The problems I often came across as a BA rarely had to do with analyzing processes and determining their worth. That’s the easy part. The problem is the psychological issues people have with change. Often rule followers don’t particularly care whether the process is still applicable or logical, or who even came up with it. What’s important to them is that it is a rule, and rules bring order to an otherwise unpredictable and scary world.
To put it in perspective, I had an argument with a co-worker at my last job about a process I wanted to update. I was told that I had no right changing the process, because that’s the way it is done and I should just leave it alone… That’s fine, except I was the one who created the process in the first place. The thing is, I also had similar complaints when I initially created the process from people with that exact attitude. It’s exhausting.
My point is, some people are quick to reject change, and have a natural bias against it. Sometimes because of fear of the unknown, sometimes because they don’t like or resent the person making the change. In this case, they ignore the proposal and judge the person.
I would really enjoy a workplace where people were able to work through all their personal issues before opening their mouths. Instead 90% of the feedback I get are people projecting their feelings or fears, and the worst part is that much of this feedback makes its way to the ears of low-information managers, who further complicate my life with a 2nd hand version of the same garbage that wasn’t worth mentioning to begin with.
To even begin making changes at a workplace, you have to navigate authority issues, territorial issues, a general lack of understanding from stakeholders, and a labyrinth of paperwork in between. What I learned is to never take on a project unless you are given the agency to execute it, otherwise people will latch on to any excuse to stall it.
As a fellow BA, please let me know when you find this workplace. I’d like to send my resume to them.
I run into software engineers and developers (and sometimes managers/directors) who are wedded to their code and don’t want to change anything, ever, and can see the BA as an eeeebil interloper. Hey, I don’t want to make anyone’s life hard, but my job is to oversee the current $1-million-dollar update to the software and improve the software’s clinical relevance.
I have found that treating folks with these “blocks” as ***people ***helps a lot. Have coffee with them, go to lunch, chat a bit. If you see each other as people it makes these conversations easier. I make it a point to chit-chat with the engineers and developers about non-work stuff and have found that the more we interact in a non-work way, the better our meetings get.
Now, if I could only figure out how to get Mister Nitpick to let me get through my high-level explanation before he begins the nitpick process (which is useful, but so is my explanation of the proposed process!)…
All I can say, as a newly-minted BA (who has been doing the job without the title for quite awhile), is that I understand and you have my sympathy.
My struggle is that, every summer, we get a new group of limited-duration employees who are, supposedly, trained in the correct processes but, because they are young and fresh-out-of-law-school cocky, think they can improve on it, add to it, or ignore parts of it. :smack: Every year, I send the same sort of email instructions out, reminding the newbies that we do things a certain way for a reason, the most important being that there are lots of other people using the system besides them.
This is pretty much the definition of me. From my perspective, work is hard because it is full of people who don’t want to follow the rules. They do things a different way from what is expected, disrupting processes all down the line. They demand exceptions, often for no other reason than because that’s the way they like it, or it makes their life easier. They introduce chaos into the order of my day.
I do understand that sometimes rules need to be changed, or even broken. In fact, my New Year’s resolution for 2015 had to do with embracing change, and I am working on it. I think there’s room for all of us to meet in the middle. I’m going to print out the quote above from the OP and post it. Maybe it will help me see these conflicts from the other side.
Yes, that happens. But it’s also true that often management will want to change processes and procedures without knowing or caring “whether the process is still applicable”, and with no knowledge or concern about the affected employees, just because a manager needs something to put on his/her resume and nobody ever got promoted for keeping things the same.
Then, when they encounter resistance, they blame it on “issues people have with change” rather than issues people have with uninvolved managers making unwise changes to processes that aren’t broken.
And then, even when change is necessary, employees are understandably skeptical.
Please consider this before dismissing those who question your ideas as reactionary blcokheads.
You might want to check out a concept from NLP called meta programmes. They are perceptual filters and they allegedly govern our focus and behaviour. Depending on the author, there are between 14 and 50 something meta programmes and the one that might be useful to look at here is Options vs Procedures.
A person who has the Options meta programme will look at a situation/process and will ask themselves “How can I do this differently? Is this the best way of doing things?” and get excited by the thought doing it differently.
A person who has the Procedures meta programme will want to know the existing rules and procedures and will be happy to follow them, whether they are optimal or not. The “How” is more important than the “Why”.
