Gartner Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, have frequently noted that the critical success factors for managing SAP (the German Software company) and other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) implementations are people issues; behaviors, skills, actions – the “soft” side of managing ERP implementations, business process redesign, organizational restructuring and other strategic change initiatives …
Enterprise change is accelerating for most organizations. Mergers, acquisitions, ERP, new products and processes and responding to customer demands all require change. Unfortunately, mastery of change is a core competency for few enterprises. But these “hard” (system) issues are not the primary challenges to successful change. New tools and processes are worthless unless people change their behaviors and actions. These personal change struggles are the soft” issues that … every executive must address to realize results from change.
(Gartner Inc, Oct 2005)
We totally agree. But most business leaders we engage with tend to know this – a big improvement from just a few years ago where the soft factors of change were poorly understood. We now find that the weak link is at middle management, supervisor and team leader levels. This is where the “rubber meets the road” in ensuring employees adapt to changes resulting from ERP system, process and organizational design initiatives.
Managers as champions of change
A cornerstone of managing and sustaining change is to embed ownership and accountability for ongoing change into the fabric of the organization. The place to start (assuming top leaders are already committed) is changing the role of mid managers, supervisors and team leaders. Jim Clemmer, a leading author on leadership and management including titles such as The Leader’s Digest, Growing the Distance, Pathways to Performance, Firing on All Cylinders and The VIP Strategy, notes the following:
As members or leaders of operational and improvement teams, (middle managers) are much closer to the action than anyone in senior management. So they have a much better sense of which change and improvement tactics will work. But perhaps even more importantly, they hold the balance of implementation power. Without their commitment, the best-laid plans will fail.
(Jim Clemmer, The Clemmer Group, 2001)
Managers are often promoted into their roles because they are good marketers, accountants, engineers and the like. Frequently it’s not because they are good “people” managers or team leaders with strong “soft” skills (surprisingly this is still true). But in this age of constant change, managers need to be facilitators of change and have the skills to interpret top-down strategy into operational change. They are the individuals at the “in the trenches” who are able to engage their teams, have conversations on the need for change, understand potential areas of resistance and coach and guide their teams to a future vision. Below are a number of important competencies and roles that managers need to perform if companies want to become more adaptable to ongoing change.
Middle managers as process and system owners
Organizational change is frequently focused at work processes and systems. During a recent SAP implementation, a Finance VP mentioned to me that if it had not been for a major technical problem which forced him to roll up his sleeves and become completely involved in solving the problem, he would have only had superficial knowledge of the system. He would have relied on the Super Users and consultants in his unit to operate the system and train other users. Being forced to roll-up his sleeves and solve the SAP problem created the urgency for him to fully understand the system and also become much more knowledgeable about the end to end processes and how they impacted other functions both up and downstream.
On further investigation it became clear that many or most senior and middle managers only had a conceptual knowledge of the system and were heavily reliant on their Super Users and consultants for overcoming problems, answering questions and training team members. Senior and middle managers by default should be the experts on how end to end work is conducted, who does it, and how they connect with and impact upstream and downstream functions. The reason is that it is at the process and system level where operational change takes place. With this reality, managers become change champions, coaching and training their team members, holding process optimization and innovation meetings to find better and more efficient ways of doing business and delivering better outputs to customers.
Managers as facilitators of ongoing learning
To learn is to change. I would wager that most manager job descriptions in your company describe some level of managerial accountability for hands-on training of team members. But I have seldom seen this function performed well in most companies I’ve worked with. Researchers at PWC comment as follows:
The usual approach to rapid training – taking employees off-site for intensive training – is in fact misguided. Such courses tend to work against human nature, since they are typically an attempt to impart all the knowledge needed to all staff in one fell swoop. On-the-job training (by managers, supervisors and super users) coupled with self-paced e-learning and online help to deliver personalized assistance as required is in fact a more effective way of ensuring staff get training that is relevant to their jobs.
(Dawson & Jones, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Human Change Management: Herding Cats)
I believe that the role of “on the job learning” facilitated by mangers and supervisors needs to be very specific and focused - It is not taking over the role of specialized trainers. It is rather linked to the manager’s role as Process Owner described above. Managers should hold periodic (my experience suggests this should be every week, even if for 30 minutes) team meetings where they review work processes and procedures, review process performance metrics, and identify problems areas brainstorm ideas for process improvement. These meetings can be the most powerful learning forums for new employees and team members who are being exposed to the work of other team members for the first time.
