Automation As Change "Making Automation Successful With The Principles of Change Management"

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I certify that I have read this document and, in my opinion, it is satisfactory in scope and quality as a
project report in partial fulfillment for the graduate course of Leadership and Change Management held
at the School of Management of Kathmandu University.
Mr. Sandip Timsina
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3 Copyright @ 2007, By the author
All rights reserved.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by the acts of Nepal without
the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Request for the permission or further information
should be addressed to the author.

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The object of this term paper is to observe and analyze the automation process as a change in
theoretical context. The author is confident that the results of the project and methods presented in this
report will be taken as a guide for a more comprehensive study at a future date. The author is not
responsible or liable legally and morally against the results and consequent decisions based on the
project report. The project shall only serve the academic purpose. The views expressed (except
theories), if any, in this report are those of the author only.
The term Automation in this term paper refers to business process automation by the use of computer
programs.
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I would like to express my gratitude to Kathmandu University School of Management for giving me the
opportunity to work on a term paper that enhanced my learning and knowledge on change
management and leadership.
I am very indebted to my instructor/facilitator Prof. Subas KC. for his letting me do a term paper in such
a subject that I had been involved in. It helped me evaluate the individual processes from a different
perspective.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank staffs at Nepal Bank Limited and Employees Provident
Fund in taking no pain in sitting with me in informal discussions, giving their insights.
Last but not the least I would like to express my sincere thanks to each and everyone who provided me
their valuable information and suggestions.
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SIGNATURE PAGE .................................................................................................................................... 1
COPYRIGHT & DISCLAIMER ...................................................................................................................... 2
DISCLAIMER............................................................................................................................................. 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .............................................................................................................................. 4
Automation ............................................................................................................................................. 4
What is Automation ............................................................................................................................. 4
Why do we need Automation .............................................................................................................. 5
Literature review ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Strategic Management......................................................................................................................... 5
Business Process Reengineering........................................................................................................... 6
Business Process Management ............................................................................................................ 6
Information Communication Technology as key business enabler ........................................................ 6
New forms of organization................................................................................................................... 7
Change Management........................................................................................................................... 7
Need for change ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Theoritical analysis of change ................................................................................................................ 10
Schein͛s Model .................................................................................................................................. 14
Daft͛s model ...................................................................................................................................... 14
Kotter͛s eight phase model ................................................................................................................ 16
ADKAR Model .................................................................................................................................... 19
Why change fails? .................................................................................................................................. 21
Making change successful ...................................................................................................................... 23
Theoritical analysis ............................................................................................................................ 23
Resistance to automation and managing resistance ........................................................................... 28
Dealing with resistance to change .................................................................................................. 33
Evaluating Change ................................................................................................................................. 35
Conclusion and Recommendations ........................................................................................................ 37
References............................................................................................................................................. 39
Acronyms .............................................................................................................................................. 41
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Technology lies at the heart of organization process. As an enabler, as a smoother and as an
irreplaceable facilitator technology͛s role is the most crucial in the survival of an organization. This
makes technology the power to survive through the stiff competition, source of innovation and multiply
productivity while reducing effort and the resources. Thus technology is the major subject that changes
and to adapt to this change is more than imperative. Other way technology does not affect one part or
function in an organization, but it is deep rooted in every part and function in the organization. It makes
technology the major driver of change. On the other hand emerging new trend and requirement in the
environment be that customer demand/ orientation or new requirement by regulating bodies,
organizations have to embrace this change. Today every organization wants as little human intervention
in its operation as possible to ensure standard, to exercise control, to avoid errors among other reasons.
This gave momentum to the process of automation. ͞The increase in market demands has driven
businesses to seek ways that can realize significant cost reductions and increase shareholder value by
automating business process flows, eliminating non value-adding human interventions, and allowing
enterprise applications to communicate and share information intelligently and seamlessly.͟1
Automation is encompassing virtually every walk of life. From agriculture to space exploration it has
placed its foot firm and strong.
Wikipedia defines Automation as
the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial
control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided
technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for
human intervention.
In the year 1956, in his book Automation: friend or foe? Robert Hugh Macmillan wrote, ͞In the industry
the use of automatic devices enables us to make more goods more cheaply and, ultimately, with less
capital outlay. In the military sphere their application makes possible the design of equipment that could
not conceivably be operated otherwise. And as they are extensively used for both purposes throughout
the world, it follows that, with the relative shortage of manpower in the West, our only hope of
retaining our position in the world is to install automatic equipment as fast as we can.͟ Thus Automation
is a process where machines replace the human labor in doing work.
No doubt technology brings efficiency and no organization can remain untouched by this whirl of
change. While it eliminates old jobs (e.g manual data entry, book keeping etc) it also creates new job
(e.g. computer data entry, data base management, network engineers and so on). People are being
replaced by machines. ͞Power back ups and ups are system that I have been using for years now, but I
have never thought ups could be linked to existing LAN and administered remotely͛͛ says Subash
Khadka system manager , Employee provident fund . Turn to any manager who has served in any
1
http://www.diyarme.com/eprocessing.htm
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Nepalese organization for 8-10 years will have experience of having seen at least one major automation
process. Though Nepal imported its first computer decades back, the automation process started only
after mid 95. Only few lucky ones witnessed major automation in the early 90s. Ironically many times
the organizations that automate themselves late are more modern, efficient and sophisticated in
comparison to the other players in their industry who were proud early embracers of automation.
However one cannot wait and watch as obsolescence hits technology but has to manage its adoption
and adapt to the change it brings in segregates successful companies from the rest.

We need automation for following major reasons
p To replace large human requirements in work environment and situation that involves hard
physical and monotonous work.
p To replace human in the work environment that is risky and dangerous.
p To do works those are beyond the human capabilities like lifting loads.
However in this term paper I shall discuss computer based automation specially the automation of
transaction processing and client servicing and there also automation has its own sets of advantages and
they are
p To reduce workforce in monotonous activities and to place them in other areas.

p To bring about standard in the way individual transaction and customer is handled.
p To minimize errors as machines (Computer programs) are lesser prone to errors in comparison
with their human parts.
p To bring efficiency and promptness in service delivery as in automated environment work flow is
highly smooth and customer get prompt service.
p To make organization highly responsive and flexible to changing environment and customer
preferences.

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Decision to automate business (whole or part) has strategic importance. Not only from the viewpoint of
investment, but also from organizations͛ goals and core-values; automation is a strategic move. In
͚Leading Strategic Change, breaking through the brain barrier͛, J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen
note that leaders face change of such enormous scope, size, and complexity that it is nearly
overwhelming:
p Transforming a business unit that succeeded for years by focusing on technological prowess to a
unit that must now focus on customer service,
p Leading an organization from domestic competition to the global battlefield,
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p Accelerating growth by focusing not just on building things but on all the services that go with
after-sales support,
p Changing the culture from one of considered deliberations to a fast, first-mover approach,
p Redesigning jobs to incorporate new technology that we hardly understand, or
p Something else just as daunting.
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In their international best seller ͞Reengineering the corporation͟, Michael Hammer, James Champy
define reengineering as ͞the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to
achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost,
quality, service, and speed͟. Being radical in concept business process reengineering is a subject that
leads to harsh resistance. In the context of Nepalese environment, this might be doing away with
voucher system by having records in computers or at least minimizing their number or sometimes doing
away with an entire department. Now is not the time to organize on Adam Smith͛s 1776 Wealth of
Nations where organizations set aside specialized group of workers at a particular task over general
users.
Reengineering is the opportunity to develop the rules by which business in the future will be conducted
rather than being forced to operate by the rules imposed by someone else. As such, reengineering
underpins every attempt to seize and maintain a true competitive advantage.
~

