Changing the Minds of Employees in Finance
I was working with a mid-size professional services firm that was implementing a new financial system. The CFO asked me to work with him to help him manage this project with his team, with a focus on managing communications and change. He had a project manager who would be managing the day-to-day of the project.
In initial conversations with the CFO, I learned the following:
- He was fairly new to the organization, only being with the firm for 9 months.
- The current financial system was outdated and did not support the firm as well as it had in the past.
- The finance and payroll team had longevity with the firm and, in fact, 4 of the staff members in finance and payroll actually helped to select and implement the current financial system a number of years ago.
- The CEO and others on the executive team supported this project and were excited that a new financial system was being put in place.
The CFO realized that simply because the executive team supported the project and were ready to change financial systems, it was not sufficient. He needed to buy-in from the financial and payroll team in order to ensure the move to the new system was a successful one. He also noted that the project was officially kicking off within a few months and he wanted to be sure that a good number of the finance/payroll team were on board – even if not all of them were.
Further conversations with the CFO revealed the following:
- While a decision had been made on a particular financial system, no decision had been made yet on specific components/features of the system.
- The CFO wanted his staff involved in determining changes to processes and procedures to increase efficiencies within the group.
- The CFO had discuss the upcoming financial system project at a department meeting and, while people didn’t actively resist, he noticed that staff, including his leadership team, were not entirely pleased with the idea.
Initial Meetings
We scheduled an initial department meeting with finance/payroll. Our goal was to share initial information about the project with a focus on benefits to both the organization in implementing a new financial system and to the individuals in finance/payroll. We needed the group to understand what was impacting this change and how their support was needed to ensure the initiative was successful. We also held a product demo so that the department members could see the new system “in action.”
The initial meeting went well; feedback was positive overall. The group understood the issues faced (the problem we were solving for) and seemed interested in the demo they saw. Some great questions came from the group!
We asked the group to spend some time digesting what they saw and heard in the meeting and that we would be setting up a subsequent meeting to talk further about the project and how we would like them to be involved. We asked them to put together any questions about the initiative that we could address at the next meeting.
Stay tuned for Part II and details about the second meeting with the group.
