still averse to the idea of moving out of their comfort zone and bringing a change in how they were accustomed to doing things. Also, most of them did not understand how their work impacted the overall efficiency output of other departments within the organisation. An example: the purchase department looked after the purchase orders, and the logistics and accounts departments managed the received material and payments respectively. When the ERP was rolled out, the interdependence of one department on the other grew exponentially. For instance, if the purchase department was not making purchase orders in time, they could not be received by the logistics in time, and thus payments could also not be made in time.

The biggest change management challenge I felt during this period was to make people understand the benefits of having an open attitude towards change, and especially, make them realise that they were no longer working in isolated departments. I also realised a few other steps that required to be undertaken. We re-defined business processes across the organisation as integrated business processes. Secondly, all employees were adequately trained so that they could deal with the changes in processes. Though it took us some time to streamline processes across the organisation, but we stabilised eventually. And soon, as the systems matured, we started reaping ROI benefits.

My experiences with change management issues during the various stages in my career have definitely given me an insight on how to bring about progressive transformation more effectively. I have learnt a few things along the way which would hold one in good stead. Firstly, it always pays well to involve people in talks about new and impending projects. If they are involved from a very early stage they are better equipped to handle changes later. Also, the approval and support of the top management of the organisation is an absolute must. Secondly, training for all employees and peers is critical. It serves the ‘breaking-the-ice’ purpose and gives the employees first-hand exposure of the new implementation, which in turn, really eases change management issues. Proper communication between different departments lies at the heart of seamless change management. It is important that any two departments communicate effectively during change management processes. It makes the task simpler and straightforward.