Culture of Change

As the source of change becomes broader, accommodating changes to our business model becomes more complex. The change impact is also reaching down further into the business model requiring a response at the individual and personal level. It is starting to impact our personal identity. The answer to the question “Who Am I?” keeps changing. This is normal but still emotional when experienced.

Acculturation techniques can be applied to “Managing Change” projects with good results. As applied to managing change, the focus of the acculturation techniques turns from one of ethnic cultures, to the cultures of different groups, organizations, and situations. The techniques focus on addressing the impact of change to each group member’s personal identity, analyzing the emotion this causes, and developing a strategy that aligns the groups’ emotion and generates energy for the change.

The Sustainability Model emphasizes both the interdependency of the 3 pillars as well as the issues involved with the integration of the pillars. Even though current emphasis on this model is toward the Environment, it still frames the impact possible solutions will have on the Society and the Economy. I applied that concept to the 3 components of an Information Technology project as depicted in accompanying figure. This depicts the equal importance of People issues to business success and how the knowledge transfer of cultural awareness and diversity skills can assist in achieving a successful IT Project.

In the remainder of the article I will provide an overview on the trends that are driving the application of cultural awareness and diversity skills toward Change Management. My focus will be at the executive and strategic level. I will focus on the internal aspect of Change Management and its impact on Project Management. As stated earlier this perspective is equally helpful in the development of Business Intelligence applications by focusing on the external aspect of Change Management. However, that would take more dialogue and may be covered in another article.

Trend to a Global Economy

More dimensions are being added to our economy and way of life. There is more of a global impact and increasing complexity along with more technology being applied in response to the new solutions. Sometimes our response may be a bit too complex or not quite understood which leads to unexpected consequences. The new change incentives will impact more situations, organizations and groups than previous change incentives. As our responses to the new opportunities become integrated into more aspects of our way of life, the impact on involved cultures (groups) will also continue to grow. As the impact grows the change requirements also go deeper into the organization. All the way down to the individual. This has the consequence of making a big impact on the individual’s personal Identity.

Trend to More Technology

Initial application of computer technology solutions to the business model had a focus on Efficiency. Processes that had been done manually before were now being supported and made more efficient with technology. Most of the changes in this initial stage of the Computer Technology industry were applied toward the operational level of an organization, and the increase in efficiency was usually easy to identify which made the choice of more technology an easier one to make. There was little impact to a person’s identity, other than they were getting more “Hi Tech”. However as technology projects moved up the organization chart the resistance to these changes started to increase.

Technology was not only being used to automate operations, it also automated management functions and supported executive functions. Technology not only increased the pace and frequency of change management, it impacted the complexity of being a manager and executive. Management cultures changed from an intuitive driven, event based approach, to a data driven, goal oriented approach. This started to impact the identity of a “Good Manager”.

Previously, a good manager had great “gut instincts” and good intuition. Intuition was still a good characteristic, however, now it needed to be combined with “data driven decision making” and not gut instincts. At that time, managers and executives had a difficult time identifying with this type of management. It was not aligned with the Management Culture that they knew. They had a huge investment in learning and excelling in the old Management Culture.

Early technology projects had focused on improving the efficiency of an organization. As the pace and impact of technology increased, projects started to address improving effectiveness and adding innovation. Efficiency was easier to cost justify, you add up the “costs/benefits” or “plusses/minuses” and see what wins. Determining effectiveness generally introduces more unknowns that have to be estimated, and therefore more risk is introduced. With Innovation you are changing Status Quo, and now we are back to impacting the Culture of how things have been done before and to the investment the organization has in the old Culture.