How to overcome change management issues in supply chain projects? (1)

Filed in archive Point of view on January 11, 2008

One of the interesting Figures which I saw recently on the subject of change management belongs to David Viney. We all have heard a lot about change management: The fact that is important and we have to take care about it but little on the practical side of it. This nee to practical methodologies is felt even more in the supply chain area because this field deals with the restructuring of the existing value chain processes. Anyway, the figure which you see below captures one of the important issues in this area and provides practical insights which can be useful for supply chain people:




David Viney believes that what often times happens in the projects (including supply chain ones) is something called J-Curve Effect. Normally, the expectation of the outcome and the progress path is not determined considering the level of the inertia in the organization and that's why when the projects start, people notice that there is always something going wrong! (The reason: Because the organization is going through the J-Curve not the progress path which you have determined).

As a result, project managers become nervous and put more pressure on the people and things get even worse...The fact is what ever you do, you can't eliminate the J-Curve, so what should we do?

I will write about some solutions in my next posts but in the meanwhile, let me know what you think.