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Managing Barriers to Business Reengineering Success
by Wolf D. Schumacher
CHAPTER 7
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
Once People Have Chosen a Set of Purposes Based on Ideals and
Accepted Responsibility for the Task of Planning, They Can Grow
and Contribute to the Well-Being of Their System.
Merrelyn Emery and Ronald E. Purser, 1996
Business Reengineering is no panacea to help organizations to fundamentally adapt to external threats to their existence. Largely driven by the potentials of state-of-the-art Information Technology, it is a technical way of redesigning a company`s business processes. Thus, linear not complex thinking mandates many Business Reengineering projects. Resulting are not only project successes. Hard and soft barriers build up during the course of Business Reengineering projects, accounting for many project failures. Hard barriers being wrong technology, non-human resource problems, and legal constraints. Soft barriers account for most obstacles of project success. Resisting people within and outside the organization resist being changed. The extent of resistance encountered in many Business Reengineering initiatives lets managers ask themselves, if they should carry on with Business Reengineering altogether ? The answer is yes, because Business Reengineering is right: It is important, that companies organize themselves around their customer-centered processes; and that information technology is extensively used to support business processes. The question is not: Business Reengineering yes or no, but: How do we set up a Business Reengineering project such, that the organization and her people reap the most benefit from it.
Toshio Okuno of Japanese soy sauce producer Higashimaru Shoyu, who went through a large scale successful Business Reengineering project, answers this question clearly (Cooper/Markus, 1995):
"The first and most important lesson (for Business Reengineers) is that lasting organizational change always requires significant change in people. Without change in human knowledge, skill, and behavior on the job, change in technology, processes, and structures is unlikely to yield long-term benefits. It is essential to focus on changing people as well as other aspects of the organization, because people make the difference in organizational performance and have ideas for productive change."
Companies that are unsuccessful in their Business Reengineering projects, thus should not drop Business Reengineering and look for the next "management wonder-drug", but concentrate on people and their organizational culture instead. We found that change management theory and practice offers interventions abound, that help organizations to concentrate on people and people related change. These interventions have to be studied carefully and applied to individuals, teams and groups, the organization as a whole and the environment.
It is of mandatory importance, that an organization carefully studies the culture it owns. Many companies undertaking a Business Reengineering project own a control oriented culture where management dictates change from the top down. This typically generates resistance among employees. Traditional Business Reengineering project methodology has it, to concentrate on resistance as a phenomena to overcome. Working with resistance is a much better paradigm, because it stresses the importance of planning and working together as peers within an organization.
These considerations let us propose to change the culture of an organization, while it is undertaking a Business Reengineering project. To some, this appears impossible, since Business Reengineering was devised as a short term effort. But looking at what is expected from Business Reengineering, namely drastic improvements in performance, this proposal makes sense: An organization will not fundamentally change its way of doing business, unless the people it employs, are fully supporting the project`s objectives.
We support the general idea of turning an organization away from control toward a culture of collaboration, where resistance is no stumbling stone, but a valuable contribution. How can a control minded organization make collaboration possible ? At first, this sounds like an insurmountable task. The author does not believe so. Collaboration within an organization can be learned by doing so. Developed from the field of social psychological change, search conferences are a powerful instrument, to start real collaboration in an organization (Emery/Purser, 1996).
The search conference, also known as future search conference (Weisbord/Janoff, 1995) is a highly participative event that enables a large group (managers and employees of an organization) to collectively create a plan that its members will implement by themselves. They jointly develop visions, long-term strategic plans, and concrete action plans. A search conference takes two to three days and can be a very effective starting point for Business Reengineering efforts (Schumacher/Schubert, 1996). A search conference is designed to provide a learning environment where all perceptions are valid regardless of source and hierarchical status, and where participation is equal and open.
Action plans are an outcome of search conferences. As opposed to traditional action plans set up by managers for their employees, these are set up by the people themselves. Chances are, that they carried through. One of the actions defined, could be participative process design sessions, where people define their own processes they are or will be working in. or will be working in (Cabana, 1995).
In participative design workshops, people design their current work structure and redesign it as a building block of a Business Reengineering project with a collaborative cultural attitude. Managers who think, that people will not be aggressive enough regarding the change of processes and structures, have to ask themselves if they want people to participate at all. The underlying question is: Can a policeman (manager in a control culture) be changed to a coach (manager in a collaborative culture) at all ? The answer is yes, given that management embraces the idea of a collaborative culture wholeheartedly.
Related Reengineering Resources
Reengineering Best Practices
Reengineering Toolkits and Document Templates
Business Process Reengineering Implementation
Change Management Strategies and Action Planning
Process Management and Improvement
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