Just as total quality management owes much to tools like statistical process control and the “house of quality,” business process reengineering can benefit from tools to supplement and focus managerial intuition.1 Unfortunately, current tools for managing change don’t do the job.2
Effective change management depends on recognizing complements among technology, practice, and strategy. Interactions play a critical role in affecting outcomes, a role that leads to new analysis and theory.3 In developing a theory of complements, Milgrom and Roberts showed mathematically how interactions can make it impossible to successfully implement a new complex system in a fully decentralized fashion.4 Instead, managers must plan a strategy that coordinates the interactions among all the components of a business system. In particular, because information technology and new organizational paradigms eliminate time, space, and inventory buffers, operations may become more tightly coupled. These linkages further aggravate change management problems and process interactions.5
In this article, we introduce a new tool, the “matrix of change,” that can help managers anticipate the complex interrelationships surrounding change. Specifically, the tool helps manage concerns about feasibility (stability of a new system of practices), sequence (which practices to change first), location (greenfield or brown-field sites), pace (fast or slow), and stakeholder interests (sources of value added). The matrix of change... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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