In my last post I raised the question from a real life consulting situation as to whether an ambition to reach Level 2 Business-IT Maturity is sufficient to really engage and motivate employees in what is undoubtedly painful change. And it’s not just about enough motivation, it’s also about the proper end state vision. If you are at Level 1 and your end state goal is Level 2, I think your approach and, presumably, results will be different from those where the end state goal is Level 3.
Anyway, I met with the client again, and we got into a very open dialog with the IT leadership team about this point. Their argument is that, for a variety of reasons, they had historically over-promised and under-delivered – both to their business partners, but, in this context, more importantly to their IT professionals. Several previous “change programs” had promised visions of a wonderful new future where life would be grand for the IT professional, with constant loving from the appreciative business partners! Well, inevitably, 3 years on, life is even tougher than it was when they started talking about “transformation” and the fear among the leadership team is the heavy and potentially destructive cynicism that will undoubtedly surface among their IT professionals. So they have concluded that a much more pedestrian “lets get back to basics and fix the plumbing” is the right ambition for them to lead real change. Having discussed this at length with them, I believe they have re-framed me, and that they are right. I still have a nagging doubt, but have accepted their position.
This is sad, and reminds me of one of the many things I learned about change from Daryl Conner – when a leadership team fails at change they lose twice. The obvious loss is the failure to achieve the results of the change they embarked upon – presumably a significant loss, or they would not have embarked upon the change. The second and potentially more damaging loss is that they have effectively “taught the organization to ignore strategic change” leading to the familiar this too shall pass attitude that characterises many organization change situations.
Filed under: Demand Maturity, IS Management, IT Management, IT Maturity Tagged: | ambition, Business-IT Maturity, IT leadership, IT transformation, organizational change management
