NYCPHP Meetup

[David A.Roth]

I think what is really important is that if you are going to take on 
the task of change, you then find yourself becoming a "change agent". 
Sometimes a company will hire someone for this sole purpose. This 
request sometimes comes from the top management or the middle 
management. While this might seem like the ideal way to bring about 
change, it is also met with many of the same concerns.

When the web was new, many companies didn't have a web site and were 
not even using e-mail. They would look for a person to hire who knew 
coming in that they would be a change agent. They were informed that 
coming into something like this, that there was going to be people who 
1)Didn't want to change, 2)Saw the change as a threat, 3)Needed to be 
persuaded to make this change happen, 4)May make you unpopular during 
this change.

As for #1 & #2, sometimes no amount of carefully worded speak and 
actions are going to win those people over, which can cause #4. The 
thing to do is to focus on #3. You must be #3 to be successful. I have 
seen this first-hand.  For example, where one developer would get 
excited about an idea and before you know it, even to the detriment of 
the company he had eight other developers working on this new idea. The 
point of this is that if you are going to take on the task to be a 
successful change agent, you need to be persuasive to get buy-in from 
people so they are excited about doing this. The moment you start to 
accomplish this, others unofficially become change agents too.

David Roth
rothmail at comcast.net