Managers as ERP “Super Users”
In many ERP implementations, the role of Super User (SU) is a critical role typically an employee in the client company with a penchant for technology as well as people:
The SAP Super User (is) gifted with the talents of knowing their portion of the system well, they often are asked to go beyond the role of their day-to-day job to provide or assist in the provision of documentation, training, and support – engaging users and providing a personal touch to bring harmony between the people and the SAP system.
(The Adventures of Super Users
Cristin Merritt, Insite Objects, Dirk Manuel, ExxonMobi, Suzette & Hannah-Hessler, Applied Materials)
The Super User role is an important way of transferring knowledge from consultants and building competence and ownership for change and knowledge into the organization. Too often however, Super Users are selected from junior staffers. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, but team managers tend to delegate this role and then continue business as usual while the SU grows and develops knowledge. And it’s the SUs that largely facilitate the change at system and process levels. They are expected to coach team members and conduct training sessions, and they reach out and communicate with other interconnected functions to ensure users in those functions know what changes are in the pipeline. Unfortunately, many SUs are not senior enough to influence change. In one case I experienced recently, a Finance department manager had elected herself to be her department’s SU. She said “if I am going to lead my department in this implementation, coach and train my team, optimize our end to end processes and work with other functions to ensure understanding and data integrity, I need to be at the forefront of knowledge, learning and managing this change. The Super Users role is what managers should be doing anyway”. I Agree!
Managing process/system Communities of Practice
So, if managers begin to perform the role of Process Owners, what mechanism or structure is effective for performing this role? A well known energy firm has effectively used Communities of Practice (CoPs) to promote a focus on end to end global processes and provide a mechanism for managers to effect change and continuously improve end to end processes. CoPs are formalized teams of key players that are responsible for a core business process across all functional structures and countries that own the process and are responsible for its continuous improvement and performance. These CoPs collaborate and share knowledge using collaboration software tools as well as hold global teleconferences on a regular basis. CoPs are powerful mechanisms for managers to engage thousands of people involved in a process anywhere in the world to share knowledge, learn and adapt to process driven change.
Managers as communicators
“Perhaps the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of your organization is the quality and clarity of internal and external communications. Good communication streamlines processes, enhances teamwork, and creates a positive culture; by contrast, dysfunctional communications creates a climate of misunderstanding and mistrust.”
(Harvard Business Publishing, 2009)
A leading global company I worked with recently attempted to effect a culture change in their organization from a collegiate, easy going company to a driven, more performance oriented culture. A very impressive communications campaign was developed with posters and interactive web-based learning tools. The problem they faced is that this communications strategy was media driven and went over the heads of middle managers. It lost traction because it was did not have day to day practicality driven by managers and team leaders. For effective change, particularly of the scope and size of culture change which impacts every employee in the organization, managers must become the primary vehicle for disseminating information and soliciting feedback. They are in the best position to gather feedback and assess resistance to change. Making sure that mangers are effective communicators is a significant challenge in itself, but it is an essential one if large scale change is to be effective. Good managers are most trusted by their employees and are the ones that influence behavior on a day to day basis.
“When leaders embrace honest conversations, dramatic and rapid change occurs”
(Michael Beer, Trust Matters in Business, May 2007)
Michael Beer, the world renowned authority on organizational effectiveness and change and Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, notes that “the core element (for driving organizational change) is the ability (of line managers) to have “honest conversations” with their teams – this is the level that employees can be engaged at an emotional level. Without this direct interaction, even the most effectively crafted corporate communications campaign will have little impact.
Conclusion – Drive change where the “rubber meets the road”
Placing greater importance on the role of middle managers and team leaders as facilitators of change is a powerful starting point for an organization to become more adaptable to constant change. Selecting, promoting and developing managers based on their ability to communicate and create a sense of excitement and urgency, facilitate learning and coach team members, facilitate process communities and encourage process innovation and continuous improvement is critical to building the capacity to change into the fabric of an organization.
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