Business process management includes methods, techniques, and tools to support the design,
enactment, management, and analysis of operational business processes. It can be considered as an
extension of classical Workflow Management systems and approaches. ͞BPM is a management
approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It is a
holistic management approach that promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for
innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. Business process management attempts to
improve processes continuously. It could therefore be described as a ͞process optimization process.͟2

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Organizations are investing ever-increasing amounts in information technology (IT). However, the
existing literature provides little evidence of a relationship between IT investment and organizational
strategic and economic performance. The exploratory research reported here appears to be the first to
relate comprehensive sets of IT investment measures to organizational strategic and economic
performance measures. Although the individual IT investment variables were found to be only weakly
related to organizational strategic and economic performance, they were significantly related to
performance when grouped and analyzed by means of canonical correlation. More specifically,
canonical results suggest that organizational strategic and economic performance measures such as
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management
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sales by employee, return on sales, sales by total assets, return on investment, and market to book
value are affected by IT investment measures such as IT budget as percentage of revenue, the
percentage of IT budget spent on training of employees, number of PCs per employee, and IT value as a
percentage of revenue. The organizational performance measure growth in revenue and IT investment
measure percentage of IT budget spent on staff were not significantly related to other measures and
therefore were not indicated to be useful for investigating possible effects of IT investment on
organizational strategic and economic performance.

While the western world is advocating for networked enterprises or virtual organizations our country in
specific is aiming to be paper-less if not paper-nil. The new organizations addressed the issue of
innovative networked and compared to traditional companies less integrated forms of organizations
(Rockart & Short 1991, Davidow & Malone 1992, Picot et. al. 1996). These organizations (both in home
country and abroad) know that ICT is the only tool to make it possible. Many IT tools like email, internet,
blogging, video-conferencing and all have transformed the way organizations do business. How many
years back anyone would have thought companies like Accenture.com would have been possible.
Focus points of research are the competitive effects resulting from temporary forms of cooperation,
implications for the management of these structures, and information technology requirements
necessary to integrate the participating organizational units (Sieber & Griese 1997, Hirschhorn &
Gilmore 1992, Venkatraman & Henderson 1995, Bensaou & Venkatraman 1996).
É

Automation is also change and hence its management is change management except that the domain is
specific instead of generic. Literatures on change management focus on today͛s need of organizations to
continuously adapt to changing market environment, customer preferences and the field of
competition. This has become more frequent because of the pivotal role technologies play in the
organizations and the changes that occur in the field of technology large and fast. This adaptability also
determines the flexibility of the organizations. However the ͞used-to͟ inertia, change of power, change
in organizational structure, reengineering of the business processes etc. exposes change to huge
resistance. Thus the management of change is very much important when it comes to automating
business processes.
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͞The right of any corporation to exist is not perpetual but has to be continuously earned.͟
Robert Simons
In ͞Creative Destruction͟ Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan puts it very rightly by saying organizations
seeking to succeed, not just to survive, must learn to ͞act like the market͟ and adopt policies that will
enable them to ͞change at the pace and scale of the market͟. Despite being the citizens of a developing
country in the last 10-15 years we have witnessed that the traditional organizations have changed. We
no longer see huge chunks of files, mess of papers in tables of offices (at least in offices, in most of the
private organization and few government organizations) and along with papers the paper weights, bulky
almaris used as filing cabinets have disappeared. We can also assume that budgets for stationary items
like pens and ink might have dropped significantly. Ask anyone and the reply would be computerization.
While automation might just be following the suite for few organizations it͛s the matter of survival for
others. Manual processes need to be automated because
p Manual processes are too routine and monotonous.

p No expert logic is required to carry out these activities.
p The process is lengthy and occupies manpower unnecessarily.
p Manual processes are prone to error.
p Manual processes require more trainings and interventions.
p Manual processes can be partially controlled.
p Customer put pressure to do work fast and prompt despite everyone is working hard.
p No consistency in reporting.
In his article Growing Pains, recognizing and assessing the need for organizational change3, Eric Flamholz
identifies the ten most common organizational growing pains, people feel there are not enough hours in
the day, people spend too much time putting out fires, people are not aware of what other people are
doing, people lack understanding about where the firm is headed, there are too few good managers,
people feel that ͞I have to do it myself if I want to get it done correctly͟, people feel that meetings are a
waste of time, when plans are made there is very little follow-up and things just don͛t get done, people
feel insecure about their place in the firm and lastly the firm continues to grow in sales but not in profits.
When I interviewed the change leaders at Employees͛ Provident Fund and Nepal Bank limited, the
situation at the time when they realized the need for change was in some way similar to what Flamholz
has suggested. In both these organizations existing system which automated only few business process
were changed to cover a wider area. NBL saw the change when its management was under a foreign
management team (ICC bank Management Team, ICCMT) which saw investment in Information
Technology as a major strategy to modernize the bank and to tackle in the competition that the new
banks were throwing at it.
3
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/beyondstartup/a/uc070903.htm
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At employees͛ provident fund, there were independent and widely spread software solutions (most of
them developed in house in Fox-pro) in use across the organization. The reporting process was complex
and very lengthy, the results not reliable and it required many experts. However the major pressure
came from the contributors (clients of employees͛ provident fund) to make its accounting fast,
transparent and reliable.
Here I would like to borrow a term from system development called the big-bang approach. In this
approach system is developed all and at once. At NBL the approach was more or less big-bang approach.
They wanted to have a solution for all (here all refers to its core banking operations) operation at once
and they went into the tender process and a rigorous analysis of proposal in their context. They selected
the ͞Newton͟ software from an Indian Company. It was a core solution to them. However at Employees͛
Provident Fund realizing they could not get a tailor made system to fit their context and with practice of
developing programs in-house they targeted only the fund management process to be automated. The
contract was given to Information Technology Nepal a private software development company. The
company would develop software forming a team that also consisted technical staffs from computer
section.
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Earlier it was Kurt Lewin who made three stages of change process distinct, he proposed a successful
change undergoes through three phases and they are unfreezing, changing and refreezing. According to
him in any individual, group or organization there are two competing forces in operation. These are the
forces of stability that aim to maintain the human system in the status quo and the forces of change that
push the system towards the change. In most of the human being these forces are in equilibrium. Thus
for change to take place this status quo should be challenged either by strengthening the forces of
change or by weakening the forces of stability (restraining forces). He argued that enhancing the forces
of change would lead to a corresponding increase in the forces of stability. Therefore, weakening or
reducing the forces of stability can more effectively bring about change. He argues that the forces of
stability and change are both within the organization. These forces exist in all organization and the
change leader has to discover
these forces to push the
organization towards a new state.
Let us see Lewin͛s three stages of

change
¸
With a passage of time, a well set

structure leads people to be
habituated to some particular
practices, processes and ways. In
the changed context, tasks that
are not relevant or useful anymore
are still being performed by force
of habit, without anyone
questioning their legitimacy.
Unfreezing means getting people
to gain perspective on their day-
to-day activities, to unlearn their inefficient ways and to be ready to move on to next level to do things
in different ways.

After the system, process and people have been unfrozen, they can be led to change. The change
process can be highly dynamic as automation. Automation requires people to take new roles, modify
their work practices, learn new things, it requires some time to smoothen up. When processes change
chaos is destined to happen but a leader should focus on settling down things and change to take its
course.
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At this stage the new behaviors, attitudes and

practices are absorbed into the organizational
culture. The newly automated systems are
integrated into the organizational system e.g. the
reports from the transaction processing system
now will be accepted by the finance department,
people start referring to online blogs to seek
solutions; they develop new skills and provide
support to each other. Changes will be made down
the line and people identify them with this new
system. They start feeling easy and confident with
this new system.
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-6
-5 Organizational members͛ inertia
-4 In-efficient Bureaucratic red-tapism
-3 Poor network information mgmt.

