Change Management

[salcha]

Hi there,

I'm under experienced in change management, but may be the most appropriate person in my company to head it up. I've got my bachelors, in Industrial Engineering and a couple years post college experience, but I've never specifically been in charge of major company change. We are a family company and have been in business for about forty years. We are a construction contracting company, with three “sister” companies. We have about 16 “office” personnel and up to 300 workers in other capacities. I'm looking for help in providing the right direction to improve our company.

To make that a little less broad some symptoms of our problems are that: our cost accounting is never as current as it could be and is often inaccurate. We do most of our work in the summer months and spend our winters sifting through our failures and successes trying to make things add up. By January we don’t necessarily know if we made money the previous season or not, and we definitely don’t know how much and from which operations we have realized the gains and losses. Our office procedures are flawed and cumbersome. From an organizational view, we don’t have a mission statement, we rarely have meetings, people usually don’t know how their jobs affect others in the company or even in the particular process they are working on. In the past they have tried to add this or that accounting software to fix their problems, but to my knowledge have never gotten past “the way things are always done” as far as company wide operations. We’re mostly managed by experience and intuition of the owner/president, the civil engineer and the finance lady all of whom have been here 25 years or more.

I’ve broke down what I think are the 65 or so issues we should work on first. I have some kind of priorities figured out for which are the most important. I have knowledge of ISO 9000 and a semi-peripherial view of companies that have implemented it. I have learned theory of change management, TQM, Continuous Improvement, Financial Management, all the standard things for an IE, etc. in school, am aware of the change resistant culture that we have here, and many of the personal dynamics. I’ve done additinal web research to try and look at our options. And spent time analyzing what we have and how to get where we want to be.

I want to know how to choose the most appropriate methodology to pitch to our president so that we get on the right track. He’s aware we can do better, but doesn’t know the civil engineer wants serious change and so do I. Nor does he know that we are plotting to do something and hopefully that something is company-wide. I could also use advice beyond theory of how this sort of thing actually goes, what sort of timelines I could expect and how to improve our odds for success.

The current picture looks grim, but is also very exciting in that there is a lot of room for improvement. I am a bit anxious that whatever we do becomes a combined effort from the office group, that people realize the need for the change, the potential that we have, that they buy-in to our efforts, and that we are thorough and expeditious. Any input from you could really help my company improve and we would all appreciate it immensely. Thank you very much for your advice.

 

[sbi]

I understand this well; I am part of the family in our small mfg co in the Midwest,
We still are managed by an 86-year-old patriarch that tells my brother and I he was building this for us. By the time he is ready to give it up I’ll be able to retire

How many family members do you have spread through out the company? Are they in management, or production, supervision?

Are they any good at what they do?

Or have some of them taken on to much above their abilities to satisfy older higher ups in the family?

Cost accounting can be dangerous if you get the wrong system, we put one in that counts every nut, bolt and washer, way to much paper work for the benefits, but our Pres. Thinks we are doing better because the number crunchier are generating paper that looks good no matter what is really going on in the plant.

 

[salcha]

Sbi, thanks for the response. To answer your questions, my grandparents started the company and they mostly ran it together until two summers ago when Granddad’s health became limiting. He was a shrewd and hardworking businessman, my grandmother wise and effective and managed the books. My uncle basically took over the presidency during the first year of Grandad’s health problems. He is quite intelligent, in his early fifties, trained in business principles and has a good deal of experience around here to understand what he’s working with. His daughter graduated college last spring and now works here. She’s a bright girl, a quick and motivated learner, will be a greater and greater asset to the company the longer she is around. My mother works here a little bit doing the books for a side business. Her work is largely inconsequential the things I’m discussing but she is good at what she does. All three of my brothers and I worked here for a number of years in field positions. I came to the office last February with no position, then became one of two assistant engineers and now that the season is over, I’m trying to get some initiative rolling to make us more competitive while bringing a more logical sense of order to our semi-chaotic environment.

My uncle is more progressive as a president than my grandfather, but both, in my view, have and had too much of a need to struggle and stress about the details of what their employees are accomplishing; instead of controlling things from the larger perspective/creating systems to get results instead of getting in the middle of the work. We, the civil engineer, I and a couple others in the office, believe that my uncle will be willing for the company to change and even to change his style if we can show him the benefits of a different way. Hopefully this winter brings about some changes for the better.

 

[sbi]

if you want to
my work phone is 402-751-2135 im am normally here 7A to 3:30P CST
you have a lot more family to deal with tha I do !

 

[flexibility]

salcha

I think that what you need is a PERT time and cost system.
I would not recommend the theory of change management, TQM, Continuous Improvement, Financial Management, etc.
From the PERT system to may get all the information and control you need. It is a simple and rough program, and it should do the work for you.
Beware from the sophisticated programs they put the systematic and informatic before efficiency.

 

[Iskit4iam]

PERT? Useful but not going to solve his problems. We had a sister division in railroad construction. They never knew how they were doing until it was too late to recover their mistakes. Their field cost reporting was flawed. They had beautiful pert charts though.

Lean six sigma tools that identify your processes and opportunities for improvement are what you need. 65 issues are way too many. Focus on the one that is the most important. Once you get the process down you can address other issues.

Nothing happens unless your uncle gets on board big time. You have to make him a believer and champion of the entire effort. How do you do that? You know your uncle, what excites him. I've used publications, benchmarking, and world class tours to get the lightbulb to come on. Another reason to identify and address just one problem is he may just let you because you ask. Then you have a chance to convince him with results.

Good Luck

 

[HamishMcTavish]

If you are planning changes I would advise;

1) Don't change too many things at once because people can only cope with so much at once

2) Take the time to review how effective the change has been as part of your plan

3) Involve the workforce that the changes affect, they may well have a different perspective on your proposals.

4) I agree with Iskit4iam, you need to prioritise what is most important, whether that involves 6-sigma or not.

Regards, HM.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam