cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The emergence of rapid development techniques allows for real-timeupdating of software and flexible scoping of a project, but this approachinvolves a new way of specifying and managing development of ITsystems which can be hard to establish and keep going.IT people tend not to learn about change management. They learn tosee their job as ending when the system is delivered. This is beginning tochange in more forward-looking organizations, but is still an issue inmany IT departments, and in many software development companiesand consultancies too. IT people need to improve their skills in influencingand managing change, as well as their understanding of howorganizational change works, and the nature of motivation and resistancein organizational systems.The first aspect of the way the IT people work in organizations is therole that they tend to assume when working with business clients. Block(2000) offers a useful way of describing the three types of role that aconsultant can have when dealing with a client. This is helpful whenconsidering the ways in which IT people can choose to work with theirclients. The three types of role are:• expert role;• pair of hands role;• collaborative role.IT-based process changeThe expert roleThe consultant is the expert. The client has fully delegated the authorityto plan and implement changes to the consultant. Decisions on how toproceed are made by the consultant on the basis of his or her expertjudgement. The client elects to play an inactive role, and is responsiveonly when required by the consultant to respond. The client’s role is tojudge and evaluate after the fact. The consultant’s goal is to solve theimmediate problem.When IT people choose this role (as they very often do) it means thatthey have the space to get on with the job in hand without interruptionor interference, but it means that they can hide behind their expertisewhen things go wrong, much to the frustration of business managers.The other problem with this approach is that the client’s commitment to293