Organizational infrastructure
-2 structure and layout
-1
+1
+2 Board͛s commitment
Audit reports
+3 EPF͛s expansion
+4 Cases of forgery
+5
+6

Organizationtal members͛ inertia
When the CMS project was initiated the average age of the organizational members was above 40, they
had been habituated to work manually and most of them had never used computers in their life. It was a
mammoth task to train these members, modify their work styles and make them use computer.
Organizational structure and layout
In terms of effectiveness it was the smallest restraining force. The layout of EPF building at Thamel
(major target of CMS project) had no network wiring in place, electricity wirings were not very modern.
A transaction had to pass through multiple level of staffs from verification to approval. Branches outside
Kathmandu on the other hand were on rented buildings and EPF could do very little to make necessary
changes.
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Poor network infrastructure
Many branches like Dhankuta, Surkhet, Dhangadi lacked network infrastructure. There were no private
sectors providing lease lines or any other form of connectivity while NTC͛s service was unreliable.
Inefficient information management
There was no efficient filing system at EPF, it required lot of time to locate an individual͛s information.
These documents were spread among many sections and sub-sections. Migration of existing data (fox-
pro and manual files) was a very difficult task.4
Bureaucratic red tapism
EPF is a multi-layered organization. It consists of Board the representatives of which are appointed by
Government. From tenders to small expenditure (more than 0.2 million rupees currently) requires
Board͛s approval. Board meeting still takes place less frequently and at that time it would not take place
for more than 2 months. Thus the bureaucracy delayed decision making.

Audit reports
Auditors always complained about the reliability of the existing reports. They advised EPF to have full
scale computerized system time and again. It raised the issue of accountability of EPF.
Customer͛s pressure
Undoubtedly EPF͛s work before CMS was time consuming and inefficient. The accounting of
customers͚(contributors͛) financial transaction was slow, at the middle of one fiscal year EPF would still
be processing previous fiscal year͛s transactions. This raised dissatisfaction in customers and they
started raising questions against the credibility of EPF. It was the major driving force pushing
automation.
Board͛s commitment
When EPF proposed the development of full computerized system the board supported and appreciated
the idea. Only few proposals faced criticism and skepticism. However this commitment was not a major
driving force as board took long time to make a decision.
Expansion of EPF
Expansion of EPF (currently EPF has 8 branches) required it to have information available at all branches
readily. Under manual system this was not possible however it could be achieved by centralized
contribution management system.
4
Migration of identity cards and records from previous fiscal year has not taken place till date, only opening
balance was transferred during migration.
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Forgery Cases
Forgery cases start to surface frequently and loop-holes in the existing manual system was held
responsible for these cases. CMS was proposed as the ultimate panacea.
In their book ͞Change management: altering mindsets in a global context͟, %

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Edgar Schein, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) argues change in individuals involves two
opposing forces. One is the and the other is
According to him, the
prospect of learning something new itself produces anxiety. Individuals are reluctant to learn anything
because they fear that they might appear less competent and confident to others and have chances of
being neglected. On the other hand when individuals shun change they develop a feeling that ʹ unless
we learn something new-we are going to be out of business or we shall fail to achieve some important
goals. He proposes that reducing learning anxiety and increasing survival anxiety can more effectively
bring about change. A leader has to involve himself in creating a climate of psychological safety so that
individuals feel comfortable in changing their mental models and ways of thinking. Individuals need to
be persuaded to give up their old mental models so that they can embrace new ways of thinking and
thus Schein is against coercive persuasion which according him will have more dissuading effect than
convincing.

Following Lewin͛s model Richard L. Daft say leaders build organization-wide commitment by taking
employees through three stages, V V, employees hear about the change through memos,
meetings, speeches, or personal contact and become aware that the change will directly affect their
work. In the second stage lies the V , leaders help employees develop an understanding of the
full impact of the change and the positive outcomes of making the change. Finally the
process begins. The commitment stage involves the steps of installation and institutionalization.
Installation is a trial process for the change, which gives leaders an opportunity to discuss problems and
employee concerns and build commitment to action. In the final step
, employees
view the change not as something new but as a normal and integral part of the organizational
operations.
All these propositions are equally important in case of automation process specially when the company
has a long history. While a newly formed organization is more flexible and receptive to change efforts it
is not true in case of bigger and older organizations due to the fact that a particular way of doing work
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has taken the shape of their organizational culture. Though difficult the chances of successful
implementation of change is not dire. While I shall discuss in detail how to do away with the
impediments of change in the resistance to change section. I would like to explain why Lewin͛s model
plays significant role even when its automation.
The change leaders have to make people ready. In very rare cases people at the bottom level or the line
managers realize the need for change, but fortunately automation is one such change where usually the
bottom level employees, their supervisors and the line managers usually are asking for improvement.
However when it comes to resistance automation processes are not spared at all in comparison to other
change. Again, the need for change in countries like ours and in the government sector where most of
the employees are older have served the organizations for more than 10 years, the resistance is high. In
their research article, facilitating organizational change, Holt et al. observes that the resistance to
change is directly proportional to the job tenure. So, the leader has to have an unfreezing strategy, to
develop readiness for change among the employees. At the first level it can be done by enriching them
with information. Letting them know why automation is important, how helpful automation will be to
the organizational members and how it aims at organizational good in the long run. In my experiences at
both Nepal Bank Limited and Employees͛ Provident Fund, Nepal the need for automation was foreseen
by the top management. In the former employee͛s involvement was little while in the later even the
employees were feeling that their job was becoming difficult, it had become too routine and they had
become more dependent on few people who knew computer. However they did not know what could
get them out of status quo. Unfortunately in both the organizations the unfreezing efforts were very
little. At Nepal Bank Limited the trade unions were made aware of the change that was to be initiated
however at EPF the information was delivered in meeting, formal programs etc. With mere 500
employees most of them stationed at the Thamel branch where the software was being developed
organizational members were aware that software was being developed, on contrary in NBL with staffs
of more than 6000, at the time of change, information reach was debatable. Change was rather prompt
in both these organization, by the time everyone knew about it properly the system was automated. I
wonder if both these organizations made formal attempts to strengthen the pushing forces and weaken
the restraining force. NBL might argue the time was harsh and change had to be brought in very fast
(then management ICMT had contract for only 4 years) at EPF a proper planning could have been done,
the analysis of which is beyond the scope of this paper.

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John Kotter concluded in his book "A force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management"
(1990) that there are eight reasons why many change processes fail:
p Allowing too much complacency

p Failing to build a substantial coalition
p Understanding the need for a clear vision
p Failing to clearly communicate the vision
p Permitting roadblocks against the vision
p Not planning and getting short-term wins
p Declaring victory too soon
p Not anchoring changes in corporate culture

Kotter argues "Without

motivation, people won͛t
help and the effort goes
nowhere͙. Executives
underestimate how hard it
can be to drive people out of
their comfort zones". In the
more successful cases the
leadership group facilitates a
frank discussion of potentially
unpleasant facts: about the
new competition, flat
earnings, decreasing market
share, or other relevant
indicators. It is helpful to use outsiders (say, for us, to bring in consultants, the unchurched, people from
other denominations, regional or national staff people) who can share the "big picture" from a different
perspective and help broaden the awareness of your members. When is the urgency level high enough?
Kotter suggests it is when 75% of your leadership is honestly convinced that business as usual is no
longer an acceptable plan.

The scale of Automation and hence the magnitude of change depends upon the business process that is
being targeted for automation. At both Nepal Bank Limited and Employees͛ Provident Fund, the
magnitude of change was very large as it was trying to automate the main business process that these
organizations were in. In this context it is very important to have a right time, with commitment with
right mix of skills and development.
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Once the team is formed it should focus on the KISS model (Keep it simple stupid). The vision should be
developed in such a way that it encourages simplicity and efficiency.

