The pain of change and why it’s worth it
Why are people so resistant to change and so thankful they took the step when it’s done?
One of the biggest challenges that we, as Eazy Costing, face when pitching to potential clients and waiting for them to sign our SLA is their resistance to change.
It appears that “they” are more comfortable sitting and dealing with everything that is not working, than taking the step to move their businesses to place of growth and sustainability.
It reminds me of a program that I wrote for a client in the late 1990’s to manage his Service Contracts. He called me after about three months of it being used saying that “he didn’t like it”… I asked him why, he said “I knew that we were losing about R 100,000 per month, and now I know where we are losing it, and I don’t really want to do anything about it”.
There’s an “impression” that any change will be painful. Why is that? If it wasn’t for change, we would never have learned to crawl. If it wasn’t for falling, we would never have learned to walk. If we never learned to walk, we would not have been able to run.
We know that bringing Business Processes into a business that has never had “proper” structure can be “uncomfortable” for the owners and management team. It’s possible that they may feel that they have “failed” the business for not having processes and structures in-place.
The reality, for most entrepreneurs, is that they don’t have “Formal Business Training”; many are Artisans who due to their amazing craft abilities were “forced” to expand their trades into businesses to be able to serve the needs of more and more clients.
There is a concept that Carl Bates speaks of, the shift from Craft to Enterprise, that most entrepreneurs are not even aware of; this is the shift of moving from a “one-person Master Craftsman business” to a “multi-person self-sustainable business”.
Many of our potential clients “think” that by bringing Eazy Costing into their businesses that we will disrupt the operation so much that they won’t be able to operate. The reality is that we take a few of the Admin team initially and get them up-to-speed and then when the business is ready, we train and bring the rest of the team on-board. The total time to implement rests almost-solely with the “owner” of the business if he/she wants to get up and running quickly it can happen in a few days, if on the other hand, the intention is to slowly roll-it out the process can take one or two months. Our preference is to do it as quickly as possible as we see this as least disruptive.
Many potential clients have never done a Stock Take, even though they know they “should”; they feel that as soon as they do one that their stock levels will immediately “go out” because people will use stock without recording the usage. With Eazy Costing managing stock is an automatic part of the Operational Process, so once done, and when used correctly, stock quantities are easily controlled.
Another reason that some potential clients are weary to embark on the journey with Eazy Costing is because we ask them to Commit Fully and use the Entire Program from the beginning. This can be scary as they don’t know what this actually means, so it’s easier to rather not take the steps that need to be done to get Eazy Costing fully implemented.
Something else that we often encounter, especially in the first few days of implementation, is a push-back from team members. There are many reasons for this, including:
- Unwillingness to change
- Fear of the unknown
- Fear that they will be shown to be incompetent in their roles
- Knowing that they will no longer be able to “take chances” (stealing time, material, etc.)
- Unwillingness to be “controlled”
Our experience shows that when the Team Leader is fully behind Eazy Costing and the successful implementation in the business and is willing to guide and support team members through the process, then the journey is almost painless.
One of the biggest things that we’ve seen is that once Eazy Costing has been fully implemented and is running at full steam that all Team Members love it. Comments like “I don’t know how we worked before Eazy Costing” we hear often. I recently heard this one, “my family is immigrating in the next few months, I hope that Eazy Costing will be available where I’m going to be working so that I don’t have to go back to a paper-based job-card system”.
I’m reminded of a phrase that I was asked at the start of a personal growth weekend that I attended years ago, it went something along the lines of “are you willing to do whatever it takes to get what you have come for?”. I’m glad that I did do whatever it took as my life changed and grew from that experience. It is exactly the same with Eazy Costing.
When the business is willing to do whatever it takes to implement Eazy Costing they are rewarded with a business that operates seamlessly, from a Business Process perspective, and the follow-on is that the business naturally thrives.
Gayo L Primic
Managing Director
