5 Reasons for Internal Resistance within Organizations for ICT Automation

Technological revolutions transform organizations. In recent times, it has been the ICT (Information Communications Technology) enablement that has lead the transformations within organizations.

Strategists suggest that ICT enablement is an ongoing process and it is about a series of consistent organizational transformations to leverage technology (for increasing productivity of organizations). Therefore, many experts insist on building inherent capability within organizations to keep on seamlessly adopting the changing ICT technologies.

But, adoption of ICT by any organization is not that easy. ICT Project Managers will tell you that for almost all the major ICT enablement projects, in between the push from management and pull from customers in favor of the project, there is a persistent internal resistance within the organization (undergoing transformation) throughout the life cycle of the project.

Moreover, it is observed that ICT projects are perceived to be more of a technology affair ever since its inception till its completion. And, in the process of ICT enablement, Change Management is not given the due importance. Change Management is at the best considered to be an internal capacity building exercise comprising of training (or at times hand-holding support) the existing employees to work with the newly installed systems.

In planning of the ICT lead transformation of organizations, what is grossly overlooked is the fact that organizations are run by people. If apprehensions in the minds of people (running the organization) are NOT adequately addressed, it results in internal resistance towards changes brought about by organizational transformation (through ICT enablement). Therefore, it is important to understand, what makes people resistive to change. My personal take on why people have a general tendency to resist ICT enablement at workplace are listed as under:-

1.      ICT Introduces Measurement – To indicate towards the fact that a lot of productive time gets wasted in the name of trivial things, it is so said that ‘In office meetings, hours are spent and minutes are recorded’.  Actually this is generally true for many aspects of office culture and meetings are no exception. Putting systems to monitor different aspects of official work puts a way to measure many of such tasks, which may be picked to supplement performance of employees. Prior to installation of ICT systems, people are used to be working in an environment, where only the supervisor assesses their assigned work for measurement of performance. Therefore, employees generally feel that computerization is taking them from a relatively free environment to little restrictive environment.

Moreover, measurements can become input to metric system used to derive different indicators about the health of any department (or section / sub-section) and may be compared with respect to other departments or against standard data for similar departments in other organizations.      

2.      ICT Limits Discretionary Power – Many employees are accustomed to using their personal discretion in matters related to (say) service provisioning or decision making on the behalf of organization (and these employees may be quite judicious while using their discretionary powers). ICT automation reduces instances when discretion of any office bearer would be required. And for the cases discretion is required, rational use of discretion may need to be established in the light of data captured by various systems. .

    

3.      ICT introduces Non-repudiation – Evidence stored in various server logs and various databases of the organizations (with authentication/authorization and with time stamp) makes non-repudiation assured to greater extent than physical files or physical registers managed by humans.

4.      ICT Curtails Positional Advantage – Usually people enjoy many advantages by holding a position within an organization. Such advantages stretch from social recognition to advantage of access to first-hand information. It is widely believed that computerization reduces asymmetry of information within an organization and at the same time reduces number of persons who approach to office bearers for services.   

5.      ICT Increases Role of Experts in Decision Making – ICT can be exploited to the best if it can be used to process information to create knowledge. To have the capability to process information captured within an organization and correlate with the external information (domain specific nitty-gritty, industry specific trends and information on market conditions on supporting facilities like (say) finance, human resources) requires contributions from external expertise. Howsoever polite, such expert interventions in the sphere of line management may seem, it may not always go well with the traditional way of decision making in traditional set-up.   

In the end, I feel that one word that can sum-up the above five points could be CONTROL. With the introduction of ICT enablement it is the control that employees feel they may be losing to machines. And, if the organizational change managers may take this into account, while designing change management plan, may be ICT projects may go much smoothly.   

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Two Points on Good Execution

“Be it a vision, a mission, a strategy or a plan, in the end, it is the execution that makes it happen”

Companies put every possible bit in place to make execution succeed. It is widely believed that one of the key attributes for achieving sustainable competitive advantage is excellence in execution capability.

However, it is observed that different departments of an organization have different perceptions, ways and methodologies for making the execution successful for instance – Quality Consultants insist on strict adherence with standard processes for ensuring a perfect execution or (say) Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) suggest mastering the domain specific dynamics can make execution successful.

But, howsoever good the strategy be and howsoever good the synchronized efforts of all the departments function to create a flawless support mechanism to facilitate smooth execution, eventually, the onus to perform for intended results comes to the Core Execution Team.

A team comprises of individuals committed towards achieving a common goal.  Therefore, it is important for every member of a team to streamline individual efforts keeping in view the shared interest of the team.

Contribution made by a cohesive and coherent team is much more than sum of individual contributions put-up by its team-members. This is so, because shared values, mutual trust and collective recognition drives each team member to apply herself / himself to a greater extent for achieving common goals.

What makes a team of professionals stand out? What should a team leader do to elevate the performance of its team to highest possible levels? These are among the common questions, which usually keep on getting repeated during informal discussions among professionals belonging to any field, any level and any region.

Here is my take on the topic, the two things that I consider most important in making the team perform to the best of its potential are:-

1.     Clarity – Clarity in the minds of team-members on questions like:

a.     What exactly a team member needs to do?

b.     What other team members are supposed to do?

c.      What exactly is the goal?

d.     What is the evaluation criteria for the team and for individuals?

2.     Consensus - Consensus among the team members on issues like:

a.     How can the goals be achieved?

b.    What makes just and fair approach for the individual interest and for the interest of the team?

c.     Reward mechanism

d.    The vision, the mission and future prospects of the team

Clarity & Consensus in Two Dimensional View

The adjoining figure presents, extent of clarity and extent of consensus in a two dimensional view. This figure is drawn to explain my personal observations on characteristics of teams with respect to these two aspects (Clarity and Consensus). Based on the figure, my general observations are listed in following four points:-      

A.    Team with High degree of clarity and Low degree of Consensus (marked as A in figure)

a.     Reasonable Team Performance

b.     Politically Charged Work Environment

c.      Low Degree of Sustainability (Poor Outlook for Long Term Prospects)

d.     High Attrition Rate

e.     Limited Access to Information to Team Members  

f.      Limited Application of Professional Skills by Team Members

B.     Team with High degree of clarity and High degree of Consensus (marked as B in figure)

a.     Excellent Team Performance

b.     Profession Focused Work Environment

c.      High Degree of Sustainability (Good Outlook for Long Term Prospects)

d.     Low Attrition Rate

e.     Easy Access to Information to Team Members

f.      Excellent Application of Professional Skills by Team Members

C.     Team with Low degree of Clarity and Low degree of Consensus (marked as C in figure)

a.     Poor Team Performance

b.     Hostile Work Environment

c.      Low Degree of Sustainability (Poor Outlook for Long Term Prospects)

d.     Very High Attrition Rate

e.     Poor Access to Information to Team Members

f.      Poor Application of Professional Skills by Team Members

D.    Team with Low degree of Clarity and High degree of Consensus (marked as D in figure)

a.     Poor Team Performance

b.     Hierarchy and Team Spirit Driven Work Environment

c.      Low Degree of Sustainability (Poor Outlook for Long Term Prospects)

d.     Average Attrition Rate

e.     Limited Access to Information to Team Members

f.      Poor Application of Professional Skills by Team Members

In the end, one must NOT forget that the only way clarity and consensus can be increased within a team is through COMMUNICATION. Establishing a formal way of communication within a team and promotion of informal way of communication accommodating diverse views should be one of the very first thing a team leader should ensure.

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