ADDRESSING CULTURAL CHANGE IN AN EVER CHANGING WORK ENVIRONMENT
The nature of work is changing rapidly as the impacts of a global market shifts to an information-based economy, increasingly complex skills requirements and unprecedented growth is felt by all corporate and government agencies.
At a time when processes, procedures, information technology, and even terminology changes are fast moving and ever changing, we often are successful at the implementation of change, but fail at acceptance by the users, which often leads to failure. Perhaps the most rapid change is technology. Do you remember writing letters by hand, putting them in an envelope and putting a stamp and mailing it. Then waiting 2 weeks for a reply? Postage meters? Holey Joes? Phones that actually plugged into the wall? For those of you in the over 40 crowd, do you remember the good old days when you left your office and didn’t worry about missed calls? You knew they’d be on your answering machine the next day. You didn’t take your work home with you!
Times have changed. Even terminology and the way we write have changed. We’ve gone from Governmentese to Plain language. We’ve gone from using good grammar to using acronyms for everything. It used to be that only the federal government used acronyms, now they’ve even entered our everyday writing as we text from phone to phone.
But I digress…..Let’s talk about cultural change. In the context of this briefing, when referring to cultural change, we include cultural capital (attitudes that influence behavior), social norms (social norms within the organization), and the process of behavior normalization (where behavior and actions become the social norm). Cultural change transformation may require changes in organization practices, physical environments, relationships at all levels of the workforce. Culture change is difficult and time consuming because "culture" is rooted in the collective history of an organization, and because so much of it is below the surface of awareness. For example, in the US military, clear lines of chain of command are drawn and subordinates follow orders (usually without question). This is the accepted culture. In most federal agencies there are similarities. Chain of command is usually clear and most of the time subordinates follow orders (or directions if you prefer), but sometimes the direction is questioned and this is the accepted culture.
It is sometimes confusing, especially for those of us that were used to carrying out orders without question. Some people are very order/rule driven others are more questioning and free form. The social norm would depend on how that organization normally operates. I don’t think an employee that worked for Google where they have a very free reign, creative, loose work environment would adapt immediately to being a soldier. Their behavior would have to be “normalized” to the new environment. This would be a “cultural change”. Conversely, within organizations, sometimes we have to change the social norm within the current organization. Some businesses are very successful at accomplishing this, others aren’t. The ones that are successful address cultural change by understanding current organization core values and beliefs, respecting and acknowledging these values, and including employees in the change. They establish new social norms and over time the new behavior becomes accepted and normalized.
Cultural change today usually includes some sort of technology upgrade. Smarter Technology is about working smarter to get the maximum benefit for your organization. Technology change is not new. Remember when you actually had to get up to change the channel on your TV? How many of you know how to use a compass? Would you get lost without your GPS?
Change affects the work processes and training needs of employees. Other organizational effects can be broad and far-reaching, or they could be limited to restructuring and realigning service access points, in any case, employees need to feel involved in change. Employees that feel as though they have a say and that their opinions are valued will more likely accept change. Acceptance of change increases the likelihood that the change will be successful. As successes mobilize employee interest and support, organizations can use the experience as a foundation for implementing core changes in the way they do business.
The three most important elements for creating organizational cultural change are inclusion, management support, and training.
o Inclusion: Employee “buy in” is critical to successful change. Those that feel part of a change are more likely to promote and feel ownership of the change, which increases the potential for success of the change.
o Management support: Managers must support the cultural change, and in ways beyond verbal support. Managers must lead the change by changing their own behaviors. Leadership and vision from senior management is a requirement.
o Training: Culture change depends on behavior change. Employees must clearly understand what is expected of them, and must know how to actually perform the new behaviors once they have been defined and implemented. Training can be very useful in both communicating expectations and teaching new behaviors.
Change represents a fundamental shift in the way in which we do business and strong leadership is required to see the effort through to fruition. Management’s decision to implement or not to implement a recommendation is their implied assumption of any risk associated with the decision. Funding is critical to success!
Adequate funding – A well-conceived approach to automation is meaningless without a realistic plan for paying for it. This entails:
o Determining who will pay
o Planning for operating and capital funds (how will the system be maintained?)
o Timely policy decisions – The project will be severely delayed if key policies are not addressed, including:
§ Requirements for use of a common system, or at a minimum common definitions of concepts, terms, and data
§ The Use/role of existing systems
· Ownership and Maintenance - One critical concern revolves around the question - Who is the “program manager”? Policy decisions must be carried out and maintained by someone. Many initiatives have failed long-term because the implementation team for the initiative was temporary or inadequately funded to maintain the systems developed.
