CIO Studio founder Ray Delany recently wrote an article about helping teams accept change, with some core advice on bringing people along with change projects. Go check it out if you haven’t already read it.
This week I thought I’d dive into this again, given it’s such an important topic, with some thoughts on how we at CIO Studio help organisations bring their staff along on the journey.
Why is change so hard for people?
Let’s be honest, the change or upgrade of a core IT system or technology platform in any organisation means disruption.
When I’m managing a significant technology change, the people - and how well they will jump on board - is always a core part of planning. Often people struggle with change and it’s not that they’re being difficult; it's simply that change is actually really hard!
On a personal level, I recently had the challenge of using Gmail. Honestly, you would have thought I’d gone from driving a Vespa to piloting an A380, such was my resistance and frustration that it didn’t operate exactly the same way as Outlook, which I was used to.
As is often the case, it wasn’t necessarily a better or worse experience overall – just different. But that was enough to trigger an irrational level of frustration with the change.
That’s just email, a pretty standard pattern and workflow with fairly minor interface-level differences between different platforms. But multiply that by core systems in a business and it’s a whole new level of change and anxiety.
And often it’s not just the change - staff impacted still have to do their day jobs of course, as well as taking on all the stress and responsibility of being on the project team which is implementing a new system.
We’ve often seen genuine confusion from management as to why their people have ended up resisting or pushing against change – after all, shouldn’t it make life easier for them?
But it’s not really that surprising when you think about it.
Less visible reasons to push against change
On top of the more obvious reasons above, there are some more subtle – but every bit as real – reasons sometimes people push against change.
One is a kind of “castle expert syndrome”:
There are a lot of businesses out there who have bespoke (i.e. custom built) systems developed for them years ago, or off-the-shelf stuff that is no longer supported. They have relied on the developer of that system for sometimes decades as they keep making “improvements” to their system.
So now they have a system, usually without documentation, built ages ago and with lots of “bolted on” functionality. This might sound familiar to some readers!
Very few people know anything about the system technically. The developer has either long-since disappeared or, surprise! They’re now ready for retirement.
In this environment, often there are "Subject Matter Experts” within the company with great knowledge of the legacy system. They’re the people who make it hum and do things with it that nobody else can – the expert in the castle.
Change the walls in the castle, and they might think their value has diminished. In fact, are they needed at all anymore? Hence a perceived “loss of power” is at play here.
What happens in reality
The castle experts, and plenty of others, might have initial negative perspectives of a change. They might think their job is at risk and if nothing else, they think they may no longer hold the same value to the company.
Whilst it’s true that there are sometimes reductions in headcount, the far more common scenario in an SME is an increase in the value of the work the same staff do. Rather than doing basic, repetitive low-value but important tasks, technology can take care of that and they end up spending their time on far more meaningful – and valuable – activities for the company.
We see the same thing at an industry-wide level when technology brings about change. Xero disrupted accounting in New Zealand, however, there are today more accountants than ever, and they’re generally making more money than ever. Xero took over the basic bookkeeping function, meaning accountants focused on higher-value activities. It’s the same thing within other businesses.
How do you manage the people side?
So, there’s change happening, and you have “castle experts” who are worried about the implications to their own value in the company.
The reality is the castle experts are massively valuable assets – now and into the future. They understand how things work and, if nurtured and supported well, will be crucial to a successful implementation of change – at which point their concerns around value will rapidly evaporate.
A skilled leader will coach them to elicit a positive response to change, rather than a defensive response where they just won’t budge, or worse, up and leave.
But let’s be honest – it ain’t easy.
On one hand, the company is getting their head around the change itself – how to ensure that their technology decisions will lead to the most value from their investment. Then there’s the actual implementation itself!
On the other, they might be trying to manage some key internal people who are implicitly against the change.
That’s where a good CIO comes in – one with experience leading such changes, an understanding of the people aspect, and the ability to help the team understand just how valuable they will become to the company once they’ve helped make the change a reality.
The difference an experienced CIO can make
Frankly, you can’t overstate the value an experienced strategic tech change leader will make to the success of a technology change project. It seems obvious, but so many think they can just “go it alone” and simply follow the advice of a product vendor.
Or worse, just leave it to the vendor to implement.
That approach just doesn’t work.
The tech sector’s shocking project failure stats paint a good picture of why this isn’t such a good idea. A surprisingly high proportion of technology failures are actually people failures, down to those overseeing technology change projects missing the experience or expertise necessary to bring people along on the journey.
This is why a good CIO – or team of strategic tech leaders – is so crucial. They understand both the tech and the people side of change management.
It’ll surprise nobody that I think CIO Studio’s model deals with this problem well.
Essentially, we’re a team of highly experienced strategic tech specialists who have managed many successful change projects, individually and in teams, and have the battle scars to prove it.
Here is what we do. From the initial review, to full implementation, to keeping things moving forward the rest of the time – CIO Studio provides the expertise only a team of specialists can bring, at a fraction of the cost of trying to build that team internally (even if only a team of one!).
But however you do it, it’s really important to ensure your change project is led by those who understand both technology and people to get the most out of both.
Angela Whittle is a Core Advisor for CIO Studio and has been involved in overseeing different aspects of numerous technology change projects. Feel free to reach out to Angela or any member of the team to discuss how we can help your company navigate technology change.
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