Over at MSDN, Mike Walker of Microsoft writes about IBM findings that cultural changes are a big impediment to any kind of information technology (IT) implementation. (I “met” Mike when I was preparing this case study on Microsoft in Financial Services a few years ago.)
Kind of intuitive of course but it is good to see statistics backing up gut feelings.
I heard the same thing in spades the week of October 20 at PegaWorld. Case studies presented by the Royal Bank of Canada, SunTrust Banks and American Home Shield (more on each case in future blog posts) spoke about culture as much as technology. That issue also came across strongly at a main-tent panel session that included executives from Kaiser Permanente, Citi and JPMorgan Chase.
It’s not just the natural human trait to resist change but an even baser trait: we don’t like to share, I guess. PegaWorld presenters noted correctly that the big payoff for business process management (BPM) is in the re-use across departments and other corporate silos. But resistance to sharing the templates and best practices of the first BPM installation is a continuing problem. Everyone wants to do it “their way.”
So if you’re in charge of a BPM project in your enterprise, you have to add psychologist and kindergarten teacher to your resume: Everybody share!
-- Dennis Byron
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