THE UNANNOUNCED CHANGE

A RANA Case Study – A Small Architectural Organization

The Story

Janice Meighen was the Project Management Coordinator hired 6 months ago to install automated Project Management and supporting systems in Building Resources Ltd. (BRL), a small, highly specialized architectural firm of some 42 employees. Right from the beginning, Janice had suffered from three problems in the organization:

Only two of the 20 architects in this company had any Project Management or computer applications experience. The others considered such systems as unnecessary field.
Janice was one of only four women in the company with professional status. All of the members of the support staff in the company were female, however; so, the professionals had a tendency to look down on the professional staff who were women.
Janice was not an architect by trade but Electronics Engineer with a strong background in computer science and early Artificial Intelligence applications. She did not fit into the clubby atmosphere of the architects’ office.

Things came to a head when the leader of the “resistance group” met with the President of BRL, Arnold Kraay asking him to terminate Janice’s employment for incompetence and for causing “turmoil” in the company. Mr. Crampton pointed to the considerable improvement on work processes and the bottom line since Janice’s arrival. He was not very interested in losing either a valuable employee who was bringing change to the organization or any of the architects involved.

The Intervention

RANA received a call from Arnold Kraay asking for advice on a path forward. RANA’s Process Leaders:

Helped the President compose and broadcast a message to the organization dealing with the role Janice was hired to play;
Interviewed all of the architects to gather information on their concerns;
Established a Change Management Team (CMT), with Janice as lead, 3 architects and 3 support staff as members;
Facilitated a Town Hall meeting so that the President could expand on the change needed and the Team could establish a change plan;
Facilitated the first three meetings of the CMT and coached Janice on how to act as a Process Leader, facilitate meetings and extend help to those having trouble making the change needed by the organization;
Monitored the situation with the President for a period of one year to ensure that meaningful change was taking place and that the anxiety level of the organization in the face of change subsided to normal management levels.