Communication is at the crux of successful change. The team and the change leaders/agents must bring
in as many organizational members as possible. They should continuously reinforce the need for
automation and keep them updated about the progress and the success achieved so far. Leaders should
take every opportunity to reinforce their commitment to change. In NBL the resistance was already
there for ICMT and there were very few meetings where management would inform the staffs about the
progress. At EPF the story was different. EPF has a culture of organizing at-least four general functions
annually and the presence of staffs in these functions is substantial. In every such gatherings and
meetings the change leaders communicated how enthusiastic they were about the progress going on.

A leader should encourage constructive ideas, listen and analyze criticisms, seek for feedback and
ultimately reward the positive outcome and discourage the negative ones. Leaders of change should not
assume that once implementation is complete and so is training from the very next day everything will
start falling in place. That would be very myopic. They should encourage positive work while support if
mistakes and errors surface.
Many times the leaders are victim of functional myopia. They forget a simple fact that even after
rigorous testing bugs will continue to appear but they become too defensive of the system and are
apprehensive of people. They blame people for all mistakes while few of them might be from the
malfunction of system programs. Continuous blaming and reprimanding employees will make them
more critical of change rather that endorsing it.

As suggested earlier change leaders should not assume things will start falling in place from the very
next day. They set high targets which ultimately become discouraging to themselves when they are not
met. The initiatives should be manageable. They start many processes in parallel to all of which they
cannot commit their own involvement. For example the first step in many of the automation soon after
implementation is migration. Leaders instead of focusing in migrating data of one or few areas/sources
want to migrate all data at once and the experience turns out to be bitter.

Change leaders should foster and encourage determination and persistence. They should encourage
progress reporting and highlight the achieved and future milestones.
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Change leaders should continue to display their commitment to change even after the automation has
completed and the implementation has been successful. They should reinforce the values reward the
efforts, promote people who have been committed, supportive and involved in change process which
will create a culture that does not fear change. For all change new recruitments, promotions, rewards
may not be possible but for bigger ones leaders will not only make a particular change successful but will
ensure the future changes will be equally successful.

In his book, the four agreements (1997), Don Miguel Ruiz highlights the four agreements as inspiration
nal code of life. This can be applied by leaders of change.
c
Be impeccable with your word - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to
speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth
and love.

Don͛t take anything personally - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a
projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of
others, you won͛t be the victim of needless suffering.
"
Don͛t make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.
Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With
just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
6
Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when
you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-
judgment, self-abuse and regret.
cÀ P a g e

ADKAR is an individual change management model. In other words, ADKAR represents the essential
elements of change for a single person. When a group of individuals experience change, ADKAR can be
used:
p As a coaching tool to support individuals through

the change process
p To guide change management activities like
communications, sponsorship, coaching and
training
p To diagnose a struggling change by performing an
ADKAR assessment

It is not the top management whose way of doing work changes when automation process completes.
It͛s the work of the blue collar staffs, account staffs and the staffs handling the transaction and their
concerned department has to change their ways. So at the beginning it is very important to make all
level of staff aware why the upcoming change is needed. Change implemented to improve business
operations, stay ahead in competition, and/or increase the bottom line, is not only wise, but also
necessary for success.

The leaders and the agents of change have to ensure that the desire to adopt to change, make it
successful is being developed in the employees. They should encourage the desire of the organizational
members to support and actively participate in the forthcoming change, regardless of the immediate
appeal or flash of the new procedures or processes.

According it is a must for manager to provide training and education to its organizational members
about the change and help them how to adapt accordingly. In an automated environment it is very
much important to provide all the necessary training to staffs. Its not only training them on how to use
the software. Working with computers for the first timers is a tiring struggle, so the training should
begin from the basics of computers. In Nepal Bank Limited, Employees Provident Fund not more than 10
p.c. of the staffs knew the basics of computer. There was a huge challenging task to make the
automated systems successful when most users were above mid-forties and they had never turned on a
computer on their own. It is advisable to organizations to start giving the basics of computers and
automated system from the very beginning i.e. long before the strange software takes over them.
Automation and training can run in parallel and it will also create enthusiasm among staffs about using
new system.

cî P a g e
One important factor about change is that it should be able to empower people. When an organization
is automating itself, it should look forward to enabling its people/staffs to be able to make change
successful, to adapt themselves to changed environment.

Individuals and organizations must be reinforced to sustain any changes making them the new
behavior, if not; an individual or organization will probably revert back to their old behavior.

p A person͛s view of the current state
Of the need for change p How a person perceives problems
p Credibility of the sender of awareness messages
p Circulation of misinformation or rumors
p Contestablity of the reasons for change
p The nature of the change (what the change is and
To support and participate in the change how it will impact each person)
p The organizational or environmental context for the
change (his or her perception of the organization or
environment that is subject to change)
p Each individual͛s personal situation
p What motivates a person (those intrinsic motivators
that are unique to an individual)
p The current knowledge base of an individual
Of how to change p The capability of this person to gain additional
knowledge
p Resources available for education and training
p Access to or existence of the required knowledge

p Psychological blocks
To implement required skills and behaviors p Physical abilities
p Intellectual capability
p The time available to develop the needed skills
p The availability of resources to support the
development of new abilities
p The degree to which reinforcement is meaningful
To sustain the change and specific to the person impacted by the change
p The association of the reinforcement with actual
demonstrated progress or accomplishment
p The absence of negative consequences
p An accountability system that creates an ongoing
mechanism to reinforce the change
Adkar: A Model for Change in Business, Government and Our Community *+,

P a g e

In spite of the importance and permanence of organizational change, most change initiatives fail to
deliver the expected organizational benefits. This failure occurs for a number of reasons. You might
recognize one or more of these in your organization.
p absence of a change champion or one who is too junior in the organization
At EPF there was one particular leader who showed extreme commitment to change. He not
only ensured the system was ultimately completed but took every opportunity to reinforce the
idea among others that automation was inevitable and it will simplify work, make service
efficient and work less error prone. At NBL staffs cannot say with certainty that there was a
strong champion of change. Due to this reason I observed that there was more resistance to
change at NBL than at EPF. At EPF the CMS system installed and people are using it with little
whining while at NBL, staffs still observe (after more than 6 years) Newton Banking solution with
doubt.
In other organizations when change champion is someone junior and new, people observe the
messages of change was a temporary excitement, they doubt change.
p poor executive sponsorship or senior management support
Change at times is a result of new regulatory requirements from government/regulatory

