Change Insights

I recently had the pleasure of seeing first hand what happens when a business makes a change and doesn’t bring its people along for the ride. Well, I say pleasure – it was actually a very painful experience, but it does a great job of illustrating why any business change needs to have people at its core.

A good friend recently celebrated a milestone birthday (the type where life supposedly begins) and we decided that it would be a fantastic treat to give him and his wife vouchers to go to a posh hotel restaurant for a lovely meal. I decided to pop into the restaurant after I finished my meetings for the day, the weather was pouring with rain outside, but the reception of the boutique hotel was warm and welcoming!

I asked about the vouchers, and the lady I spoke to immediately deferred to her colleague. ‘No problem’ I thought, ‘she must be new and not sure how the gift vouchers work’. The gentleman she delegated to immediately set about pointing, clicking and typing on his computer, as I stood expectantly waiting.

And waiting. And waiting.

After about five minutes without success, he apologised and picked up the phone to call for help. The first person he called couldn’t help. Neither could the second. Or the third. Thankfully lucky number four – the Deputy Manager – agreed to come and assist.

The problem, it seemed, was that they had recently had a new computer system installed, but no-one was quite sure how to use it and the person that did know how to use it didn’t seem to know her username and password (ring any bells!). Cue more phone calls and breaching of IT security rules, the front desk staff were in!

Or not.

The Deputy manager’s knowledge of the new system was sketchy at best, and they spent another ten minutes trying to work out how to sort out a gift voucher, at one point sheepishly offering me the hotel website on their computer for me to place an online order, even though I was standing right there at the time!

After a bit more teeth-pulling, they eventually managed to take payment and I took receipt of the gift voucher!  The parting apology was accompanied by the words “I preferred the old system” – a sure sign that a change management project has failed. I left the restaurant cursing the failed business change which meant that it took 45 minutes to buy a gift voucher.

The Change Management Lesson

You’ve probably already beaten me to the change management lesson here, but I’ll explain it anyway.

In introducing a big business change – the installation of a brand new computer system – the hotel had forgotten to get the buy-in of the staff. They had not been appropriately trained, they had not been given the information they needed to log in, and they had not been shown the benefits of the new system.

The system may have been amazing, and it may have cost the hotel a lot of money, but the staff didn’t know how to use it, so it was useless. Worse than useless in fact and had it been a sunny day I would have gone elsewhere, and it would have cost them an expensive meal for two.

What should have been a business improvement ended up significantly deteriorating the performance of their operations, because they didn’t take their people along with them on the change journey. It’s such an obvious mistake, but one that gets made all too often.

The lesson is simple:

Change without people isn’t really change at all.