When the whole country is behind a 74 year old man having an honest intension of eradicating corruption from an emerging economy, I was busy scheduling my trips around EU. The next time I spoke to my parents back in India, they were mentioning about the anti-corruption fire burning in India. Well, this blog is definitely not about the same issue and ‘my perspectives’ to it!
I thought it will be better for me to write about something which I have experienced over the past year at workplace and leave it to the reader’s imagination to link it up with the situations around rather than writing an entire booklet about the hottest topic around the world! I have been a Change Analyst since the last December where I am responsible to change the perceptions of people to adapt to a process oriented set up. Sounds easy? Yeah… but difficult on the ground! It is about changing the way of working for people who have seen things working without processes. It is about changing the thought process and turn around the way in which things have been working!
It was an exciting start early this year. The whole community of IT users came back to work after their Christmas of 2010 and what they see back at work? No more the same control, process, people to work with, etc. So, on a whole, a cultural shock to the way of working from what they saw before going home for Christmas! Not that they did not know about the change; but as a universal fact, things start affecting only when you start realizing it and relating yourself to it. As expected, there were agitations, unhappiness and an overall negative environment around.
As a department, IT came up with shit loads of documents and bombarded them on the business community. Acceptable? NO! Not at all! It was termed ‘being bureaucratic’ by the community! All they needed was people to hand hold them through the change. Having realised that, we went into a mode of conversation with them. All the agreements which were initially made during the time of design of this migration phase started to look void. There was a phase where the business community was literally shouting at the top of their voices against our actions!
Having seen the (over) reactions, we changed our approach of managing the change. We started speaking their language. Treated them as a child who understands the same thing said in a way he would expect. There we saw a connect! But, in the due course of this change, there were a lot of people who were very much against the process and decided to move on. Was it bad? Well, all I would say is that, I would have been a lot more happy if they had stayed for a few more months! The joy would have been their’s.
The movement of these old guys came as a blessing in disguise for we at IT. There came a fresh set of individuals with whom we could establish a better thought process and a better frequency resonance! In between all this, there was a Change catalyst among the business community who always took the pain under the wrong part of his body but stuck on to the new way of doing things. Having noticed all this over a couple of months, we opened up. Wide open to ideas; shifted from a mode of ‘We want this to happen in this way’ to ‘let us discuss and decide what is the best workable solution amongst the both of us and create a win-win platform’. There was the turn-around which we waited for a good 3-4 months! What I see today after a good 8 months spent on doing things at the ground level is a healthy environment which has so much agility and fun!
Having said that, I questioned myself - should we have been an open book from Day 1? I don’t think so! The situation has to be tackled exactly like moulding a child. The situation wouldn’t have been smooth after say 6 months if we had been an open book since Day 1. If your question is why, here goes the explanation. What will a child do when you don’t give him a boundary? Unknowingly he will get into a lot of troubles. There has to be a care taker initially telling the dos and don’ts. After that phase, give them a little bit of freedom and let them mould, learn on the ground, experience etc. A similar situation here…
Now, do you want to compare this with the situation around the nation? I shall leave it to you :)
I thought it will be better for me to write about something which I have experienced over the past year at workplace and leave it to the reader’s imagination to link it up with the situations around rather than writing an entire booklet about the hottest topic around the world! I have been a Change Analyst since the last December where I am responsible to change the perceptions of people to adapt to a process oriented set up. Sounds easy? Yeah… but difficult on the ground! It is about changing the way of working for people who have seen things working without processes. It is about changing the thought process and turn around the way in which things have been working!
It was an exciting start early this year. The whole community of IT users came back to work after their Christmas of 2010 and what they see back at work? No more the same control, process, people to work with, etc. So, on a whole, a cultural shock to the way of working from what they saw before going home for Christmas! Not that they did not know about the change; but as a universal fact, things start affecting only when you start realizing it and relating yourself to it. As expected, there were agitations, unhappiness and an overall negative environment around.
As a department, IT came up with shit loads of documents and bombarded them on the business community. Acceptable? NO! Not at all! It was termed ‘being bureaucratic’ by the community! All they needed was people to hand hold them through the change. Having realised that, we went into a mode of conversation with them. All the agreements which were initially made during the time of design of this migration phase started to look void. There was a phase where the business community was literally shouting at the top of their voices against our actions!
Having seen the (over) reactions, we changed our approach of managing the change. We started speaking their language. Treated them as a child who understands the same thing said in a way he would expect. There we saw a connect! But, in the due course of this change, there were a lot of people who were very much against the process and decided to move on. Was it bad? Well, all I would say is that, I would have been a lot more happy if they had stayed for a few more months! The joy would have been their’s.
The movement of these old guys came as a blessing in disguise for we at IT. There came a fresh set of individuals with whom we could establish a better thought process and a better frequency resonance! In between all this, there was a Change catalyst among the business community who always took the pain under the wrong part of his body but stuck on to the new way of doing things. Having noticed all this over a couple of months, we opened up. Wide open to ideas; shifted from a mode of ‘We want this to happen in this way’ to ‘let us discuss and decide what is the best workable solution amongst the both of us and create a win-win platform’. There was the turn-around which we waited for a good 3-4 months! What I see today after a good 8 months spent on doing things at the ground level is a healthy environment which has so much agility and fun!
Having said that, I questioned myself - should we have been an open book from Day 1? I don’t think so! The situation has to be tackled exactly like moulding a child. The situation wouldn’t have been smooth after say 6 months if we had been an open book since Day 1. If your question is why, here goes the explanation. What will a child do when you don’t give him a boundary? Unknowingly he will get into a lot of troubles. There has to be a care taker initially telling the dos and don’ts. After that phase, give them a little bit of freedom and let them mould, learn on the ground, experience etc. A similar situation here…
Now, do you want to compare this with the situation around the nation? I shall leave it to you :)