agencies about which the management of the organization itself is skeptical. The management
thus fails to sponsor change, commit them fully to change. However even when change is
essential (not only because it is a regulatory requirement) senor management do not provide
full support to it by allocating it resources, providing feedbacks and suggestions change can fail.
At NBL where the branch managers were already nearing the retirement observed change as
something strange, difficult to learn and at these branches the automation was difficult. These
branches made more mistakes than others, organizational members avoided trainings etc.
p Discrepancy between top management values and behaviors
Again this is something related with commitment. Managers talk one thing while they practice
something another. They stress on the need for automation in general meetings and gatherings
but at individual level cannot embrace the automation process themselves change is destined to
fail.
p poor project management skills
Bringing about change is not operation, it is unique in nature, time bound and consumes
resources and hence qualifies to be a project (some are even programs). When the change
leaders do not have project management skills (time, cost, quality, resource, procurement
management skills) change can fail.
p hope rested on a one-dimensional solution
c P a g e
Change on one hand might appear to address one problem but on other is a source of another
problem. Change is multidimensional with its impacts on strategy, people, organizational
culture, work procedures a simple focus on one dimension leads to failure. For example
automation at both NBL and EPF would not only alter the way daily operations were executed, it
required people to learn new skills (computer skills) if management had only focus on
reengineering business process forgetting the people aspects, change would have deemed to
fail.
p Lack of organizational readiness
Organizations may not be ready for change. Before change to be initiated organization should
be made adaptive to change. Its culture, work practice and even its people should be change
friendly. Making organization ready is Kurt Lewin͛s unfreezing process. If leaders initiated
automation without making arrangement for network terminals, architecture supporting
resource sharing, people͛s knowledge about computers change will see fierce resistance.
p Overdependence on outside help
EPF carried out the automation with IT Nepal Solutions. The programmers from IT Nepal came
to EPF office at Thamel everyday and they did preliminary analysis, wrote computer programs
within EPF͛s premise. The idea of EPF was that with this model of development EPFs staffs
(there already was positions of programmers at EPF) would have control on everything and they
would be able to fix bugs, make necessary changes to programs when required however the
participation of insiders was not as per expected. The programs was being written in computer
language they didn͛t know about, these very staffs resisted this change as a result of which IT
Nepal solely carried out the development. When the project was handed to EPF and bugs
started to surface, new requirements appeared it became to difficult to fix those errors and
make necessary changes. Ultimately EPF had to hire new programmers existing programmers
had to be promoted just to create room for new programmers. It is often said that it had
become necessary for EPF to hire at least one programmer involved in the development of CMS
(member of IT Nepal Team) so that CMS would not fail. Later a programmer from IT Nepal was
brought in along with two others (one of them was this writer).
p change team diverted to other projects
Inefficient management cannot utilize resources to its maximum. Even when the level of change
is large the leaders fail to dedicate resources (human resource in specific) explicitly to the
change process. These people are given many other responsibilities so that they cannot put in all
necessary efforts to change process. When CMS development was being carried out, one of the
programmers was sent to China for further education, other two went for sabbatical and the
only programmer had to support existing fox-pro systems.
P a g e

From Cummings and Worley͛s Organizational development following are necessary for successful
change
a. Motivating Change

͞Since the future is uncertain and may adversely affect people͛s competencies, worth, and
coping abilities, organization members generally do not support change unless compelling
reasons convince them to do so.͟ (Cummings and Worley). Change can be motivated by creating
readiness, overcoming resistance to change etc.
b. Creating a vision

A vision is required that describes the values and purpose of organizational change. It is the
rationale and logic explaining the need for change. When CMS system was being developed one
vision was that of prompt service delivery from few days to less than an hour. Manual system
required searching through folders, files and then into individual leaflets. Many of these papers
would be at different sections and hence it was a time consuming process. When everything was
available in computer, it was matter of few minutes at maximum, the reconciliation was
automated and no human intervention was required. Despite unfriendly physical layout a client
can get loan against his contribution from EPF in less than an hour. However it is only because of
inefficient queuing mechanism clients have to wait for a longer time (it is not because of
information processing).
c. Developing political support

People and groups in an organization have different preferences and interests. Automation
brings a great shift in power equation. People start experiencing that they are losing control and
are becoming more computer department. At EPF the current computer department was a
mere wing/subsidiary of the Contributors service department, soon after automation it became
a fully fledged department with budget of its own and with control over all computer
(information) related resources. The contributor͛s service department that once controlled the
computer section was now depended on support and services of computer department. No
longer could the programmers be summoned when required, they had to go to the
programmers follow a well established process. Even before the clients they were not powerful
officers when problems came in the solution was not on their discretion but at the discretion of
computer department. Thus automation was clearly threatening the balance of power resulting
in conflicts and struggles. EPF tried to ease the situation by having the influential managers and
executives into the CMS development and analysis committee, by developing a process that
tried to make Contributor͛s Service Department and Computer Department more or less equal
in power.
The sequential strategies to have political support includes
p Assessing the Change Agent Power
" P a g e
p Identifying Key Stakeholders
p Influencing Stakeholders
d. Managing the transition

Between the existing stage of status quo to the desired stage lies a complex, longer and difficult
transition state. Cummings and Worley have identified three major activities and structures to
facilitate organizational transition:
i) Activity Planning
During CMS development milestones were set and the sequence of activities were
planned. The parameters that determined the success of short-term goals were defined.
The necessary resource requirement was planned as well.
ii) Commitment planning

Identifying key people and groups whose commitment is needed for change to occur is
equally important. It involves identifying these people, bringing them into the team or
into the leader͛s in-group5 and confirming they share the vision lies at the core of it.
iii) Change-management structures

Change as suggested earlier is a project and it should have its own structure. From
Cummings and Worley alternative management structures for change include the
following
p The change manager/leader
p Project manager temporarily assigned to co-ordinate the transition.
p The formal organization to manage the change effort and to supervise the
operations.
p Representatives of major constituencies involved in change.
p Natural leaders who have the confidence and trust of large numbers of affected
p A cross section of people representing different organizational functions and
levels managing change.
p A ͞kitchen cabinet͟ representing people whom the chief executive consults
with, confides in and that manages the change effort.
e. Sustaining momentum

Once the change process begins it should not slow down despite resistances and hindrances. To
ensure momentum following are needed
i) Providing resources for change
Extra resources need for activities such as training, consultation, data collection
and feedback, and special meetings. A separate budget should be allocated to
facilitate change.
ii) Building a support system for change agents
5
LMX theory of leadership
6 P a g e
Change agents also require support. Change is a tiring process and change
agents have to face criticisms, resistances that make them vulnerable. A system
should be in place to provide support to these agents in terms of consultants,
protecting them against failures, giving them incentives, making room for future
development etc.
iii) Developing New Competencies and Skills

Automation frequently require new knowledge, skills and behaviors from
organization members. Automation does not succeed when people are not
skilled in computers (if automation is hardware oriented, people should learn to
use these hardware, learn control mechanisms and even simple
troubleshooting), reporting tools and few basic computer hardware related
ideas and skills. Organization should have proper training and development
package to aid development of required new competencies and skills.
iv) Reinforcing new behaviors

New behaviors (positive) would be reinforced when rewards and recognition are
associated with them. This can be accomplished by linking formal rewards
directly to the desired behaviors.
v) Staying the Course

Too fast change or too slow change does not bring desired result and sometime
lead to failure. At times as Cummings and Worley point out, managers do not
keep focused on a change because they want to implement the next big idea
that comes along. They lose track and the change stops in the mid-way or it
loses direction.
Five Change Factors of Pettigrew and whipp
1.

Continuous monitoring of both the internal and external environment (competition) of the
organization through open learning systems.
2. Ý
Employees should know that they are seen as valuable, and they should feel that the
organization trusts them.
3. ²
Intentions are implemented through time. Bundling of operational activities is powerful and can
lead to new strategic changes.
4. ²
P a g e
Move the organization ahead. Creating the right climate for change. Co-ordinating activities.
Steering. Set the agenda not only for the direction of the change, but also for the right vision
and values.
5. ¯
A change strategy should be consistent (clear goals), consonant (with its environment), provide
a competitive edge and be feasible.
A related/similar organizational design concept is the Star Model by Galbraith. The star has 5 points:
1. Strategy : determines the direction of change

