A multinational consumer goods corporation initiated a comprehensive information system project for all its departments, manufacturing & logistics operations included. The lead person of the project was Dana, one of the corporation’s up-in-coming IT managers.
Dana convened a working group comprised of senior heads of respective departments of the multinational’s various departments, i.e., finance, sales, manufacturing, & logistics. For several months, Dana and the working group toiled over how to integrate the new IT system into the organisation’s operations. Different programs & user interfaces were presented, discussed, & debated.
Finally, Dana and the working group agreed to a final prototype & implementation schedule for the IT system.
The logistics senior manager, Otis, however, was often absent during the working group’s meetings. Whenever he did attend, he would just nod to whatever Dana proposed. Right after the members of the working group placed their signatures of acceptance of the new IT system prototype, the chief executive officer (CEO) asked Otis to resign, citing his chronic absenteeism and poor job performance.
As soon as the new logistics manager, Ben, attended the last working group meeting, Dana told him that the new IT system would be up and live within a week. Ben asked if he could look at the system. Dana said yes but Ben would just have to accept the system as is since the programmers were almost done preparing the system for implementation and the working group & the top management had already approved it.
Shipping operations on the first day the system went live was a disaster. There were no orders or items to allocate or plan deliveries. Staff couldn’t print invoices. Trucks waited for hours to be loaded & dispatched. Forklift operators likewise idly stood by as staff sweated waiting for the slow IT system to print pick lists.
Finally, Ben got fed up. He told staff to manually override the system to print invoices & dispatch shipments. Dana angrily disagreed. She reminded Ben that he was not doing what the system was designed for. Ben said he didn’t sign off on the system in the first place and he could have helped make it better if Dana gave him the chance. Dana, however, threatened Ben and both ended up quarrelling in public.
Ben continued to override the IT system much to the annoyance of Dana. Top executives, meanwhile, complained about slower than usual shipments and demanded Ben do better. Executives could only scratch their heads, however, when Ben & Dana tried to explain what happened. The executives themselves didn’t understand what the IT system they approved was designed to do.
The multinational corporation updated the IT system some months later. Operations stabilised as Ben & staff contributed their input. Dana eventually got promoted to a more senior position, but Ben resigned some months later.
Whether it’s implementing a new system or constructing a new facility, we who are project leaders make it a point to involve users & stakeholders to participate in the planning and to jointly approve the final design.
Dana’s mistake was she relied solely on senior heads to get their input and authorise the system she was introducing. She failed to ask the real users themselves such as the logistics staff who would be at the forefront in the execution of her system’s order-to-shipping module of the IT system. She thought the former logistics manager’s, Otis’, signature was enough, and she didn’t give weight to any of Ben’s or the logistics staff’s inputs.
Ben’s mistake was he didn’t apprise his superiors to the potential problems of the system. He paid for that mistake with the ensuing mess his shipping department went through starting the first day of the system’s implementation and with a tarnished record for his bucking the system and quarrelling with Dana.
But the biggest mistake was the executive leadership’s passive oversight of the new IT system’s implementation. The executive leadership’s ignorance could not be excused given that the corporation invested a lot of money into the new system. Not only the chief information officer (CIO), chief supply chain officer (CSCO), chief financial officer (CFO), and the sales director but also the CEO himself were just as (if not more) accountable as Dana & Ben in the system’s implementation.
The leadership had no one to blame but themselves for the mess.
But at least somehow, they learned as the corporation in later years did well.
This was based on a true story in which we hopefully won’t have to similarly experience.
Ellery's Essays 