Thursday, February 18th, I was invited to a graduation ceremony at Utrecht, The Netherlands. The invitation drew my attention because the graduating students were quite interesting. All of them had over 20 years of business experience and the last 18 months had invested more than 40 days in their Master in Advanced Change Management. Count an additional 40 days for literature, class prep and social events. I was curious what these business veterans had learned.
“What is leading you in Youth Care?” was the event theme. Not directly ICT related. But appartently , the multitude of initiatives in Youth Care in The Netherlands, makes it difficult to put priorities and select a strategic course. And that surely sounds ICT-like!
People in Youth Care are divided in “professionals” and “managers”, so we were explained. Professionals are passionate, involved and full of energy. Managers are linked to burocracy, taking distance and control. If the professional opts to follows the numerous quality systems in selecting tasks and priorities, the coaching youngsters become at peril. Also here the parallel with ICT environments is clear. ICT professionals – developers and architects – easily state that the IT quality systems are killing creativity and work satisfaction.
But the most important learning point is in another area. In the black townships of Soweto, so the case explained, government had been trying to improve life conditions for youngsters through large change initiatives, but without results. Until, one day, a local police agent, put some “teddy bears” in his office. Capturing the message “I have interest in your world”, youngsters more easily found their way to the office. Contact between officials and youth increased in quantity and quality, and soon the policy office because a multi-service youth center. The approach of the local agent, is now being copied by the government to the other black townships.
Suddenly alos here the link with ICT became clear to me! One of my bigger customers recently, and initially to my surprise, had abandoned to launch large strategic change initiatives for IT transformation. Change initiatives had to be “low-profile”, not using broadcast communication. In stead focus was on personal involvement at small scale, and “micro-communication” adapted to the receiver.
These business vets made it clear to me: the more complex the situation, the higher the importance of small initiatives. Maybe I have to put the Master in Advanced Change Management to my list.