2. Structure : determines where the decision-making power lies
3. People : selection and development of the right people
4. Process : determines the flow of information
5. Rewards : provide motivation and incentives for desired behavior
Jay Galbraith argues that in any organizational change approach, one must take a systemic view and
make sure that all five areas above are addressed.
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Folger & Skarlicki (1999) - "organizational change can generate skepticism and resistance in employees,
making it sometimes difficult or impossible to implement organizational improvements"
ë

p An employee may be operating on the basis of a desire to protect what they feel is the best
interests of the organization
An employee may provoke insightful and well-intended debate, criticism, or disagreement in order to
produce better understanding as well as additional options and solutions.
In their article ͞Decoding Resistance to Change͟ (HBR April, 2009) Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford argues
that resistance is an important feedback and dismissing it robs the change leaders of a powerful tool as
they try to implement change.
The kind of automation that this term paper is trying to present is large of its kind. It changes the way
people do their work, it brings about power shift and makes the previously expert novice and in extreme
case useless as well. At Nepal Bank Limited this change helped the management to trim its mammoth (in
terms of business volume and work) from more than 6000 to less than 4000, at Employees͛ Provident
Fund it did not even cut a single job but changed the power equation, required people to change
themselves to be helpful. In an informal canteen talk a staff at EPF said one reason said so many people
joined Unions6 and became active is because of computerization. He argued in one hand with
automation work became fast, efficient and less error prone so people had much spare time, they used
this by participating in Union related activities. On the other hand there were people who could not
change themselves when the organization changed when work style and culture changed; they joined
union for security reasons. Though there is no concrete evidence supporting this staff͛s view, this is a
worthy logic.
There are three basic sources of impediments for change and they are
¯ ²
p Organizational culture:
Edgar Schein, MIT Sloan Professor defines cultural change as ͞-

-
6
Unions in NBL and EPF both are looked upon more negatively than positively. People perceive unionists as those
who do not like working and who do not serve the organization in anyway except for organizing programs most of
which are politically motivated. They are often referred as lazy-bones. Unfortunately active union members are
rarely seen working and their excuse is that they are occupied with union related activities. With extreme
alignment with political parties these Unions are very powerful that they have a big say in management. They
decide on who to promote, who to transfer, who to receive incentives. This is a bitter irony in Nepal.
À P a g e
One of the major cultural hindrances that EPF faced during the time of automation was its ͞Club
culture͟ valuing the seniority. The automation usually brings the young people in the fore-front as
they learn faster and are already skilled in computer systems. Thus people fought with problems in
seeking who should they refer to. Another culture that stood as an impediment was no sharing of
information and ͚know-hows͛. I believe this is a general culture in many Nepalese organization
where people hesitate to help others by letting them know how to do work and even sharing their
own work. Those who would grasp the new ways from trainings and informal trouble-shooting did
not come forward when peers faced similar problems.
Unfortunately the problem was so deep rooted that programmers, analysts (insiders as well as
outsiders) didn͛t share ideas clearly. The brainstorming sessions exposed their securities but users
do not confirm that the management or change leaders at EPF tried to change the culture. The
culture is still persistent.
There was a strong commitment from the change leaders. The meetings were dominated by one
leader in specific who was/is identified as a computer expert. In informal interviews people who
became part of the change said many processes could have been simplified but the particular leader
was very rigid and his rigidness exposed system to various threats and other complicated many
business processes. This leader is not a computer expert but enjoys such citation because others
knew very little about computers. No one argued with this leader as he was too dominant and threw
technical reasons which others failed to understand. However other group of staff maintain that the
automation was only possible because the leader denied to listen to others which would have
lengthened the change process by few more years.
p Differences in functional orientations

Automation requires involvement of people from different departments each having different
orientation. Credit department͛s focus would be only on loan processing while focus of General
administration would be on procurement, legal department will emphasize more on legal
orientations. This will lead to polarization of various members leading to extreme form of resistance.
p Power and vested interests

As suggested earlier, automation shifts power equations. People who have been powerful under the
manual system or any other existing system might no longer have power while those who had no
power can become more powerful.
At EPF the existing system was built on Foxpro legacy system. It was complex program where in
order to view reports commands had to be given. The system was not menu driven and it brought
about dependency upon few people who knew computers. They were powerful and everyone tried
to please them so that they could get their work done fast. The proposed automated system made
the users equally powerful. They no-longer had to request these ͞computer-experts͟ for reports and
data. These people strongly opposed the new system.
This new system was built in another computer program and Fox-Pro system was already becoming
obsolete. These computer experts had no idea about the new computer program and all of a sudden
they became unimportant and even worthless from highly important individuals.
î P a g e
People in the general administration that handled purchasing and inventory were opposed to paper-
less system. They argued the ledgers should be printed for few more years citing the organization
could not be confident on the new system. It took four years when the ledger printing (that
consumed lot of paper) was partially discontinued.
p Organizational physical layout:
Automation not only reengineers the business process and the way people do their work, as a part
of the chain that it brings in, it also brings about changes (minor as well as major) to the
organizational layout. The existing architecture may not support additional wirings, networking at
the technical level and placement of counters etc. Many organizations move to new buildings while
others undergo massive architectural changes to support automation. These changing in layout may
not be easy.

Strong informal norms and expectations
Groups have their own expectation and they have their own set of norms. Even in a closed circle of few
friends the norms are very strong and the group members have higher expectations from their peers.
When a group forms a negative impression on change it is very difficult to influence individual member
to adapt to change.
Group cohesiveness
EPF͛s employees had been in the organization for years. It had led to the formation of many informal
groups that behaved in a particular way. When these groups showed resistance to change, their
cohesiveness intensified the resistance.
Groupthink or escalation of commitment
In highly cohesive group all members held one particular belief and opinion. In these cases when the
influential member of the group has negative opinions about change the entire group will form negative
opinions about change. In unionized organization employees align to the official statements/opinions of
their unions.
²
Resistance for people can be a defense mechanism caused by frustration and anxiety. Individuals may
not be resisting the change as much as they are resisting a potential loss of status, pay, comfort, or is it
power that arises from expertise. In many case there is not a disagreement with the benefits of the new
process, but rather a fear of the unknown future and about their ability to adapt to it, e.g. fear that one
will not be able to develop new skills and behaviors that are required in a new work setting. At individual
level there are following types of resistance
Technical resistance
" P a g e
Most people view technology as something difficult, learning to use which is not only tedious but
exposes their vulnerability. At the depth of this lies the learning anxiety, they fear when they have to
learn new things they might be exposed as incompetent and unskilled. There is the fear of unknown.
Technology thus becomes something on which if they do not become careful will bring results, create
blunders that can pose serious threat to them and their career. This type of resistance is directly
proportional to age. This is undoubtedly the biggest form of individual level resistance during the
process of automation.
Political resistance
Political resistance has to do with changing power equations. As repeated in this term paper automation
brings about major shift in power. Important people become useless and vice-versa. People who are at
the losing end will always resist change.
Cultural resistance
Values, ideas and customs have high influence on shaping people attitude and perception. This in turn
affects change. A banking system that requires annual reconciliation with central and remote backup
server during the time of dashain will meet with resistance as people do not like coming to office,
serving overnight during national holidays.
The other resistances to change include
p Not knowing the purpose of change

p Threat to personal image, power and vested interests
p Inertia or complacency and conformity oriented organizational culture
p Summation of perceived personal loss
p Fear of failure
p Capability/skills gap
p Ghosts of previous failed change initiatives
p Peer group pressure
p Forced conformity of powerful others.
p Too rapid change
In their research paper ͞resistencias͟ Martinez et al. suggest that strategic changes attract more
resistance than evolutionary changes. They observe that no single source of resistance (leadership
inaction, embedded routines, collective action problems, capability gap and cynicism) played significant
role in affecting the process of change. They further observed that the source of resistance to change
with highest influence were related to difficulties created by the existence of deeply rooted values.

