Rath & Strong Blog

The People-side of Change

I was back at the iQPC conference in London last week… it was a well-attended event and the quality of presenters was high.

Of course, people were talking about finding faster ways to cut costs, as you would expect.  But what really struck me was the emphasis that was placed by many speakers on getting the people side of change right.  They are absolutely right, of course, and I was struck by this as my own presentation was on that point too (so much for standing out from the crowd). 

I posed the question “Is sustainability a luxury that we might have to do without when the pressure to act quickly becomes overwhelming?”  We all know stories of organisations that have cut costs too deeply or in the wrong place and lived to regret it, and I got to thinking about the recession of 1991 where the need to cut costs in a hurry was almost as pressing as it today.  Back then the methodology that came into vogue  was Business Process Re-engineering.   In hindsight, this does not seem to have achieved what it promised - the improvements were often short-lived because they relied too heavily on IT solutions and, most importantly, ignored the people side of change. 

So of course I was greatly reassured to hear so many people making it clear that they won’t be repeating the mistakes of the past. Let’s hope they walk the talk – do you?