Question: How do we change IT from
reactive to proactive in a change-resistant corporate culture?
Our advice:
Driving change through an organization such as an IT department requires
commitment, drive and empathy. In addition to interpersonal skills, there are
proven strategies that you can use to drive such change.
There are two distinct yet related elements here:
How do we overcome the debilitating organizational cancer called "resistance to
change"?
How do we move from being reactive and constantly "putting out fires" to being
proactive and "in control"?
Resistance to change stems from several factors. Some of these include:
Self-interest:
Vested interest in one's status based on the status quo.
Fear of the unknown:
Feeling of being unsafe and in unknown territory.
Different perceptions:
Genuinely different opinions from those of the change-driver.
Suspicion:
Not trusting the change-maker or the change to actually deliver the promised
results.
Conservatism:
Personality variable of the individuals concerned.
Lack of faith:
Inability to see the change materialize all the way through.
Habit and inertia:
"What we've always done is the way it should be."
Social conformity:
Social agreement, herd mentality, or fear of loss of team member(s) due to the
change.
Lack of vision: Inability to see how the change will serve the greater
good.
There are four phases in the continuum from reactivity to proactivity:
Reactive-Defensive:
Procrastination; need to react quickly to avoid embarrassment.
Reactive-Responsive:
Respond to the needs of the business in a planned manner.
Anticipatory-Reactive:
Anticipate the needs so that reaction time is minimized.
Proactive: Anticipate needs, participate in the planning, and prepare
the environment well in advance for the business to use it.
Keys To Change
Using lessons from neuro-linguistic programming and neuro-associative
conditioning, the keys to change are:
Find an empowering characteristic to replace the disempowering characteristic.
Associate enough "pain" to the disempowering characteristic.
Associate enough "gain" to the empowering characteristic.
Take baby steps toward the empowering characteristic.
Make the empowering characteristic permanent.
In an IT organization, this translates to:
Establish the goal of moving from being reactive to one of being proactive.
This message must start at the top and be clearly communicated through the
organization. Understand and accept the current status as just "what's so" and
clarify that it's nobody's fault. This provides a blame-free starting point on
the map of where you are and where you're looking to go.
Using stories and examples, demonstrate how being reactive is costing the
organization and the individuals in terms of lost productivity, system
downtime, user frustration, and decreased competitiveness. Quantify the impact
on each of the stakeholders in the Michael Porter Five-Forces framework,
namely, customers, suppliers, and the various types of competitors.
Demonstrate, using case studies and testimonials, the positive impact of being
proactive. Quantify the impact on each of the stakeholder groups. Generate
buy-in from the staff. Make it their decision to be proactive. Don't tell
them; instead, listen.
Make it a game to seek out and reward proactive behavior. Don't reprimand IT
staff for proactively taking steps to better serve their customers, even if
occasionally their calculated and well-intentioned "guesses" may be off the
mark. Equip staff with the tools they need, including people, process, and
technology, to help them succeed at their game.
Repetitively use a model such as the McKinsey 7-S model (Strategy, Structure,
Systems, Style, Skills, Staff, and Shared Values) to instill the change in the
organization and to make it permanent.
Finally, don't do it alone. When in doubt, seek the help of a qualified and
experienced change-management consultant to guide you through the process.
Sanjay Anand, TAC Expert, has more than 20 years of IT and
business-process management experience as a strategic adviser, certified
consultant, professional speaker, and published author. More than 100 personal
clients, both large and small, have included companies from a diverse array of
industries and geographies, from academia to technology and from Asia to the
Americas. He's often referred to as a "consultant's consultant" for training
and mentoring skills. He was the creator of Asia 's first best-selling
computer-assisted learning software package at the age of just 17.
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