THE PEOPLE SIDE OF BUSINESS REENGINEERING

THE PEOPLE SIDE OF BUSINESS REENGINEERING: THE KEY SUCCESS ELEMENT

by: Jeanenne LaMarsh
LaMarsh & Associates, Inc.

Everyone knows that reengineering is about processes. To the great relief of many workers, the focus is taken off of them and
put on the work.

"Let's not blame people, let's look at where the process failed."

"If there is a problem, it's because the process is broken. The people are doing their best to make it work."

The workers knew these things all along, they are pleased that you have finally figured that out!

So, if we are going to change the processes, improve them, fix them, the workforce should be happy. Right? Well, there is a
problem. The workforce is people and reengineering the processes means change and people have a lot of problems with
change. Any reengineering project that does not factor in the difficulties people have with change and address the change
issues in a systematic, structured way, is doomed to fail.

Why, if we are fixing what they wanted fixed would the workforce resist these changes? Several possibilities exist:

THE FUTURE STATE OF CHANGE

They may want change, but not necessarily the changes in the plan. They may have their own ideas about what should change,
and frequently it revolves around someone else changing, not them.

THE CURRENT STATE OF CHANGE

While the new way of working may be much better, workers don't see that there is that much wrong with the current way of
working. They may see the way to make things better as just adjusting and manipulating what they do today, not the drastic
and wrenching changes in the plan.

THE DELTA STATE OF CHANGE

The new way may appear highly desirable, and the current way very unsatisfactory, but the process of going from here to
there, the process of changing, looks too hard, will take too much energy, and is confusing and frightening. Moreover, it may
appear that there are not enough resources of time, people and money.

BPR uses a rigorous and disciplined methodology to identify the current state, determine the optimum future state, and design
an implementation plan. Too often, however, this methodology ignores these human resistance issues and the need to address
them in the implementation plan. When that happens, people who are targets of the change end up expending the majority of
their time and energy figuring out how to stop the change, or change it until it looks like something they can live with, not
what the engineers developed. This is how reengineering fails.

What can we do about this problem? If we are thoughtful and listen well, the targets of the change will tell us what to do.

THE FUTURE STATE

If the problem is that the desired state is not very desirable we need to find out why. Are the targets making this judgment
based on incomplete information? Then communication is the key. Is the problem that as the targets look closely at the
change they see some things that, from their perspective, are not very desirable? For example, maybe now they will have to
work in partnership with the purchasing department.

After all these years of blaming that group for all the problems, they may have some pretty strong opinions about the skills,
knowledge and personal characteristics of purchasing. Now you want them to work with those people? It will never work.
They see purchasing as a group that makes life worse, not better. They see themselves having to expend tremendous amounts
of energy and resources to compensate for the deficiencies in purchasing. They would be much better off staying the way
they are. The new way will never work.

While communication may help a little here, what is called for is changing the perspective people have about purchasing
through education and providing both departments with the skills to integrate with people they have up until now seen so
negatively. As they move towards that cooperative working environment, they need to see that there are rewards for
changing. In other words, 'what's in it for them?'

THE CURRENT STATE

When the problem is that the current state just doesn't seem that bad and the question is why go through all this effort, the
change agents, those engineers planning the change, need to communicate the why - in the language and from the perspective
of the worker. Many companies have gone to the well too often with bad or incomplete information. If every year the
workers have heard the same message, "we need to change or we will go out of business," but every year they continue to be
employed, they distrust the message.

Go back and check those messages from previous years. Were they an honest and accurate appraisal of the company's
situation? Were they designed for understanding by the workforce and to engage people as partners in change or were they
really targeted to Wall Street or to scare the workforce into accepting change with incomplete or even inaccurate data?

Sometimes, the first step in getting people to accept the need to change is to educate them about the state of the business and
how to understand what the current state is. In addition, they need to clearly see how their current rewards in the form of
paychecks, job stability, and reinforcement for the current way they do their job is going away in the marketplace. The
worker needs to know the real situation. What are the rewards in terms of performance reviews, merit increases and
promotions that would keep people operating in the current state? These rewards need to be systematically removed when
they are rewarding behaviors, actions, processes, and results that will not support the new environment.

THE DELTA STATE

These two steps, defining the future state and showing the dangers in the current state are not enough, however. Even the
most committed workers will find it difficult to go through the delta of change required in a reengineering effort. Therefore,
it is critical to build into the implementation plan attention to the three change elements that have surfaced in this discussion:
communication, education/training, and rewards/reinforcements.

Companies and people have no choice: they must change to survive. They do have a choice, however, in how they change.
Deciding to manage change by applying an organized, structured methodology is the clear choice of successful companies.
When they do this, changes are implemented faster, cheaper, and with a minimum of pain and disruption to people. Since
every company is struggling to make changes, those that can do it successfully have a strong edge over their competitors who
struggle and often fail. Change management is a key factor in making the changes from business process reengineering
successful.

Jeanenne LaMarsh
LaMarsh & Associates, Inc.
Jeanenne LaMarsh, president of LaMarsh & Associates, is the author of Changing The Way We Change, a how-to book that includes assessment instruments, tools, and thoughtful discussions about how to manage major change. Building a structured plan to identify the key change issues that result from business process reengineering and developing the strategies and tactics to address them is the work of LaMarsh & Associates. Jeanenne's book is based on her twenty years of experience in a variety of change implementations for companies such as Ford Motor, American Express Financial Services, AT&T, and Compaq Computer Corporation.
LaMarsh & Associates can be reached at lamarsh@aol.com or 847-657-7895 or 847-657-7330 (fax).

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