After the thrill is gone: Institutionalizing GM
William J. Meehan, P.E.
Boston Edison Company
800 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02199
Abstract
Nearly every trade magazine targeted to the Electric, Gas, Telco and Water/Sewer
Industries is full of articles and ads about Geographic Information Systems. Billions of
dollars are spent yearly on GIS software, hardware and services. The ads tout that a GIS
can change your business, give you the competitive advantage and make your workforce
more productive. The thrill of this fascinating technology is widespread. The good news
is that the ads are all true, the technology is wonderful. The bad news is that getting
meaningful change to occur is difficult. Boston Edison’s GIS project is complete. Yet
there continues to be on going issues of deriving the full value of the system. This paper
will focus on the obstacles to full institutionalization of the GIS, interventions and
strategies to fully realize the most out of the GIS.
Introduction
GIS projects are not about computers, data conversion, land-base or Global Positioning
Systems. They are about cultural change, significant, often painfi-d change. The goal of
any GIS project is to institutionalize the system~or the purpose of dramatically
improving the bottom line. Parachuting a GIS into an existing process without a vision
for business reform will likely result in lukewarm effectiveness. The late Senator Robert
Kennedy noted, “progress is a nice word. But change is its motivation. And change has
its enemies.” Kennedy knew full well that people resist change, often violently. There
are at least four human responses to change:
- Make believe the change isn’t or hasn’t occurred
- Watch helplessly as change occurs
- Fight change
- Participate in creating the change itself
Since a GIS is about significant change, the challenge is to:
- Inform those who choose not to believe that change is occurring
- Draw the bystanders into the change process
- Recognize that detractors exist and fight to control the damage
- Work tirelessly at building the advocacy group by showing tangible
results.
Before we can successfully institutionalize the change, we ought to take a look at some of
the obstacles to change. So here are my top ten reasons why we avoid change (stealing
from David Letterman):
10) Management might figure out what the workers do.
9) The workers will figure out what management does.
8) Change brings up bad memories of giving up my binky (security blanket).
7) Workers might have to talk to management about what really matters.
6) Management will have to ask workers what they think.
5) Management might have to admit that workers were right all along.
4) Workers might have to admit that managers do have intelligence.
3) People might get blamed for the messed up processes.
2) I will get fired.
And the number one reason to avoid change:
1) It hurts!
Conventional wisdom suggests that an effective change program ought to occur swiftly.
After all, if change hurts, it’s better to suffer the quick pain and then get on with it. The
inherent problem of a GIS implementation is that it takes so long. Often the thrill is gone
even before the program begins because it has been studied, prototype, piloted,
costhenefited, analyzed and dissected to death. Boston Edison’s GIS has been no
exception. The implementation time has been a serious detriment to institutionalizing the
GIS. Our learning is: since change is painful, do it fret.
We wrote the original prototype functional specification for the GIS project (called
CAD-Image) early in 1986. The first significant activity, the pilot project began in 1989
and was completed late in 1990. Analysis, justifications and lobbying for fill
implementation occurred during 1991. Full project implementation was authorized in
1992. December of 1999 was to be the original completion date for the complete system.
Thus the total time from original concept to completion would have been (if completed
according to plan) a whopping 14 years! Even with the acceleration, the project took 10
years: three presidents, several completed wars, a total upheaval of the electric power
industry, at least five generations of PC’s, the fidl and rise of the US auto industry and the
deregulation of the telephone industry. The nature of conventional large GIS projects is
that they take a long to time to complete, by design.
Long Projects Prolong the agony of change
Long projects carry these serious liabilities:
The Withering Patience Curse
Or``Eve~one's Patience is Equal to Halfthe Project Schedule.'' Eventhough theproject
is on schedule and on budget, management runs out of patience halfivay through the
project, even though the schedule was well publicized. At the hali%ay point of our
project, people assumed the project was way behind schedule, even though the schedule
had never slipped but had been accelerated. No one wanted to look at the plan.
The Disappearing Advocate Hex
Or “Management Advocates Retire Halfway Through the Project.” Since the project has
taken years to get to where it is, the most ardent advocates have retired. They have been
replaced by managers who have no ownership in the decision to authorize the project.
Some people do not even recognize the signature on the original authorization papers.
