TIL : Change Management is a thing in the corporate world

[Xeon]

Came across an ex-colleague on LinkedIn, and saw his job scope is in 'Change Management'.

Change management - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change.

What the F*ck does this even mean LOLOLOLOL
How is this even a thing to the point where people can make entire jobs out of this LOL?!

Seems there's a lot of rubbish in the corporate world that has built up over the years that these corporations have existed, and bored people coming up with all kinds of "processes" and implementing all kinds of corporate philosophies to give themselves a job LOL How extra is this!

Honestly, if I'm the boss of a corporation and the company isn't doing well, I would erase the entire 'Change Management' department, together with the HR team as well and outsource their roles if needed.

 

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[Andy Black]

Came across an ex-colleague on LinkedIn, and saw his job scope is in 'Change Management'.

Change management - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What the F*ck does this even mean LOLOLOLOL
How is this even a thing to the point where people can make entire jobs out of this LOL?!

Seems there's a lot of rubbish in the corporate world that has built up over the years that these corporations have existed, and bored people coming up with all kinds of "processes" and implementing all kinds of corporate philosophies to give themselves a job LOL How extra is this!

Honestly, if I'm the boss of a corporation and the company isn't doing well, I would erase the entire 'Change Management' department, together with the HR team as well and outsource their roles if needed.

There’s definitely a need for change management in the IT world.

I’d guess in big enough corporations that cultural and organisational changes doesn’t just happen without people to manage it.

IMO, HR is there to protect the company.

 

[FierceRacoon]

A friend of mine who is a senior manager told me about some large company — I think it was Siemens. Over the time of their existence they have acquired many smaller companies. Quite often it is easier to keep the acquired company with the same tools and processes it had and not try to move everyone e.g. from Google Mail to Outlook. Particularly if you acquire a profitable company, you wouldn't want to hurt the profits by changing things up too much.

The net result is that a company of an international scale ends up working with many different CMSs inside of it, many different task and ticket management systems, you get the idea. But you may not get the scale: it can be hundreds of different systems, all combined with different languages and timezones. Occasionally something very important such as payroll processing does need to be standardized.

If you had to change the way expense reporting is done for some 5,000 people in 50 countries, how exactly would you go about it? Keep in mind that if you waste 1 hour for each person involved, at $50/hour you are wasting $250k. If 1% of those people get annoyed by the change and quit, that's 50 professionals to replace and train, easily a $1M cost.

And that hardly qualifies as an organizational change. Try adding a level to the organizational hierarchy. Say, you've had 500 people that were Level 3 employees, but now 50 of them will become Level 3B, and the remaining 450 will report to them. How would you prepare this kind of change to avoid drama and ensure effectiveness? Do it poorly, and the effect may be devastating. Do it well, and nobody may notice.

Organizational structures and practices contain so many pain points. There is an almost infinite well of opportunities.

 

[Andy Black]

Ok, I had to Google it.

TIL = Today I Learned

 

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[G-Man]

It's a thing. It's a real thing in some instances. If you've ever had to implement a new ERP system in a large organization, for example, you know you have to sit there and map out who is affected, how they are affected, how to mitigate potential issues, and then put out a plan for the implementation.

Sometimes you bring in an outside person because while all this is going on, the business has to keep going and making money. The world doesn't stop just because you're changing your system.

Example, we're implementing a new warehouse management system. We brought one of our HK people in to stay for 3 months to do nothing but quarterback that process. Why? Because while there are other people that could do it, it's cheaper to pay a dedicated person than the costs incurred by lack of focus from other key people.

Sadly, I've found that a large percentage of people that bill themselves as project management consultants for things like this are pretty much useless, but the need is 100% real, and a huge opportunity for anyone with the competence.

 

[Jon L]

I know of a clothing distributor that went out of business because of a poorly managed change in their accounting system. They were in trouble already, but this was the final nail in their coffin.

They bought a whole bunch of apparel, and then couldn't ship it because their new accounting system couldn't process the orders. It took them months before they were able to get everything out the door.

Meanwhile, styles changed, and the stock they had in their warehouse could no longer be sold at full price. They had to mark it down significantly. This burned through their remaining cash, forcing them to shut down.