If you imagine these meta programmes distributed along a scale, then about 40% of the population tend to be more in the Options, 40% tend to be more in the Procedures side of things. About 20% can easily switch between both sides (probably a useful trait in BAs). Figures are from Shelle Rose Charvet’s book “Words that change minds”.
The best way to influence people that have different meta programmes seems to be to change your language, e.g. “opportunity, alternatives, break the rules, flexibility, variety” vs “correct way, tried and true, first … then, proven path”.
Or, my personal favorite, the new procedure or policy is poorly thought out or not entirely understood by management, and sincere questions and concerns are dismissed as someone just being a passive aggressive reactionary blockhead.
This is interesting, I was considering opening a thread on the same subject, a colleague of mine is having the same problems with his team. It became my concern because his team members are complaining to me about him and I want them to stop doing that.
As you already realize people resist change, and in this case it will sound to them like you are giving them additional work to do. Even if there is no new work to be done in your reformulated process they still have to learn the new process and start using it.
All they’re doing is expressing their annoyance at having to change things, the form it takes doesn’t matter, and since they have no rational argument you’ll get all that personal stuff coming back.
So start by acknowledging their petty concerns, IOW, let them know you feel their pain. Then blame your boss for requiring the changes, everybody understands that, and appeal to them to help you out on that basis. Ask for their advice on to implement the changes in a way that minimizes the problem for them. You can ignore everything they say if you have to, but it’s the thought that counts.
As for rules, it’s a trap, there’s no sufficiently complex job that can be performed using simple rules. Concentrate on guidelines and priorities, give them examples to work with.
Of course none of this may help, people can be enormous pains if they want to be. Just don’t make the mistake of my colleague, if you turn it into an emotional battle between you and them they’ll have the advantage in numbers.
I sympathize because I’m often expected to use my leadership skills to bring about change, with no authority to tell people what to do.
In this position, it’s tempting is to see people as inanimate obstacles that you must subdue. The problem with this view is that people are not objects, and if they sense you’re treating them as such, they will double down on the resistance.
People accept change best when they feel like played a role in shaping it, even when in truth they haven’t. Setting up a meeting with the affected users and giving them a chance to discuss the mere prospect of change–as if the matter hasn’t already been decided–can go a lot farther than just dumping the idea in their laps and forcing them to deal with it.
I’m not a hand-holdsy type person who likes to schmooze or coddle, but the golden rule applies. Imagine how you’d like to be treated if you were used to a certain process, and are now being told to do something different. What would make you least resistant and hostile to this change? Would you want someone to relate to you in a sympathetic and patient manner, or would you want someone to talk to you as if more interested in filling out their accomplishment report than creating a new system that is better and more acceptable than the previous one?
Pretty much anyone can implement a new process or project in a vaccuum, that’s easy. It’s simply following a roadmap. The really challenging parts are managing change, setting expectations and matrix management. Those skills are far more important to a successful implementation than being able to follow a project or implementation plan. They are also skills that, if missing or under developed, will make one a very unpopular cow-orker.
May I ask what sort of input you’re getting from the people who actually have to implement your changes? Did you check with them beforehand to see what processes they felt did and did not work? Were they involved in developing the new process? Did you run it through a test period and get their evaluation?
Or did you just announce that it was time for everyone to stop doing things the way they had been taught and start doing them “your” way?
And, having spent a good portion of my career as an interchangeable cubicle drone, I never got in trouble or jeopardized my job for being a “rule follower.” It was thinking outside the box that my superiors objected to.
I really love this community. Every response was excellent and made me think. I sort of just vented and didn’t really know if anyone would even read it. I come back a few days later and now I have so much to think about.
The more I learn about working with people the more I admire the perfect ways they have developed of being who they are, which they got to through a series of reasonable reactions to the world they got to experience.
There are all kinds of good external reasons to resist change. None of us is sure unanticipated consequences won’t be a problem when change happens, including the person who created the rule they’re proposing to change. How can you ever discover all the other traditions that developed around the old rule, which will now cause issues? People who built their protocols around your old rule didn’t necessarily inform you, and don’t necessarily remember all the ways they did so. The old habits provide some of the framework of clues through which we interpret everything.
I think change is great, but so is stability. If you find people inexplicably resist what you are doing, your not understanding is probably the more actionable issue than their average behavior.
Not to say management is always right, but as far as I’ve seen, there are a LOT of passive aggressive reactionary blockheads in the world - probably 2-3x more than are actually needed.
