Interesting post for Lesson 4 #2

This article focuses directly on IT staff training needs beyond just hard and soft skills, but what methods and techniques can be used to help motivate people in a changing environment.

http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/51072/

Interesting link related to lesson 4 reading

I thought this article talked about the points I raised concerning the missing focus on managing the people side of any type of organizational change.

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/rr00006?gko=643d0

Thoughts on lesson 4 reading

The hardest part of any change initiative, in my opinion, whether IT or other area, is how the people management aspects are handled.  The thing that jumped out at me is how little of the reading focused on that aspect of the issue.  In my experience it is more about people being worried about their jobs that gets in the way of change rather than complexities or relevant skills sets needed to implement change.  This manifests in 2 different ways

• Passive Resistance: The people who can best contribute to change initiatives, those that know best how things work now and what skills and technologies are available are the ones that are often most at risk.  They can be hard to motivate to contribute to change efforts, so they are less likely to help

o   This can potentially be addressed with abundant training in new technologies, giving opportunities in the new target state

• Nay sayers: These people are often not very good at their current jobs, but have found their niche in the current system.  They may have little to contribute to the target state efforts.

o   This can be partially addressed as above, but other avenues must be made available.  Providing early retirement or transfer opportunities are two possibilities.  One innovative approach from a high performing culture I found is a standing separation bonus for any employee to take advantage of.  The theory is that anyone who can be tempted to leave has not completely bought into the enterprises goals.

Both of the above can be minimized with initiatives related to employee morale and culture.  Including both of these things can help uniting staff in a common goal and helps with change execution.

I did find that two of the optional readings talked a little about this type of issue

•  “Five steps to a faster, better cheaper I&O” identifies the above as one of its identified Key Challenges

Key Challenge: “Achieving and sustaining changes in I&O team behavior is reported consistently as the most challenging aspect of I&O transformation.”

However, I did not see where the paper gave real concrete actions to take to address this issue.

It did allude to how organizations with a strength in some aspects of people management, lated to organizational structures and project management may have developed these at the cost of the wider culture.  This causes imbalance where the overall culture cannot embrace change.   This suggests that there is a link to the broader Enterprise Culture and skill sets to be able to successfully implemented improvements.

Additionally, the paper partially addressed the topic further by talking about the importance of developing and communicating a clear vision of the future state to include required resources and competencies.  This I believe gives people a clear idea of the possibilities they have to be involved in the future.

• “Strategic Technology Planning: Picking the Winners”

This article talks about more details of how new technologies can be brought into the organization, but again, only indirectly mentions the broader context of the organizations ability to change. 

It first addresses indirectly culture as it discusses the broad idea of categorizing enterprises into A, B and C types of “Technology Aggressiveness”.  This categorization seems to at least indirectly show how enterprise culture has an effect on its ability to change.

It later brings up a discussion of how new technologies can be transferred around the enterprise.  It talks about different strategies which can indirectly address the concerns I raise.  The concept of creating an advanced technology group (ATG) and defining various options for moving the technology into the enterprise.  It suggests including staff transfers, ass one such approach.  I believe this is an implementation of part of my theory above.