While change can be both tricky and expensive within organisations, it’s also necessary in order for the organisation to innovate and adapt to the world around it. Needless to say, however, the implementation of a new BRM capability can be challenging if the culture within the organisation is prohibitive.
The actual implementation of a BRM capability is essentially a business process change, which is achieved by business process re-engineering (BPR). BPR is about being innovative and thinking ‘outside of the box.’ As Archer and Bowker put it, BPR is “a vision-led structured methodology for the fundamental rebuilding of business process through the balanced interaction of work tasks, people, information, and technology.” To re-engineer a business process is to completely rethink the way it works from beginning to end, questioning everything from the perspectives of both the customer and internal efficiency.
BPR is likely to entail not just the reorganisation of roles and responsibilities, but also some fundamental changes in the organisational culture. When faced with this challenge, it is important to first identify your organisational culture, which is often heavily influenced by the managerial cultures and are commonly categorised into the sections below:
Autocratic power culture – Led by management, wherein an autocratic leader can be charismatic and well-respected.
Bureaucratic role culture – Formal and centralised, wherein everyone’s roles are clearly defined and relationships are also clearly set out. However, there are often informal relationships and roles that people exploit to get things done quicker and easier, rather than using the formal channels. This can be particularly important in areas of organisations that have a specific technological expertise.
Matrix task-based culture – Tasks are devolved to the lowest practical level in a project management style.
Anarchic individualistic culture – Informal and decentralised, in which everybody has a say in all decisions.
Whatever your organisational culture, it needs an appropriate approach to ensure success—and this may mean changing the culture completely. Davenport and Short[2] summarise the culture on which successful business change must rest, expressing that organisational culture must move from:
- Hierarchies to teams
- Controlling to empowering
- Analysis to action
- Risk aversion to calculated risk taking
- Boundaries to networks
Commitment to change
Once you’ve determined your organizational culture, the next step is to build commitment to the change you are trying to implement—in this case, a new BRM capability. Yeates and Cadle[3] state that in order to get all staff to commit to the organisation’s mission statement—and to make the pursuit of improvement a core feature of the organisation’s culture— organisations must be willing to spend the money to adopt a distinctive managerial style. The two key goals they identify are:
- The removal of hierarchical differentiators, with the same privileges for management and staff alike. This also fits into Robertson’s current style of thinking, Holacracy.[4]
- The application of resources, such as quality improvement teams to identify and solve quality problems. A BRM team could fill this role!
Widespread organisational commitment is integral to the success of the new BRM capability, as it sets the stage for C-level buy-in. Hammer & Champy detail some further benefits, including the organization’s transformation into becoming processed and culture-focused, which helps to empower the right people in the right way, improve understanding, and focus on value delivery.
Common obstacles
Of course, it’s unlikely that such a tremendous business reorientation would be accepted without a fuss in most organisations. Some common obstacles to change I have encountered are people’s inherent fear of change, an inability to see the potential benefits of the change, pockets of resistance from some stakeholders, general confusion about the scope of the change, lack of commitment to the change, and unrealistic timelines for people to see the benefits of the change.
Without a patient and thoughtful CIO at the helm, all of these obstacles could very well be the downfall of the new BRM capability within the organisation. The support of C-level management is critical in these instances, as well as a strong organisational understanding of the BRM capability and its benefits.
Climbing the ladder of support
Jobber[5] offers a useful typology termed the “ladder of support,” which identifies the different stages of acceptance displayed by those affected by the change:
- Opposition – When employees are openly against the change, and use direct and forceful methods to try and stop it
- Resistance - When employees show their displeasure about the change less openly, and more passive-aggressive in tactics to delay or stop it
- Compliance - Employees will act in accordance to the change, but still believe that it is not the best option, so they do so with minimal effort
- Acceptance - There is a high level of support, and employees realise the benefits of the change and will work towards the change
- Commitment - Employees are committed to the change, fully believe in it, and work towards it with conviction and enthusiasm
It is important to note that this is not a simple hierarchical chain—people can start anywhere on the ladder and move in either direction. Therefore, it’s important to find out where key stakeholders are on the ladder and help move them in the right direction.
Conclusion
When implementing a new BRM capability, it is absolutely critical to analyse your organisational culture before setting any other steps in motion. Ask yourself, What managerial styles are in place in my organisation? Do they differ throughout different business functions within the organisation, or do they shift as I move up and down the hierarchy? What is a tried-and-true method to approaching change with these groups? Which methods of resistance could I potentially run into?
In order to ensure that the BRM capability thrives within the organisation, you must be prepared with answers to all of these questions—and then some. Can you think of some other questions you’ll need to answer before beginning this journey?
[1] Archer, Richard and Bowker, Pauk. (1995), “BPR consulting: an evaluation of the methods employed”, Business Process Re-engineering & Management Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 28-46.
[2] Davenport, T H and Short, J E. (1990), “The new industrial engineering: information technology and business process redesign”, Sloan Management Review, Summer, pp. 11 - 27
[3] Yeats, D and Cadle, J. (1996),”Project Management for Information Systems”, Pitman publishing.
[4] Robertson, Brian J. (2015),” Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy”, Portfolio Penguin
[5] Jobber, D. (2001), “Principles and Practice of Marketing”, McGraw Hill, 2nd edition.
