November 11, 2004
Dear Everyone:
Have I mentioned the Space Standardizations Project yet?
Back in the last quarter of 2002, our CEO announced an urgent need to reduce costs. Immediately following that, the president of our operating company, “Boring and Really Expensive Services” (BRES), announced that he, personally, would save the company $23 million. By “personally” he meant us.
Immediately following that, my supervisor at the time announced that she would no longer reimburse for ARMA dinners and took away my “temporary” cubicle in “Pleasanton” and moved me to our “base” offices in “Pleasant Hill”. Not that the commute to “Pleasant Hill” is all that bad, 25-30 minutes in the morning, not much more than that in the evenings.
The only problem is that while my desk is in “Pleasant Hill”, my job is mostly in “Pleasanton”. That’s because the document management system people are in “Pleasanton”, and I’m one of the training coordinators for the system. Luckily, my group, Global Records Consulting (GRC), maintains a single office with some surplus furniture for any GRC member who needs to work in “Pleasanton”. Mostly, that’s me.
So, early in 2003, a number of Cost Reduction Teams were formed. And the Powers That Be (PTB) decreed that all these teams would use the new document management system to manage all the documents that they would be generating. The PTB also determined that all these people could be trained in under two hours. Consequently, they weren’t well trained and they weren’t happy with the system.
One of these Cost Reduction Teams came up with a
way to reduce costs: Cut
back on those luxurious offices and put everyone in cubicles.
And BRES Space Standardizations (BRES SS) was formed.
They also bought a building in downtown “Hobby” that used to
belong to a certain
And, needless to say, the PTB decided that all the people in BRES SS would use the document management system to manage all the documents that they would be generating. The PTB also determined that all these people could be trained in 30 minutes or less. Consequently, they weren’t well trained and they aren’t happy with the system.
In the meantime, the BRES SS team was busily breaking the overall project down into things like the HPCP (“Hobby” Portfolio Consolidation Project) and the BAPCP (Bay Area Portfolio Consolidation Project). Yes, we are once again swimming in alphabet soup.
It recently and, I understand rather publicly, came to the attention of the PTB that quite a lot of people using the document management system are not happy about it. So they’ve hired an outside consultant, a “Change Management” expert, to look into the matter. I’ve met him before; he taught a day-long in-company change management class that I took a couple of months ago.
In fact, I was scheduled (as I mentioned in last week’s Letter) to give him an overview of the document management system last Friday. I figured it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. But every time I started to explain something, it would spark a question, which would lead to more questions. And before we knew it, three hours had gone by and we had to vacate the room for someone else.
So we scheduled another session. Again, every point brought up questions and observations. And, wouldn’t you know it, the system would pick this time to show off some of it’s more colorful personality quirks. This gave the change management expert even more ideas (by this time, I had become something of a sounding board), which he wanted to capture in his presentation. So off he went to work on that and we still haven’t finished the “overview”.
It’s rather nice to be able to explain to someone who will listen that just “dumping technology on people’s heads” really isn’t the best way to instill confidence in a complex system. And since the PTB is spending significant bucks on this outside expert, there’s even the possibility that they will listen to his recommendations.
Not that I’m holding my breath, you understand. I’ve been around enough to know how projects can get shortchanged by the next “flavor of the month”. So I’m reserving judgment until I see what comes of it. All the same, it’s kind of fun to watch.
Love, as always,
Pete
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