Change! How well do you like change? Do you embrace it or loath it? In today’s world Change is as certain as death and taxes. Change is something that is part and parcel with what I do. From simple things like modifying someone’s workstation to complete redesign of the work process. How people act and react to change is something that should not be overlooked, even for relatively minor changes.
Case in point. One would think that helping an employee who is uncomfortable at their workstation by making a few modifications to their workstation with their input would be 100% embraced and accepted. However, experience has shown me that even though the employee may agree with the discussed changes while I am present, there are always a certain small percentage that will revert back to the way things were once I leave (or after a period of a few days) just because they were more “comfortable” being uncomfortable. You might call this a “very small scale change”.
Now compare this to a major departmental or organizational change. For example, I helped a warehouse/distribution client completely revamp their warehouse. What changed: the physical layout and the work process and work flow of picking, packing shipping, receiving and stocking. The impact of change to the warehouse employees was very high. The reaction by employees varied. Some loved the changes and quickly embraced the new flow; some were neutral, i.e. “this is fine, the other was fine too”; and some were resistant, i.e. “there was nothing wrong with the old way, in fact I think we should go back to the old way of doing things”. Well, there was no going back. Fortunately the resisters came on board relatively quickly because the new way truly was better—easier, more efficient and resulted in the highest productivity amount with lowest error rates ever. Within less than a month everyone was on board and happy with the changes.
Not every change happens as quickly nor results in the desired outcomes like the warehouse/distribution example above. Why is that? There are always two sides of change—1) the technical side of change where the processes, equipment, engineering, software, etc. changes are carefully planned, and 2) the people side of change, i.e. the human factors, where emotions, behaviors, perceptions, habits are often overlooked or considered not important. Project success often lies
Research done by PROSCI, has shown that the amount of project success is highly dependent on the inclusion of change management (CM). In the first graph below, projects that include excellent CM succeed 96% of the time, in contrast, only 16% of project succeed when CM is poor. Another impressive research study result showed that when excellent CM was included in project the percentage that stayed on or ahead of schedule were 72% compared to only 16% when CM was poor (see second graph below).
What does this mean? For projects large and small, whether IT deployments, lean initiatives, ergonomics implementations, etc., there is a need and a compelling business case to include some amount of change management. For high risk projects (those will high change impact in organizations that have a “culture of same”), including decision to include change management may well be the decision that results in success or failure.
Kelby Ergo Design is excited and proud to announce that we can help you not only with the technical side of change but also with the people side of change as Jill Kelby is now a certified PROSCI Change Management practitioner! We can help you design the change for people and process even more effectively.
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