Managing change or getting short changed?

Have you ever worked in a situation where you are battling mainstream mentality and work culture on a daily basis? Let me tell you now that it is an exercise in absolute futility. Imagine swimming upstream against a very strong current towards the source which is a massive waterfall. It is a no win situation no matter how you slice it.

A couple of years ago, I was employed in a local conglomerate. Having spent most of my life working in multinationals, it was a culture shock to say the least. But I was warned by my boss then of what to expect. He wanted me to be the “agent of change” and foolishly I agreed. Yeah … right! But you know how it is. You are new. You are eager. You are motivated. You want to change the world! … or rather the little corner of the world that you work in. Oh woe is me! I was fooled by my own naiveté, enthusiasm and arrogance. I was fooled into thinking I could change decades of entrenched work culture and mindsets that had wormed its way even up to the junior and middle management levels!

It was a struggle for me from day one. Folks left office at 5.30pm sharp. Morning tea and evening tea were a must in that work culture. I called a meeting for a product launch preparation which belonged to another manager, and he had the cheek to tell me that it was already 5.00pm and could we hold the meeting the next day. Things that could be done in a day took weeks to complete. Branch managers were suspicious of me; and because I was younger than them, I looked younger and I am a woman, a few of them could not be bothered to give me the time of day. When I worked late, they thought I was hankering for a promotion.

It was difficult to trust my staff when they arranged for sales calls and submitted their claims. Have you ever heard of sales guys arranging sales calls on extreme routes in one day? (In the business that we were in, there was no such thing as monthly or weekly fixed sales routes.) And this could go on for weeks if I do not reprimand them. For example, they would see a customer in Klang in the morning and then arrange to see another customer in Kepong in the afternoon. The next day, they would arrange to see a customer in Shah Alam and then one in Batu Caves. Any sales person worth his salt would arrange the Klang – Shah Alam route in one day and Kepong – Batu Caves route the next day. At least they would try to streamline the sales calls as much as possible. But a few of my staff did the former because they could make huge petrol claims as the company paid quite a hefty amount per kilometre travelled.

Can you imagine a company where employees could engineer their own inter department transfer without consulting their managers and HR actually allowed that to happen? Well, mine did! Even my boss could not stop them. Thinking back, it was quite funny during review time. With such mediocre performance, I gave them an average grade which to me was a mercy grade. I would have rated them below average or needs improvement in any other circumstances. But they rated themselves in the regions of very good to excellent. Their argument, they worked harder than other departments and those guys in other departments have gotten better grades than them. Therefore, I was being unfair.

Every time I hit an extreme low, I would talk to my boss and he would tell me that I should lower my expectations. I was hitting against brick walls after brick walls. Things just refused to budge at my pace or even at a few paces slower than mine. In the end, I actually adapted to their work culture in terms of expectations and results. But I knew that if I carried on in that situation, I would rot. There was hardly any learning and career development at my end. All I learnt was to handle a work culture that I never want to be a part of in the future. After two years plus, I threw in the towel. I could not see my future in such an organisation.

This experience taught me a valuable lesson. Unless you have strong support in middle and upper management to engineer change, you can forget about doing it on your own. Even with such strong support, changing decades of entrenched mindsets is a huge undertaking and there should be a change agent champion at every level of the command chain. Otherwise, being a sole change agent (with limited support from your immediate boss) in the face of massive mainstream mentality is an exercise in absolute futility. In the end, you hurt yourself more than you help the organisation.

Next time before you embark on such a venture, ask yourself if you are managing change or you are getting short changed!