Lessons in IT Transformation: Technology Expert to Business Leader

Making Change a Part of Your Culture

One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that change is a one-time deal. Many of us have lived through the organizational approach of the day. Over the years there have been countless books and approaches to improving organizations, and we have all lived through these various approaches—whether it be Six Sigma or SLAs for everything from new innovations to falling out of trees and hoping we are caught by our colleagues. Many of these management strategies have some real value in their messages and lessons. However, the one problem that any approach has is that it leaves people with the perspective that once this is over, we can get back to normal.

When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I had a colleague who we'll call George. George was a brilliant technologist and one of the smartest people I have ever met. But George was not a big fan of change. He was extremely set in his ways and resistant to trying any new approaches. Time after time, we would be dealing with new and more challenging issues. Instead of viewing this as the nature of business, each time he viewed the issue as a “one-off” anomaly. His famous line, which he used constantly, was, “This is all well and good, but when things go back to normal. . . . ” After hearing this comment a couple of dozen times, I finally said to him, “George, this is the new normal! We will never go back to how things were before.”

The very definition of normal suggests how things are the ...