Had they done more testing of the new accounting system, perhaps running both systems simultaneously for a while to make sure the new system worked, they might still be around.

Several hundred people lost their jobs.

 

[chimichangatime]

Came across an ex-colleague on LinkedIn, and saw his job scope is in 'Change Management'.

Change management - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What the F*ck does this even mean LOLOLOLOL
How is this even a thing to the point where people can make entire jobs out of this LOL?!

Seems there's a lot of rubbish in the corporate world that has built up over the years that these corporations have existed, and bored people coming up with all kinds of "processes" and implementing all kinds of corporate philosophies to give themselves a job LOL How extra is this!

Honestly, if I'm the boss of a corporation and the company isn't doing well, I would erase the entire 'Change Management' department, together with the HR team as well and outsource their roles if needed.

I did this for a few years at a Fortune 100 company. It's very real. If you have a $75B supply chain that runs on outdated software and need to modernize, you need TCM (Transition Change Management). The three pillars where I worked are still with me today - People, Process, Tools, in that order. There's a lot of good stuff in change management that applies to Fastlane businesses.

Let's just say that if you've got a $75B bus cruising down the highway at 100mph, you don't pull over to refurbish it. You've got to do the job without pulling over once. Each minute of downtime could be millions of dollars gone.

Hell, some banks still run COBOL for chrissakes. Big money is reluctant to cut open the golden goose.

I work in supply chain management at a different company today and we're moving from a turd of an app written in Microsoft Access that manages the $200MM business to a flexible, modern, web-based infrastructure.

Guess what? All that change management experience has been invaluable. 90% of people fear change. I've got a mess of tangled, shitty processes that span up to 5 tools. And I've got the aforementioned turd in Access. People, process, tools. All these things need to be dealt with/fixed, then moved from as-is -> to-be. This includes not only designing end states, getting there incrementally, but also training and communication. Bringing together multiple departments, aligning vision so the entire company is marching to the same goal, etc.

A lot of companies/teams just develop new software and roll it out, and it's a huge mess. They learn pretty quickly that TCM pays for itself 10x. CIOs and CEOs don't like to get fired for F*cking this up. And they DO get fired. Then they come back and get a TCM team together to save their asses.

Don't be so quick to discount or condemn this. There's a TON of money in this line of work, and, I'm sure, a way to CENTS-ify it and make bank. Look for opportunities, @Xeon!

 

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[Andy Black]

I did this for a few years at a Fortune 100 company. It's very real. If you have a $75B supply chain that runs on outdated software and need to modernize, you need TCM (Transition Change Management). The three pillars where I worked are still with me today - People, Process, Tools, in that order. There's a lot of good stuff in change management that applies to Fastlane businesses.

Let's just say that if you've got a $75B bus cruising down the highway at 100mph, you don't pull over to refurbish it. You've got to do the job without pulling over once. Each minute of downtime could be millions of dollars gone.

Hell, some banks still run COBOL for chrissakes. Big money is reluctant to cut open the golden goose.

I work in supply chain management at a different company today and we're moving from a turd of an app written in Microsoft Access that manages the $200MM business to a flexible, modern, web-based infrastructure.

Guess what? All that change management experience has been invaluable. 90% of people fear change. I've got a mess of tangled, shitty processes that span up to 5 tools. And I've got the aforementioned turd in Access. People, process, tools. All these things need to be dealt with/fixed, then moved from as-is -> to-be. This includes not only designing end states, getting there incrementally, but also training and communication. Bringing together multiple departments, aligning vision so the entire company is marching to the same goal, etc.

A lot of companies/teams just develop new software and roll it out, and it's a huge mess. They learn pretty quickly that TCM pays for itself 10x. CIOs and CEOs don't like to get fired for F*cking this up. And they DO get fired. Then they come back and get a TCM team together to save their asses.

Don't be so quick to discount or condemn this. There's a TON of money in this line of work, and, I'm sure, a way to CENTS-ify it and make bank. Look for opportunities, @Xeon!

Aha. I wondered where I got “People, Processes, Technology” from. I must have heard it in my IT days.

I still use that today when I’ve a team I can count on one hand: I focused on getting the right people because they’ll create the processes and the technology to automate them.