Early in my career, I learned some valuable lessons about why technology transformations sometimes fail. I was leading a consulting practice focused on downsizing mainframes to mid-range computers and had had success with several large enterprises.
I was reasonably certain that I could help an insurance company CIO move her mainframe systems to cheaper and more standard mid-range servers. However, as we got further into the project, odd technical issues kept cropping up and preventing connectivity between the old and new systems.
After a lot of analysis, I realized that the issues were always related to tasks assigned to a particular systems programmer. After even more analysis and discussion with the CIO, we realized that the programmer was likely ensuring that our tests would fail.
There were three lessons learned.
First, the programmer in question derived his status from his expert knowledge of the old system. He was the “top dog” technically in the organization. The new systems threatened his stature within the organization (and possibly his future employment). This is a common issue when transforming any organization – people are worried about losing something due the change - and very often that is tied to ego and stature, not just money and job security. Without clear communication, people start to assume that change is a threat, and react accordingly.
Second, what we needed to do was bring the "top dog" into the fold. He was extremely credible with his colleagues: what he said and did carried a lot of weight internally, so having him on side was crucial to the successful outcome of the project. How did we do that? Our solution was to make the expert in the old technology the expert in the new technology – to train him, to protect his stature within the organization and give him a starring role in the transformation.
The final lesson was one that’s been repeated many times in many situations. Transformation is not strictly about technology. Successful transformation is about synergy - people and technology working in concert to create a successful change.
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