BARRIERS TO CHANGE

The final step in this phase of the Gap Analysis is to identify and assess the barriers to change confronting the organization's business processes. Barriers to change can arise from four major sources: people, technology, infrastructure, and process.

People Barriers

No organization is better than the people who work in it. As a consequence, the design and implementation of a human resources system appropriate to the changes envisioned is one of the most critical tasks within the BPR effort. Reducing or "flattening" hierarchies implies that decision making will be moved down in the organization and that employees will be empowered to make decisions. This change requires training and education, as well as motivation and trust from top management that people are able and willing to take responsibility. This tenant of BPR stands in stark contrast to the more traditional way of thinking that "trust is good, but control is better."

People barriers are the most difficult to fully identify and overcome. Often such obstacles are not overt but exist "just below the surface" as skeptism and/or lack of confidence in the proposed direction for change. People barriers can stem from a lack of shared vision, requiring a more thorough effort to involve and educate the members of the organization who will be called upon to implement the proposed changes and/or who will be most directly impacted by these changes. It may be necessary to recycle the earlier phase of the BPR in which strategic goals and objectives are formulated to ensure that these members of the organization have the opportunity to provide inputs to the process through focus groups and other awareness raising activities.

Sacred cows and fiefdoms may also be major sources of barriers to change. When asked: "Why is this particular task carried out in that fashion?" the all-too-frequent answer is: "That's the way its always been done!" Traditional ways of doing things and cultural beliefs that are frozen in time are the basis for "sacred cows" that can be challenged only with great care and the laying of appropriate groundwork. Similarly, the existence of turf issues between different units (fiefdoms) within an organization can be major obstacles to change. Perceived ownership of data is often a source of these turf issues. "Our unit has to initiate this process by entering these data, because we are held accountable for the end results (in terms of information or other outputs)."

Prototyping provides opportunities for simulating and evaluating reengineering potentials within the organization, as well as the systems development area. It also provides instant feedback on the progress and acceptance of the reengineering effort. Continuous prototyping enables the reengineering team and management to make necessary adjustments before a final process design is chosen.

Insufficient "buy-in" by top management and the lack of a champion for a particular new activity can also serve as significant barriers to change. As Anthony and Herzlinger have suggested: "the driving force behind a new system must come from top management, . . . it is unlikely that a majority of operating managers will voluntarily embrace a new system in advance of its installation, let alone be enthusiastic advocates of it." [1] Responsible managers must be willing to devote sufficient time and effort to fully understand the general concepts and objectives of the proposed changes and must be able to explain to subordinates how these procedures will help them and the organization as a whole. It often is tempting for management to fall back on the old saw: "We have no choice but to implement these procedures to meet externally imposed requirements." In so doing, however, the basis has been laid for less-than-enthusiastic support (and perhaps organized resistance) from within the organization.

Operating managers will be more likely to support the proposed change if they are convinced that, on balance, it will benefit them in carrying out their assigned responsibilities. Management at all levels must be convinced that the new processes in fact, are going to be used and that they will help them do a better job. The best way to "pass the word" is for top management discuss the new processes with subordinates, who then carry the message to their subordinates, and so on. This approach results in "champions for change" and aids in the education of all those involved.

General inertia and the inability to implement recommend changes are fundamental people-based barriers to change. The familiar definition of interia--"a body at rest tends to remain at rest"--is applicable to many processes in complex organizations. The extended definition--"a body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by some external force" is also applicable. Overcoming either form of interia--the start up of a new process from "at rest" or the redirecting of an existing process that is already "in motion"--can be a major challenge in implementing the recommendations of a BPR initiative.

Failure to successfully implement a recommend change can be a major set back to the overall BPR, as it re-enforces the "I told you so" resistence to change. Often the inability to implement is tied to an incomplete (or incorrect) analysis of the problem or issue. As Rapoport has noted, the first step in solving a problem is to state it.

The statement usually involves a description of an existing state and desirable state of affairs where the factors involved in the discrepancy are explicitly pointed out. The success with which any problem is solved depends to a great extent on the clarity with which it is stated. In fact, the solution of the problem is, in a sense, a clarification (or concretization) of the objectives. [2]

Vague problem statements lead to vague methods, where success is erratic and questionable. If the problem cannot be stated specifically--preferable in one interrogative sentence, including one or more objectives--the analysis has been inadequate or of insufficient depth. The more a given problem can be extended through the examination of timely information about the situation, the greater the promise of a successful solution.