· Effective management – The project requires capable day-to-day oversight and supportive management processes, including:
o Governance that balances customer and system-wide needs
o A viable communication plan
o Solid implementation management
· Understanding stakeholder needs. As they attempt to make collective decisions, the desire to maintain local autonomy may be in conflict with the hope for coordinated pursuit of the vision. The fallout is that major decisions regarding automation may remain pending. Evaluating the reality of these divergent interests will require:
o An evaluation of processes in light of the changing needs of the workforce and the System.
o Change in the business processes, including the way employees view and perform their work.
· A shared common vision for the scope of the System. Stakeholder and customer views typically vary widely regarding the scope and requirements of the system.
Any efforts put forth on an agency wide basis must adhere to a common vision and the need to evaluate the perceived uniqueness of the customer’s needs. Customer interests vary widely in part because of available funding and resources. The decision-makers must consider how customers’ respective technology expenditures will be supplemented. Needs and implementation of those needs must be prioritized to allow for the divergent interests.
Case Study: AITS 3.1
In August 2010, the FAA began defining requirements to upgrade their accounting system to better account for personal property assets. This included a total change in the way assets reported as excess were handled.
The FAA has two accounting systems. One is the accountable system of record, called AITS and the other is a property management system called USD. In short, property is reported as excess in AITS, transmitted to USD, and USD forwards the report of excess to GSAXcess. Property Custodians work in AITS, Property Disposal Officers work in USD. The primary reasons for the changes made in the AITS accounting system were that the FAA did not have closed loop accounting for property reported as excess. Records were archived when the property was reported as excess by the property custodian. This created a gap in the accounting loop and gave the appearance that the agency had disposed of property; when in fact it was still in the possession of the agency and had simply been reported as excess. Although the record closed in AITS, it remained open in USD until the Property Disposal Officer closed it, which they cannot do until they received signed copies of the final disposition documents. Our Property Disposal Officers were constantly complaining that property custodians were not providing them with final disposition documents in a timely manner, if at all. One of the major changes in AITS 3.1 was that the property custodians were now required to scan and upload final disposition documents in order to close out records in their inventory and the documents were electronically sent to the Property Disposal Officers so they could close the records in the property management system. So, after identifying the problem, developing programming requirements, informing the Property Disposal Officer of the change, and performing user testing, the system was deployed. We did everything right. Right?????
Then we hit the proverbial “brick wall”. Question after question, protest after protest. Why did we do it this way? Why not do it that way? Who is supposed to do this? Who is supposed to do that? Why wasn’t the field consulted? Everyone was reacting instead of implementing.
We thought we’d done it all right. We notified the Property Disposal Officers of the impending change. In addition to others, we had two PDOs perform testing (they were relatively new in their positions and not “ingrained” in the “way we’ve always done it”, they were open to the change). Yet, in the end, some Property Disposal Officers felt threatened in that property custodians were uploading the final disposition documents before the property disposal officers got to review them for accuracy. Some felt their jobs were threatened and that they were being phased out. We were a bit confused. They made a complaint, we addressed it, and they complained about the way we addressed it! Ultimately, we had failed to address the cultural change of the majority of the system users and did not have employee buy-in. They did not feel “included” in the development of the change. They were not prepared for the change
We had failed to address the cultural change and did not have employee buy-in.
As we reviewed our processes we saw that we had held monthly telcons notifying one group that change was coming, but we never really described the change in detail or asked for input on either the methodology or the potential impact. We also failed to notify the employees that would have the most impact that the change was coming and we failed to develop any type of training. There was no single program manager responsible for ensuring this happened. Everyone assumed each “group” would notify those impacted. The end result was resistance and severe criticism that impeded the success of the deployment of the new system.
The lessons learned prompted us to make the following recommendations for future technology changes:
Leadership. Getting management support for the technological change is critical. We should have involved the regional managers and allowed them input to the proposed changes before we implemented them. It's important to involve managers and have them openly support the change from the very beginning and throughout the entire project. Pull them in throughout the project to reinforce their support.
Communication. You can never communicate enough about the change! Share information with all stakeholders. It's important to communicate -- and even over communicate. Develop a schedule of the types of communication that will occur (conference calls, meetings, e-mail updates about the project, etc.) and who will be involved in those communications and make the information available to all stakeholders.
End-user involvement – Involve those affected by the change or those who use the old and new technologies. They need to be actively involved in the project from the very beginning to the end. Allow them input and consider their suggestions and recommendations. Make sure the right folks test the system prior to final deployment.
Training & Education. Develop a training plan and educate employees about the change. People need to understand why the change is occurring and how it will affect their jobs. Fear of being replaced by technology is a valid concern and oftentimes makes employees resistant to change. We didn’t assure employees that these new processes would increase inventory accuracy and allow them to focus on other aspects of their jobs.
For future technology change we recommend:
Funding
• Ensure adequate funding not only for development and deployment but also for maintenance.
Ø Inevitably something will need to be enhanced after deployment
Roles
• Assign a single Program Manager with the authority to make decisions.
Ø When seeking input from several sources, you will get several opinions, someone needs to have the authority and ability to make final decisions.