Do IT staff resist transformation as much as those in other functions?

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During one change initiative, the worst part was that the internal staff in the IT organization (ITO) didn't like it because they were so fixed in their mentality and not open to the idea of change. Getting them on board required a lot of incentivizing, rather than cajoling or educating. I developed a bunch of different incentives, such as a job-shadowing plan that allowed them to choose which business organization they were interested in. They could go to that organization, almost like an intern, and climb the ladder within the ITO that way. This was a very large global organization, and the company policy was that you have to work in the factory or in a line of business before you get promoted in IT. And that policy came from the board, not from the CEO or the CIO. They were strict about that, so I developed this set of job-shadowing plans for IT people who wanted to be promoted up to make that segue transparent. Then I could almost use that to anticipate where I was going to have staff turnover, and there were other rewards if they didn't want to move up from where they were.

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I’ve done transformations at companies after they’d had rapid growth. A company in that situation goes through growing pains because it is transforming from an entrepreneurial, get-it-done type of culture, to something that requires more structure. Their old approach will not work given the scale, especially if they want to continue scaling. They’ll realize that more processes are needed, but they haven't let go of the old way of doing things yet. Part of your task is helping them get there through cajoling, pushing and guiding. But it's not just IT, there are other functions that also have more structure pushed on them as well. They just have to go through it, and you have to help them to understand that this is the new way of doing things.

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I recently had an all-hands meeting where I had to quell some protests over moving from a ticket system to more of an ITSM system. And as we become more of an ITIL shop, I understand. Although the ironic thing is that people said, "I wish we could go back to Zendesk," but back when we had Zendesk for tickets, they hated it.

One of the things I said was, "Look, as we become an ITIL shop, in some cases we should do everything we can to streamline the systems and make that as painless as possible. But to some extent, your life is going to get a little harder. You will have to fill in a few more fields, but we get a lot of value out of that.” I think it's super important to show that, and to create a feedback loop.

Do IT staff resist transformation as much as those in other functions?

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