Fearing change is good for you
Garry Holstone loved his job. He got a lot of fulfillment in being seen as the fountain of all knowledge of the legacy system. Whether it concerns issues related to stock availability, route planning, credit management or quality inspection, Garry was the person to seek for advice. But he was particularly infamous as the one who knows everything about pricing. No wonder that Garry was asked to join the SAP ECC implementation project as a key user for business processes linked to billing. Even though he gladly accepted the invitation, people within the organisation did slowly noticed that he had changed since.
Even now people are wondering what happened to Garry. Maybe he had difficulties understanding how pricing works within the SAP ECC system. Others thought it could have been the sheer pressure of delivering a comprehensive solution against a tight deadline. Some agrue he did not like the fact that everything had to be documented, whereas the company relied purely on his judgement in the past.
Or was it Simone Perks’ fault? She recently graduated and was offered the job to assist Garry a few weeks after the project kicked off. Her positive ‘can do’ attitude was a huge contrast against Garry’s collaboration with the consultants who were configuring the system.
It became almost a daily occurrance that Garry came into the project office to announce that another very specific pricing arrangement needed to be included into the design. Upon itself not a problem, but these new business requirements were never accompanied with background information and also required more in depth knowledge of the SAP to solve. Some within the project started to believe that Garry was trying to seek the Achilles’ heel in order to force the project to fail.
Such a contrast to Simone. She was always eager to find out how exceptional exceptions could still be solved within SAP. The consultants gladly provided Simone with all the insights in pricing configuration. Soon Simone was able to make her own assessments on how to solve the puzzles that Garry offered time and again. In a matter of months Simone was seen as the most knowledgable key user within the organisation. Even Garry eventually had to admit that the tables have turned.
If he only had the opportunity to talk to Isard Haasakker, the Common Sense Implementor™. Then Garry would have realised that a SAP implementation does not only enforce change within the IT department. Also Isard would have guided him to embrace the fact that knowledge acquired today will be obsolete within a few years. You always have to be willing to explore new avenues to extend your wisdom. Purely relying on status will eventually make you redundant.
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