r’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around

“I will do anything to stop this project and I expect you to do the same!” The young lady sitting before me in tears, reporting that to me, worked for the IT Director who was in charge of the systems integration for a project we were leading. She didn’t work for me, she worked for him and he reported to me ‘dotted line’ as they say today.

We were part of a high tech company and the decision had been made, based on my recommendation, to outsource the primary warehouse of this fast growing $11 billion outfit. It was a culture clash of gigantic proportions. My team was brought in from the outside to drive change. Inside, they were all used to the best of everything.

My first order of business was to slash operating costs in the logistics function. In the warehouse in question they were spending over $300,000 a year, are you ready for this, cleaning the warehouse. It wasn’t that big, a high rise facility with maybe a 150,000 square foot footprint and eight levels. They were dusting the computers up as high as they could reach – every night!

The big guys who met in the mahogany boardroom agreed with my recommendation to outsource the function. The company was a mere fifteen years old at the time and the ‘old timers’ were outraged. We agreed to provide jobs on campus, as they called it, for everyone. Nonetheless, the pockets of resistance would rival the streets of Baghdad today.

There are a few stages of resistance but I am talking about when it reaches the Gandhi stage … it goes underground. Here are a few things that began to happen …

• Allegations of wrongdoing: For me and my team it started with rumors that soon led to allegations we were in cahoots with the company selected to do the outsourcing. This was of course a major distraction to the work we were driving. We had to take time to sit down with my boss, the CEO, the CFO and others to explain we’d never even met these people before. Lesson – it’s important to deal with what comes your way during change in a professional and upfront manner.

• Formal charges: In this company there was a person known as a Corporate Compliance Officer. There job was primarily to insure the company was in compliance with all laws. One morning I found out they were also in charge of following up on complaints of basic wrongdoing. Anonymous, that is how it worked; charges were filed against me and my staff for rigging the bid. That was a further distraction from the work at hand. Lesson – Make sure you make a thorough evaluation upfront of the culture and build the proper support for the effort. We had done this and after an investigation, we were cleared of the charges.

• Underground activities: We were receiving information as our project progressed that our systems guy was going to subvert the project any way he could. Lesson – Make sure you develop a ground work of support throughout the organization to receive information of what is ‘really’ happening in your project and not what leaders around you are ‘reporting’ is happening.

Fortunately for me our team had great contacts throughout the organization and the information flowed freely. The young lady who sat in my office and reported the Director’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around

nding over $300,000 a year, are you ready for this, cleaning the warehouse. It wasn’t that big, a high rise facility with maybe a 150,000 square foot footprint and eight levels. They were dusting the computers up as high as they could reach – every night!

The big guys who met in the mahogany boardroom agreed with my recommendation to outsource the function. The company was a mere fifteen years old at the time and the ‘old timers’ were outraged. We agreed to provide jobs on campus, as they called it, for everyone. Nonetheless, the pockets of resistance would rival the streets of Baghdad today.

There are a few stages of resistance but I am talking about when it reaches the Gandhi stage … it goes underground. Here are a few things that began to happen …

• Allegations of wrongdoing: For me and my team it started with rumors that soon led to allegations we were in cahoots with the company selected to do the outsourcing. This was of course a major distraction to the work we were driving. We had to take time to sit down with my boss, the CEO, the CFO and others to explain we’d never even met these people before. Lesson – it’s important to deal with what comes your way during change in a professional and upfront manner.

• Formal charges: In this company there was a person known as a Corporate Compliance Officer. There job was primarily to insure the company was in compliance with all laws. One morning I found out they were also in charge of following up on complaints of basic wrongdoing. Anonymous, that is how it worked; charges were filed against me and my staff for rigging the bid. That was a further distraction from the work at hand. Lesson – Make sure you make a thorough evaluation upfront of the culture and build the proper support for the effort. We had done this and after an investigation, we were cleared of the charges.

• Underground activities: We were receiving information as our project progressed that our systems guy was going to subvert the project any way he could. Lesson – Make sure you develop a ground work of support throughout the organization to receive information of what is ‘really’ happening in your project and not what leaders around you are ‘reporting’ is happening.

Fortunately for me our team had great contacts throughout the organization and the information flowed freely. The young lady who sat in my office and reported the Director’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around

or me and my team it started with rumors that soon led to allegations we were in cahoots with the company selected to do the outsourcing. This was of course a major distraction to the work we were driving. We had to take time to sit down with my boss, the CEO, the CFO and others to explain we’d never even met these people before. Lesson – it’s important to deal with what comes your way during change in a professional and upfront manner.

• Formal charges: In this company there was a person known as a Corporate Compliance Officer. There job was primarily to insure the company was in compliance with all laws. One morning I found out they were also in charge of following up on complaints of basic wrongdoing. Anonymous, that is how it worked; charges were filed against me and my staff for rigging the bid. That was a further distraction from the work at hand. Lesson – Make sure you make a thorough evaluation upfront of the culture and build the proper support for the effort. We had done this and after an investigation, we were cleared of the charges.

• Underground activities: We were receiving information as our project progressed that our systems guy was going to subvert the project any way he could. Lesson – Make sure you develop a ground work of support throughout the organization to receive information of what is ‘really’ happening in your project and not what leaders around you are ‘reporting’ is happening.

Fortunately for me our team had great contacts throughout the organization and the information flowed freely. The young lady who sat in my office and reported the Director’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around

the bid. That was a further distraction from the work at hand. Lesson – Make sure you make a thorough evaluation upfront of the culture and build the proper support for the effort. We had done this and after an investigation, we were cleared of the charges.

• Underground activities: We were receiving information as our project progressed that our systems guy was going to subvert the project any way he could. Lesson – Make sure you develop a ground work of support throughout the organization to receive information of what is ‘really’ happening in your project and not what leaders around you are ‘reporting’ is happening.

Fortunately for me our team had great contacts throughout the organization and the information flowed freely. The young lady who sat in my office and reported the Director’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around

r’s comments in a recent staff meeting was credible. Unfortunately, she felt she would lose her job if she went public. After much discussion, she trusted me and agreed to ‘come out’ if I talked to the Senior VP of Technology, the Directors boss.

As I met the Senior VP it went something like this …

“Bob, you need to know what Harry said in his Staff meeting this week.” “What?” He gruffly mumbled.

Now he and I had had similar conversations about this guy in the past, it was no surprise.

“He ordered his people to bury the outsourcing project in any way they could.”

I explained to him that I had a member of his staff who would walk in his office and testify to this fact but only if the Director was going to be fired afterwards. Bob got angry and threw a few things around. The problem we had is that we were also in the middle of a companywide systems implementation and the Director, Harry, was THE only one on the premises who knew the old legacy logistics systems. The Senior VP was in a box.

“Ed I can’t get rid of Harry … he is the only one on the campus who has a clue about our legacy systems. It would be foolhardy to me. He won’t do it. I will beat him about the head and shoulders and see to it!”

I never knew whether he beat him up or not but he did it … he delivered on his promise to screw up the outsourcing. When the system was turned on between the outsource company and us, it shut down and was quite a mess. The outsource company, of course trying to please a customer and keep the account, kept mum about the issue behind the issue. They had to bring in very high experts from IBM to figure out what was causing every transaction to double. They found code written on our side to cause this problem on theirs. Our Director, Harry, had delivered on his staff meeting promise.

Change can be ugly. Resistance is very real. When you’re managing change you must make yourself aware of everyone involved and have a network to gather ‘real information’ … and even then it might not be enough.

Ed Kugler