Capability/skills gap is a very powerful source of resistance. This is very true in case of both NBL and EPF
where the average age of staffs is above forty. At NBL the average age could have been even more when
͞NEWTON Core banking solution͟ was implemented. These people had no knowledge about computer
"c P a g e
at all more than 90% didn͛t have computer at home and never touched a computer in their life. Among
those were people who had seen the time when computer had just come to Nepal. It was treated as
something sacred in a closely guarded room. One of my colleague puts it this way ͞When I went to the
national computer center first time with an executive to put our program into batch to be processed
upon when our turn would come I realized the room where the computer was kept was more
sophisticated guarded and clean than that of our General Manager.͟ They didn͛t have to leave their
shoes at door when they entered into their General Manager͛s office they had to do so to enter into
computer room. It established an impression that computer was very precious thing and very important
tiniest of mistakes would make their life a hell. Later when desktop computer became popular and EPF
bought its own computers these people didn͛t even get closer to the dreaded machine because they
thought just by mere touching it the computer will break down.

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Worley and Cummings present three major strategies for dealing with resistance to change and they are

A leader must admit that to accept change is not easy for everyone. Leaders must identify people who
are having difficulties to accept change, nature of resistance and deal them with empathy and support.
They should be able to suspend judgment and to see the situation from another͛s perspective, a process
called
. During automation change leaders must identify people who have been resisting
to change, if its their learning anxiety, they should try to do away with it by providing them counseling,
training and assuring that they will not face any problem, this might involve citation of examples,
stressing on their capabilities and skill. If the leader knows situations where that member had made
significant contribution to organization, appreciating those contributions and energizing them would not
only defy their resistance but will add another committed member in the team. This would help a lot
when the resistance is at personal level due to age, anxiety to learn new things, health related issue.

Many times people sit with negative opinions about changes because they do not know why there is a
need for change. What the change is trying to bring? What will be its consequences? Worley and
Cummings argue that effective communication about changes and their likely results can reduce
speculation and allay unfounded fears. Many times new ways of communication has to be invented. At
NBL meetings with line managers, branch managers were held but not very regularly due to its large
networks, the change leaders however visited few branches trying to assure people, telling them how
computerized system would help them and how it will bring efficiency. Making presentations stressing
the need for change, anticipated rise in efficiency would help tear away the network of ignorance.

One of the effective ways to deal with resistance is to involve organization members directly in planning
and implementing change. Experienced members will not only participate in meetings, brainstorming
sessions and presentations but will provide insights on forgotten and neglected issues. The change
leaders at EPF recall that while designing changes it was the operational level staffs who brought in
issues where others sight and thoughts never reached. When the members are participated in planning,
their voices are heard, their issues addressed, they will be committed to implementing the changes
because doing so will suit their interests and meet their needs. Moreover, for people having strong
needs for involvement, the act of participation itself can be motivating, leading to greater effort to make
the changes work.
¯
Bargaining and negotiating
Many leaders become so involved in the process of change that they become too committed and see
everyone who opposes change as wrong, immoral people. They take change too personally and cannot
"" P a g e
tolerant the people who resist change. However in order to make change successful a leader must be
ready for negotiations. The leaders of change should have their ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement) and
BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated agreement).
Manipulating
Leaders sometimes should be manipulative to make their message appealing. This can be better done by
highlighting the positive points but not stressing on negative impacts. Sometimes when the resistance is
too high the negative impacts should rather be moved under the carpet to be dealt with later.
Automation is usually followed by some layoff, transfers etc. leaders should not be too vocal about
these issues and even when bitter things have to be spoken should stress on its positive aspects. At NBL
when automation had started trimming had also been started which made the automation to be
perceived as a double edged sword. Staffs observed it as something that would ultimately hit them back
and opposed it. Management had introduced a golden hand shake scheme which at face value was
lucrative than traditional retirement but management in many ways failed to stress on how golden hand
shake was a good choice and it was not an option not a compulsion.
Coercing to comply
Coercion is the last remaining option for the leaders to deal with resistance. When all other options fail
(support, negotiation, communication, participation etc.) management should even be ready to take
disciplinary action to those who still oppose resistance. The coercion should be progressive in nature i.e.
should begin with softer measures gradually becoming harsh. It might begin by warning, transfer, and
demotion and even if these measures fail the resistors should be fired. I could not confirm if there was
any coercion policy at NBL and EPF but staffs suggest that at both these organizations people who did
not learn computer, made too many mistakes were transferred to departments/branches where work
was still manual (hence time consuming and monotonous).
"6 P a g e

É

Change is targeted to meet an objective or to reach a desired state. It is very important to evaluate
change once milestones are met. Following are major steps in evaluating change
1. Identification of milestones

Milestones are intermediate goals. A change is assumed to have succeeded when all these
milestones are met in time and they qualify to the standards. In software related automation
milestone can be the development of process flow diagrams, software requirement
specifications, Data flow diagram, Entity Relationship model, Use-Case diagram, functional
module, testing, and manuals etc. can be some milestones.
2. Identifying the determinants of success

The determinants of success may be in terms of reliability, timing requirement, information
quality, reporting standards, etc. These parameters have their own units for e.g. reliability can
be number of data left unprocessed in batch reconciliation, time taken to process a loan, the
number of information that can be extracted etc.
3. Measuring the parameters

The determinants identified in step 2 has be measured. A log book has to be prepared which will
log number of errors reported in a batch call, time taken to process sample transactions etc.
4. Comparing the measured values with the benchmarks/standards

Once the parameters are measured they should be compared with the predetermined standards
or benchmarks to check for deviation. The tolerance level is also determined.
5. Take corrective action

Ultimately when deviations outside the tolerance region are observed corrective action should
be taken.

CMS system according to EPF is a successful system. It has reduced transaction processing time, the
year-end ledger process completes within less than two months (earlier it used to take 5-6 months
which means at a mid of a fiscal year a client would only get information regarding the previous year͛s
transaction). Branches have been empowered to provide almost all services that are available from
central office. The CMS system was a semi Transaction Processing System that supported only few basic
operations of EPF but today it embraces almost 75p.c. of EPF͛s operation.
However new bugs have started to appear on daily basis. Quick fixes have complicated the system. No
documentation of changes are made, response time is increasing, lack of source control brings out
errors previously fixed. The database administrator keeps complaining he has no time to optimize
database and to carry other operational activities because it is becoming too difficult to manage
sessions. Users complain of sessions being dropped at the middle of the transaction, no controlling
mechanisms are in place that allows user to commit mistakes many of which can have financial
implication. Network administrator complains despite high bandwidth network, networks jamming
" P a g e
become too frequent, many batch processing activities are carried out at users͛ end. Computer
Department thinks the maximum users that the CMS system can support has exceeded, addition of new
operations have degraded efficiency. User committee meetings are becoming debate more than a
meeting where arguments and counter arguments heat the scene to the extent that managers
frequently involve in a kind of tug-of-war.
Few members argue time has come for EPF to move into another system, a light yet highly flexible web-
based system but one of the most influential and powerful person is completely against it. No
estimation of CMS life was done another set of people argue. When CMS was being built future
requirements were completely ignored, simplest of changes in operational activities has become
difficult to implement in CMS making it inflexible. The change team at the time of CMS development and
implementation knows how many clients the CMS system can support. It has only been five years CMS
system has been implemented.
Computer Department is too much under intervention of the influential person cited above. In a
meeting Computer Department decides to convert the main modules (the ͞online module͟) into a web-
based system, information leaks overnight into the influential system and by the time next meeting
takes place the former decision would have been scrapped.
Computer Department has a leadership related crisis and everyone in the management knows this but
no action has been taken so far.
"© P a g e
É

