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

IT-based process changeWhat skills and knowledge might be required to enhance an ITperson’s ability to work collaboratively with business managers? Theintended outcome is to increase the possibility of implemented IT systemsresulting in the intended behaviour change. We suggest that IT peopleinvolved in large-scale change initiatives need to acquire the followingskills and knowledge if they are to become better agents of change:• Knowledge:– How does organizational change happen?– What motivates people and how can that motivation be activated?– Where does resistance to change come from, and how can it behandled?– What change processes and what leadership styles are there tochoose from, and what are the effects of each?– Wide understanding of different business processes.– Good understanding of organizational culture and its impact onchange.• Skills:– Coaching managers to solve change issues.– Facilitating multidisciplinary team workshops.– Influencing those outside your direct control.– Client and stakeholder management (saying no as much as yousay yes)!!– Collaborative process mapping.– Ability to speak the client’s language (using their terminology).If you are an IT person reading this, then your irritation level may nowhave reached an all-time high! You may be thinking, ‘I am already doingall this!’ We congratulate you, and offer our additional thoughts on therole of HR people in IT-based change. HR people suffer this syndrome inreverse. While they might focus on all the people-related aspects ofdesired changes, they often fail to grasp the nature of the technologyinvolved. Again this is changing, but slowly.Enterprise-wide applications such as PeopleSoft are now taking hold inmany organizations, replacing many of the tasks that HR people havetraditionally called their own (promotion, recruitment, arrangement oftraining). HR people need to be ready to understand and explore thepossibilities offered by these systems so that they can think through how295