Hi there,
I'm under experienced in change management, but may be the most appropriate person in my company to head it up. I've got my bachelors, in Industrial Engineering and a couple years post college experience, but I've never specifically been in charge of major company change. We are a family company and have been in business for about forty years. We are a construction contracting company, with three “sister” companies. We have about 16 “office” personnel and up to 300 workers in other capacities. I'm looking for help in providing the right direction to improve our company.
To make that a little less broad some symptoms of our problems are that: our cost accounting is never as current as it could be and is often inaccurate. We do most of our work in the summer months and spend our winters sifting through our failures and successes trying to make things add up. By January we don’t necessarily know if we made money the previous season or not, and we definitely don’t know how much and from which operations we have realized the gains and losses. Our office procedures are flawed and cumbersome. From an organizational view, we don’t have a mission statement, we rarely have meetings, people usually don’t know how their jobs affect others in the company or even in the particular process they are working on. In the past they have tried to add this or that accounting software to fix their problems, but to my knowledge have never gotten past “the way things are always done” as far as company wide operations. We’re mostly managed by experience and intuition of the owner/president, the civil engineer and the finance lady all of whom have been here 25 years or more.
I’ve broke down what I think are the 65 or so issues we should work on first. I have some kind of priorities figured out for which are the most important. I have knowledge of ISO 9000 and a semi-peripherial view of companies that have implemented it. I have learned theory of change management, TQM, Continuous Improvement, Financial Management, all the standard things for an IE, etc. in school, am aware of the change resistant culture that we have here, and many of the personal dynamics. I’ve done additinal web research to try and look at our options. And spent time analyzing what we have and how to get where we want to be.
I want to know how to choose the most appropriate methodology to pitch to our president so that we get on the right track. He’s aware we can do better, but doesn’t know the civil engineer wants serious change and so do I. Nor does he know that we are plotting to do something and hopefully that something is company-wide. I could also use advice beyond theory of how this sort of thing actually goes, what sort of timelines I could expect and how to improve our odds for success.
The current picture looks grim, but is also very exciting in that there is a lot of room for improvement. I am a bit anxious that whatever we do becomes a combined effort from the office group, that people realize the need for the change, the potential that we have, that they buy-in to our efforts, and that we are thorough and expeditious. Any input from you could really help my company improve and we would all appreciate it immensely. Thank you very much for your advice.
I'm under experienced in change management, but may be the most appropriate person in my company to head it up. I've got my bachelors, in Industrial Engineering and a couple years post college experience, but I've never specifically been in charge of major company change. We are a family company and have been in business for about forty years. We are a construction contracting company, with three “sister” companies. We have about 16 “office” personnel and up to 300 workers in other capacities. I'm looking for help in providing the right direction to improve our company.
To make that a little less broad some symptoms of our problems are that: our cost accounting is never as current as it could be and is often inaccurate. We do most of our work in the summer months and spend our winters sifting through our failures and successes trying to make things add up. By January we don’t necessarily know if we made money the previous season or not, and we definitely don’t know how much and from which operations we have realized the gains and losses. Our office procedures are flawed and cumbersome. From an organizational view, we don’t have a mission statement, we rarely have meetings, people usually don’t know how their jobs affect others in the company or even in the particular process they are working on. In the past they have tried to add this or that accounting software to fix their problems, but to my knowledge have never gotten past “the way things are always done” as far as company wide operations. We’re mostly managed by experience and intuition of the owner/president, the civil engineer and the finance lady all of whom have been here 25 years or more.
I’ve broke down what I think are the 65 or so issues we should work on first. I have some kind of priorities figured out for which are the most important. I have knowledge of ISO 9000 and a semi-peripherial view of companies that have implemented it. I have learned theory of change management, TQM, Continuous Improvement, Financial Management, all the standard things for an IE, etc. in school, am aware of the change resistant culture that we have here, and many of the personal dynamics. I’ve done additinal web research to try and look at our options. And spent time analyzing what we have and how to get where we want to be.
I want to know how to choose the most appropriate methodology to pitch to our president so that we get on the right track. He’s aware we can do better, but doesn’t know the civil engineer wants serious change and so do I. Nor does he know that we are plotting to do something and hopefully that something is company-wide. I could also use advice beyond theory of how this sort of thing actually goes, what sort of timelines I could expect and how to improve our odds for success.
The current picture looks grim, but is also very exciting in that there is a lot of room for improvement. I am a bit anxious that whatever we do becomes a combined effort from the office group, that people realize the need for the change, the potential that we have, that they buy-in to our efforts, and that we are thorough and expeditious. Any input from you could really help my company improve and we would all appreciate it immensely. Thank you very much for your advice.
