Change…no easy thing (part 1)

Change…no easy thing (part 1)

Change can be a tricky thing. While change is usually brought about in an effort to better the organization, change introduces ambiguity into the worker’s environment, which can then cause resistance. You could propose to an organization a change that will save it $1 million, but if the people within the organization do not get behind this and support it, the change will fail.

I read an article that said one of the five steps for MPS success is balancing device capability with change management. Surprisingly, I don’t read a lot about change management in relation to managed print services. A quick Google search reveals very few articles that target this exact subject. In the 2009 North American MPS Decision Maker Tracking Study, it has been shown that people are the least satisfied with vendors change management program. The problem with this statistic is it is actual the people in the organization that change, not the organization itself.

The key to effective change management is to consider the individuals that make up the organization. A great example of this is a story I read years ago.

A company was started that focused on writing books for elementary school teachers that would help them teach K-3 students. The books would help teachers explain colors, letters, and numbers to kids in the most effective way. The company was successful and after a few years the owners retired and sold the company to an entrepreneur. He wanted the company to grow larger and faster than it had, and realized it could do this if they increased the output. Once he took over, he increased the sales and distribution, upgraded the production process and hired researchers to develop ideas for new books. He then set delivery dates for all of his new customers. Unfortunately, those dates were continuously missed. This caused the new customers to find other vendors.

Frustrated the owner set in a writers’ meeting to try and figure out where the delay was. He was amazed to find out that the writers discussed how to convey the color green for three hours. The writers could not decide if grass or frogs would be the best method. The owner didn’t understand the importance. Who cared if they used frogs or grass as long as it was green? He pressured them to write faster and produce more books, but the writers said they could not rush quality and that is what the business was built on. The writers were unconcerned about the money, they were writing these books because they felt it was noble work to help in the process of educating children. This constant argument between the owner and the writers caused deadlines to be missed, money lost and declining morale on the part of the writers.

The point of this story is that while the owner had the right idea, who doesn’t want a profitable business, the process he went about to implement his idea was all wrong. He didn’t care what the writers wanted or how they felt. Unfortunately for him, the writers produce the product so without their work the business could not succeed.

There are eight common reasons that people resist change, and I think that seven of those would apply to a managed print service change. Come back next week to find out what those are!

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