It is widely known that management projects involving new information technology (viz ERP, CRM, SCM) fail for reasons unrelated to technical feasibility and reliability. The most common myth prevailing about such projects is what I call ‘Magic Bullet Theory’. It can be articulated as:

“Information Technology changes people and organizations by empowering them to do things they couldn’t do before and by preventing them from working in old, unproductive ways”.

Still, many IT-enabled reengineering and transformation projects fail, despite full knowledge about critical success factors, since it is assumed that the gun for this ‘magic bullet’ fires itself on its own. This gun is ‘change management’.

Failure to employ best change management practices in IT-enabled change stems from mistaken beliefs about the causes of change — belief in information technology as a magic bullet. Deeply held beliefs that IT can cause change on its own lead both business managers and IT specialists to restrict their own efforts as change agents. With everyone assuming that change management is the job of someone — or something — else, there is often no one left to perform change management tasks. Change then fails, and lack of learning about the root causes of failure promotes future failures.

I wish we had a magic bullet solution to this too common a problem. We do not. What I do have a few suggestions for breaking the vicious cycle.

Inducing Change
Success in IT-enabled transformation is more likely (yet still difficult) when everyone involved in initiating, designing, or building technology-enabled change accepts that IT is not a magic bullet. Good ideas and good designs together are not enough to ensure success. It requires change in human behavior. Change in human behavior cannot take place at a distance but requires direct personal contact with change targets. It is not sufficient to tell change targets how and why they have to change. Nor does it work only to explain a technology’s features and how to operate it. Change management involves listening, understanding, giving people a chance to learn and creating a learning environment. This change management activity must be done as an integral part of initiating, designing, and building technology-enabled change. It cannot safely be ignored, delegated to someone else, or deferred.

Advocating Change
This brings us to asking another pertinent question that – who should perform the change management role. We believe that it is folly to approach such a complex, dynamic, and chaotic process as IT- enabled organizational transformation as a linear sequence of tasks with defined roles and handoffs (especially when no one is lined up to play certain key roles). What happens if something changes? What happens if someone for any reason cannot or will not perform his or her scripted role? We can’t stand around hoping for better — that’s a losing game. Everyone needs to be ready to do whatever it takes. Change is everyone’s job. Our conclusion here is similar to a basic principle of total quality, where customer satisfaction is everyone’s “job one”; in IT-enabled transformation, change is everyone’s first priority.

Change Tactic
Behavioral flexibility is, we believe, a critical success factor in chaotic change processes. Sometimes the most effective tactic involves shocking people with evidence of the need for change, sometimes providing them with an attractive vision of how life could be better with change, and sometimes rewarding people for their efforts at change. Sometimes it will be giving people the opportunity, information, and resources to create their own change.
Successful change takes good ideas, skill, and plain hard work — but it does not need magic.

IT Consulting
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