While conducting the basic study on automation at both NBL and EPF the basics of change management
was found to be missing. Either the leaders/management didn͛t see the need for unfreezing or they
didn͛t know about unfreezing. In the context of NBL, the employees couldn͛t identify anyone as change
leader. However at EPF everyone knew who the change leader was. Unfortunately in both these
organizations no long term vision was developed. Implementation seems to have been successful in
these organizations but same cannot be said about the entire change process. IT based automation has
shorter life because inability to follow the emerging technology hinders organizational development at
large. In many organizations in our country even preliminary study seems to be incomplete and with lot
of loop-holes. In today͛s context while EPF cannot decide the direction for CMS though it is fast moving
toward obsoletion, while at NBL they have already started replacing Newton but again not as a strategic
move.
Many leaders of automation are too focused on technology that they forget the people side of the
process. They forget that best of the technology fails without support from people. In Nepal͛s context
change is still something that is pushed down the throat of people. Many leaders seem to be unaware of
their own organization͛s context and the realities.
Majority of staffs in government and semi-government organizations have served for long tenure and
they have been habituated to one way of doing work. In these scenarios when automation is carried out
problems will only increase. Great efforts should be given to unfreeze people, bring readiness for change
in organization.
There is one fatal problem in our organizational leadership. Leaders become too possessive about
change. They become the biggest resistance themselves when the change they brought in needs to be
replaced. In many organizations leaders continue to serve in the same department where automation
was targeted in better and bigger capacity. With time the automation they carried out moves toward
obsoletion but they are dead bent against the replacement and the entire organization suffers. Leaders
who lead change should be given opportunities to serve in other areas of organization may be in areas
where change is needed.
Change should not only be a single person͛s brainchild, it should be organizational process assets.
Seeking ideas from others is a must as it gives opportunities for improvement. Suggestions and
feedbacks from all level of staffs should be considered. In our organizations leaders are apprehensive
about criticisms especially if it comes from lower level. Participative management is still a practice that
organizational leaders in our country read only in books, that is not their style of management. During
my study I could get references to organizational experiences where people were transferred, warned
and even ͞forced to retire͟ just because they had difference of opinions. Failing to seek others idea and
insights has lead to complex process structure, unnecessary bureaucracy, wastage of resources in many
organizations (people have ample example of this at EPF).
"g P a g e
Automation is probably the best time for an organization to reengineer its business processes. However
organizations want to automate exactly the way manual process is carried out. They are too afraid to
give up time-consuming and irrelevant traditions.
Explicitly during automation system analysis should be given special care, however people tend to move
faster toward development. Testing process is given little consideration and user acceptance test is
something that is thought to be not required.
Trainings are not planned. There are no mechanisms to test the effectiveness of a training program.
People said trainers were boring and they seemed to be confused what they were saying. Trainers are
often unaware what the participants are supposed to learn/know after the training. Trainings are only
ritual.
Automation process should be documented. While technical documents will record technical
specifications, internal structure, working principles, user manuals let user learn to use system on their
own or to reinforce what they learn in trainings. At NBL user manual is well documented while at EPF
there is no manual at all. Errors are encountered in many cases just because people have forgotten how
to work on it.
To sum up there are following major recommendations

p Develop culture that embraces change
p Foster participation in decision making
p Provide resources to change

p Be ready to change yourself when time requires
p Accept the need for unfreezing
p Participate people from the very beginning
p Show commitment to change
p Do not be too possessive about change/ be prepared the change you led needs to be changed
someday
p Communicate the need for change/progress of change/results
p Be receptive to feedbacks/criticisms
p Give up the attitude ͞I know everything and what I think is always right͟
p Design training and its evaluation

"À P a g e

Organizational Development and Change, Thomas G. Cummings and C.G. Worley
Organizational Theory and Design, Richard L. Deft
Modeling the IT-Infrastructure of Inter-Organizational Processes ʹ Automation vs. Flexibility

Judith Gebauer (gebauer@haas.berkeley.edu)
The Fisher Center for Management and Information Technology
Walter A. Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
Reengineering the corporation: A Manifesto for business revolution

Michael Hammer & James Champy
How to Structure Difficult-to-Automate Business Processes

Philip Kisloff
Building Successful Teams in the Midst of Transition

by: Thomas W. McKee
Decoding Resistance to Change,

Jeffrey D. Ford, Laurie W. Ford,
HBR April 2009

Growing Pains: Recognizing and Assessing the Need for Organizational Change
Eric Flamholtz, Ph.D.
Facilitating organizational change: a test of leadership strategies

Daniel T. Holt, Dennis R. Self, Alfred E. Thal, Steven W. Lo
Going Through the Motions: An Empirical Test of Management Involvement in Process Improvement
Anita L. Tucker, Sara J. Singer
Resistance to change: A literature review and empirical study

= 7>5
(
"î P a g e

http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management-hiring/3779209-1.html
http://www.12manage.com/methods_change_management_iceberg.html
http://www.uv.es/~pardoman/resistencias.PDF
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/2005/summer/46410/the-art-of-making-change-
initiatives-stick/
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_organizational_change_management/
http://rapidbi.com/management/kurt-lewin-three-step-change-theory/
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/beyondstartup/a/uc070903.htm
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/pdcoutts/leadership/Kotter.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=2Sof1el_a6gC&pg=PA116&dq=ADKAR&ei=Ep3BS6zhJ6q2zQSK46T3A
Q&cd=4#v=onepage&q=ADKAR&f=false
6 P a g e

BATNA: Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
BPM: Business Process Management
BPR: Business Process Re-engineering
CMS: Contribution Management System
EPF: Employees͛ Provident Fund (Nepal)
IBM: International Business Machine
ICMT: ICC Management Team
ICC:
IT: Information Technology
NBL: Nepal Bank Limited
6c P a g e

Automation As Change "Making Automation Successful With The Principles of Change Management"

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Mr. Sandip Timsina

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Wikipedia defines Automation as

p To reduce workforce in monotonous activities and to place them in other areas.

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p Manual processes are too routine and monotonous.

Let us see Lewin͛s three stages of

With a passage of time, a well set

At this stage the new behaviors, attitudes and

-4 In-efficient Bureaucratic red-tapism

-3 Poor network information mgmt.

Organizationtal members͛ inertia

Organizational structure and layout

Inefficient information management

Bureaucratic red tapism

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p Allowing too much complacency

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p absence of a change champion or one who is too junior in the organization

p poor executive sponsorship or senior management support

Change at times is a result of new regulatory requirements from government/regulatory

p Discrepancy between top management values and behaviors

p poor project management skills

p hope rested on a one-dimensional solution

p Lack of organizational readiness

p Overdependence on outside help

p change team diverted to other projects

a. Motivating Change

b. Creating a vision

c. Developing political support

d. Managing the transition

ii) Commitment planning

iii) Change-management structures

e. Sustaining momentum

iii) Developing New Competencies and Skills

iv) Reinforcing new behaviors

v) Staying the Course

Five Change Factors of Pettigrew and whipp

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p Differences in functional orientations

p Power and vested interests

p Organizational physical layout:

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p To reduce workforce in monotonous activities and to place them in other areas.

~

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p Manual processes are too routine and monotonous.

In their book ͞Change management: altering mindsets in a global context͟, %

p Allowing too much complacency

p As a coaching tool to support individuals through

p absence of a change champion or one who is too junior in the organization

p poor executive sponsorship or senior management support

p Discrepancy between top management values and behaviors

p poor project management skills

p hope rested on a one-dimensional solution

p Lack of organizational readiness

p Overdependence on outside help

p change team diverted to other projects

a. Motivating Change

b. Creating a vision

c. Developing political support

d. Managing the transition

ii) Commitment planning

iii) Change-management structures

e. Sustaining momentum

iii) Developing New Competencies and Skills

iv) Reinforcing new behaviors

v) Staying the Course

1. Strategy : determines the direction of change

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p Differences in functional orientations

p Power and vested interests

p Organizational physical layout:

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p Not knowing the purpose of change

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1. Identification of milestones

2. Identifying the determinants of success

3. Measuring the parameters

4. Comparing the measured values with the benchmarks/standards

5. Take corrective action