Emotional bias, habitual or traditional behavior, and the human tendency to seek the path of least resistance may contribute to a superficial analysis, followed by a statement of the apparent rather than the real problem. An excellent solution to an apparent problem will not work in practice, because it is the solution to a problem that does not exist in fact. Short-circuiting this phase in the process may actually result in more time spent later to get at the real problem when it becomes painfully evident that further analysis is required before a successful solution can be implemented.

Technological Barriers

The primary crtierion for selecting an information technology (IT) platform should be its ability to support the newly designed processes and to adapt to changing processes and new technologies. The information system architecture has to be chosen with respect to actual and future information requirements. The choice should involve an examination of several available alternatives and should be performed without regards to constraints, whether coming from the information technology department, organizational actors, or any other interest groups.Existing systems may have to be changed or replaced entirely. The first alternative involves software engineering without affecting the hardware. The second approach often includes overhauling the current systems totally, including a new technical platform.

Barriers to change related to tinformation echnology are usually assumed to stem from the lack of the latest available equipment and related software. However, "technology overload"--the inability to utilize the technology that is available within an organization--may be equally to blame for delaying change. Preparing the end users to apply the available technology through carefully constructed transition workshops and training programs is a critical component of change management. The introduction of new technology often raises the level of anxiety among the end users. Therefore, it is important to clear identify who within the organization will be affected by the introduction of the new technology and to ensure an adequate lead time for training before the "change over" occurs. In fact, in most cases, it is advisable to run the old and the new technology in parallel for some period of time, if possible, to ensure a smooth transition and to provide a "back up" in case some component of the new technology "fails" in its initial roll-out (which is an almost inevitable occurrence when new complex systems are introduced).

It may not be possible (or desirable) to introduce new technology "whole cloth" or across-the-board within an organization. However, a phased implementation will mean that some portions of the organization and/or some portions of the technology will continue to operate on so-called legacy systems--i.e., the existing technology. Building bridges between legacy systems and the new technology may be more time and resource consuming that the implementation of the new systems. However, most organizations have no other choice--to change all of the legacy systems at one time would be to invite the worse form of "technology overload," assuring across-the-board systems failure.

Infrastructure Barriers

Barriers to change emerging from the infrastructure of an organization may be tied to physical facilities and/or to organizational structure. An organization that is spatially decentralized--located in various parts of a city, region, or even nation--or is functionally decentralized--with key roles and responsibilities distributed throughout the organizations often resulting in duplication of effort and redundancy--is likely to encounter problems of communications that can represent significant barriers to change. At the other extreme, an organization which has many layers in its hierarchy--physically or functionally--may also suffer from communication breakdowns that will result in barriers to change.

Adapting the organizational structure to fit the newly defined processes is a crucial task. Changes in the human resources system must be carefully implemented in a new organizational structure to ensure that no more than marginal disturbances occur in the motivation of the individuals being affected. Employee empowerment, subunit reorganization, and job rotation often can be achieved without major disruptions. However, the reduction of staff, which often emerges as a major reengineering recommendation, can cause major disruptions.

Process Barriers

The primary objective of this phase of the BPR is to address barriers to change that are associated with or emerge from current processes. In practice, however, organizations may adopt programs that are not the most effective available. Some processes may be dictated by external factors (e.g., governmental regulations, legal constraints, employee rights, union rules, and community attitudes) that have to be accommodated within the overall recommendations of the BPR. A cost-constraint assessment may be undertaken to examine the impact of these factors by comparing the cost of the program that might be adopted if no constraints were present with the cost of the constrained program. Once this cost differential has been identified, decisions can be made as to the feasibility of eliminating the constraints. This assessment gives decision makers an estimate of how much would be saved by relaxing a given constraint. By the same token, the cost of the constraint suggests of the amount of resources that might be committed to overcoming it. In some cases, however, maintaining a constraint may be more important for social or political reasons than implementing a more effective program.

Process monitoring must be continuous in order to scan the performance and contribution of the implemented changes to quality improvement. The performance of the new processes must be measured and compared to the processes being replaced in order to determine the overall success (or failure) of the reengineering efforts. This measurement should include the following aspects:

o Process Performance: Cycle times, customer value adding, quality

o IT Performance: Information rates and system use

o Productivity: Employees, production, service operations

This assessment involves an iterative process, in which the new processes are used as input to diagnostic phase of gap analysis and then are "looped".

In short, BPR projects are not handled in the conventional way of being initiated, performed, and finished. To achieve its full potential, reengineering must be an ongoing process of permanent improvement.

Endnotes

[1] Robert N. Anthony and Regina Herzlinger, Management Control in Non-Profit Organizations (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1975), p. 316.

[2] Anatol Rapoport, "What Is Information?" ETC: A Review of General Semantics Vol. 10 (Summer, 1953), p. 252.

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