| Stories From the Book | ||||||||
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| Stories From the Book | ||||||||
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We have been working to introduce a new IT system and new ways of working across our major operating divisions. This has been one of the largest changes our company has undertaken and it's been painful at times. Twenty-four months into the effort, it was not obvious to most people whether this was working. They felt pain but little gain. It was not at all clear to top management what were the financial paybacks. Those leading the change were under a lot of pressure to produce some tangible successes, some wins to show people who were suffering that we were on the right track.
The core project team would send a weekly email to everyone in the company called "Message of the Week". It was a status update. I can remember one that said '90% of our pre-go-live objectives have been met. Nearly all of our people have been trained and they are prepared and ready to do their jobs'. Well, there were a lot of employees who just didn't agree with that message. The people who would be using the new system, who might have been trained on how to use the new software, were nearly all saying they had no real idea about how their jobs would change when the machine was switched on. Many of the project teams who were based on each site, and who were much closer to the way the business worked than the core project team, totally disagreed that 90% of the work was done.
Every communication we received was pretty much the same. As time went on, if anything, it got worse. "Message of the week" seemed to have turned into project propaganda. One message said that a division had been making great strides with the new system and work processes, that they had improved their efficiency by something like an incredible 500%. It would make you think we had won World War III! But I remember some of the people from my division who were in regular contact with those in the "500% improvement division". Our people said they only heard complaining. 'It's taking us forever to get reports we need out of the computer.' 'Everything is upside down.' It was the same for another division. The communication said they had been doing really well in terms of business results, helped by the project. But we knew that they were circumventing all of the new work practices. So 'the project' couldn't be helping them.
It was like this everywhere. People were finding it really hard to adjust to the new software. They would read these communications and be thinking, 'this is a nightmare. We haven't won World War III; we're going down! What are they talking about?'
It got so bad that even when "Message of the Week" told of real successes, things that we really had achieved as a result of all of the effort, the credibility of the communication had become so low that people ignored the message. I'm trying to remember a "good" piece of news that I actually believed in, and I can't! This is despite the fact that I have been committed for the past 3 years to seeing the change effort be successful!
Part of this may be our culture. We seem to be more comfortable communicating 'sunshine and roses'. You know: 'be honest, but positive whenever you send a message like this out.' But more than that, when the good results just didn't 'happen', we started to feel a bit desperate in the face of some criticism. So we overplayed the positives to such an extent that they became unbelievable, regardless of whether they were real or imagined. So the skepticism grew, and this was really bad.
I suspect that any form of hoopla is a mistake.