Beyond Communication and Training: Human Change Management
by Wayne and Eileen Strider 
 
Resistance to change and lack of buy-in is high on the list of
major challenges to enterprise application projects such as ERP.
Integration firms who offer to manage ERP projects attempt to
deal with resistance by adding "change management" activities
to their project plans.  What they mean is human change
management not software change management.  Mostly these
activities amount to keeping the organization informed
(i.e., communications) and training users on how to use the
new applications.

Done well communication and training have some, perhaps
positive, impact on buy-in, but are not sufficient to overcome
resistance.  Done poorly they can actually increase resistance
and sabotage buy-in.

To deal effectively with resistance to change and achieve
organizational buy-in you must go beyond communication and
training.  Real organizational buy-in starts at the top with
executives before communication and training plans are
penned.

Below is a brief summary of the kinds of human change
management activities we think are required that go beyond
typical communications and training.  If you are experiencing
resistance and lack of buy-in with your ERP project it is likely
because one or more of these activities has not been
accomplished.

-Provide coaching and support for executives as they define
and perform their roles as project sponsors because
organizational buy-in and support starts at the top.

-Set up the decision-making process and structure so that it
includes the right stakeholders at the right level in the
organization with appropriate accountibility. Monitor the
process to assure that decisions are being made at the right
level and that follow through is adequate.

-Executive management must build cascading organizational
buy-in and support from key leaders as early as possible in
the project life cycle.  Those leaders in turn foster more
buy-in throughout the organization because change happens
one person at a time.

-Executive management and Human Resources should
produce guiding principles that teams of key managers and
representatives from business process teams will use as
they design new organization structures, roles and
responsibilities, skill requirements, and implementation
plans.  Guiding principles assure consistency of purpose
and equitable treatment among constituencies.

-Address real problems and resistance respectfully without
blame.  Be realistic about what is doable and what is a
stretch--in the context of your organization's culture and
norms.

-Keep the content of your communication straight not spun.
Your communication activities should be audience
appropriate with feedback mechanisms that encourage
two-way communication.  The format should be both
business oriented (i.e., how this will affect our business?)
and project oriented (i.e., we are on schedule and on budget?)

-Allow teams to test the feasibility of business process
changes before the changes become frozen in concrete.
The information learned from this activity will help you
make better process change decisions and will improve
the quality of subsequent communications, education,
and training.

-IT management and Human Resources should develop
a plan for managing the many IT organizational, people,
and process issues that arise post go-live when the
project ends-issues such retiring legacy applications,
returning project staff to the IT and functional organizations,
transferring knowledge, and transitioning applications
from development to production support.

The above activities done proactively in a planful way
will reduce resistance and increase organizational buy-in.
Done as an afterthought they will be more difficult, but, it
is never too late to do them.

If you would like to learn more about how to do the above
activities, please let us know.  
We would be happy to confer with you.  
Drop us an email:

 
Strider & Cline, Inc. Maximum Value Newsletter Vol. 2004
No. 2