Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult. Harvard Business Review

Let’s face it, change is hard. How can one beat the pain employees experience, and perseverance required by the Employer during a culture change? For over 25 years of experience working for the government and privately for 10 years,  I have experienced culture change both on the receiving end and on the providing end. This meant I was the one who pushed for a change, and was the one who had to endure the pain and frustration. However I was never the one to shy from challenges.

At a time when I was working at a private company meant that I had to endure the change from another perspective, that of supplying the government employees with solutions they would never stepped up from a proposal phase. This meant a lot of waiting time and trying to justify the time spent compiling that proposal. Endless meetings to decide, and convince, which eventually never took off either because of lack of enthusiasm, budget constraints or procurement issues. I ended up with a fresh proposal every year.

The fear of the unknown

I have seen it all! Every excuse even the fear to accept training when that would imply a change in process because that’s how I am used to and that would be maintaining an excel spreadsheet as their database. Another famous quote from someone who is ingrained in the company was “I know all the changes that need to be made and are all in my mind”.

Advances in technology meant streamlining of processes to ease the transition from a manual process to complete digitalization of such. 

The re-engineering process is simply a change in process where the return on investment with this little change is huge for the company. Where as, the fear of the unknown would mean that these employees would not open their mind to the change required. They simply would reason they dont require the change as the normal routine is so comfortable. 

The Path to take

So how we can get over this… One has to present a vision of the organisation where it is heading, with the top management backing it. Once the vision is set, a business plan shall follow with clear deadlines and deliverables. Afterwards when the project initiates,  get a champion on board, who is so to speak more open minded than the rest of the employees. Advocate your ideas about your vision of how the change shall be. However not just advocate the culture change required but also start deploying small actionable tasks. Once these tasks are achieved, and users shall find them  innovative and user centric, the champion with the unit will be enticed. Once the champion is on board things start to fall into place and other employees would be engaged in the process. Ultimately this journey shall align employees across the organisation to follow suit.

Aiming to implement the deliverables within the project require empowerment of employees. Most imperative though is aligning them towards the change, towards the ultimate goal.

Every day doing small steps in the right direction can turn out to be the biggest change in the organisation. Implement actionable tasks, calibrate employees and iterate through this process.