Re-engineering is dead! It was an excuse for what consultants referred to as "PoP" or "people-off-payroll" - an easy and quick way of "delivering benefits" to a corporate client under the auspices of "annualised savings" for the project.
Most of those organisations that did re-engineer have become so 'lean and mean` that they cannot move and nobody wants to work for them.
Re-engineering also resulted in very little sustainable change being brought about with regard to the real processes and systems. In fact, most of the management consultants who used these techniques "a la Proudfoot" don`t even exist today. The few who do remain realised they had to change their style and are now based around technology delivery: witness Byrne Fleming, Kresta Hague, etc.
Most of those organisations that did re-engineer have become so "lean and mean" that they cannot move and nobody wants to work for them. Most have had to rehire some - if not more - staff in order to return to previous levels of performance and to accommodate the increased demand/flow through the new processes. As a result, re-engineering actually caused more damage than it delivered savings.
Top down
If an organisation really wants to change its corporate culture, management has to accept that it is a top down process - the cascade system where staff are encouraged to "follow my lead" by the CEO. This is the fundamental reason why most change programmes don`t work, because the boss says: "Do as the consultants say you must, I`ll carry on in my own manner." But, if the boss doesn`t change, why should the workers?
There are several critical elements necessary to make change work and stick:
1. Legitimacy: The change must be legitimised within the organisation. This means that if the organisation`s staff don`t want to change, they won`t. Or if staff don`t see the need for change, they won`t go along with it.
2. Adoption: People won`t do something they are forced to do for too long. This comes down to the sustainability of the programme: force them and they will resist; but if the consultant gets them to adopt the new vision, etc and to "buy into it", then the staff end up pushing you to change if you are too slow!
3. Benefits: Staff will not change if they don`t see a benefit in it for them. If a worker knows the change is going to cause widespread job reduction and his friends are going to lose their jobs, he won`t support the change, because he will feel that he could be next. Or he may perceive that the new process(es) will require him to work harder, which will also not be a benefit to him, so he will not support the change.
Committing to the process
Changing cultures is possible, but the organisation and its consultants must understand where the organisation has come from, where it is going to, why the changes are necessary and what the benefits will be for everyone in the organisation. Finally, management has to be prepared to commit to the top down process: if they are not prepared to lead then they should not even bother with trying to change their corporate culture.
Achieving change within an organisation is a fine balance between fixing the process to enable it to work better, and increasing the capacity of the process to improve productivity per unit, etc. Productivity increases achieved via re-engineering (read: reduce the number of people on payroll) have seldom paid dividends in the long term due to the demotivating factors of the impact on the company culture, etc.
The only time change does work is when the change process itself and the enabling technology (eg the Internet) are approached together. The change process is taken right through the organisation from the top down and everyone subscribes to the process, the needs/drivers for change, the benefits of change, and the timetable for change; AND the change process is supported by the enabling technology then it has a 90% chance of working!
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