How NOT to Kill Your IT Team With Your Growth Strategy

Most of the companies we work with are family-owned manufacturing companies that are making a software change as part of their growth strategy. This change is critical at that point because they’ve either hit the limits of their legacy system or their business has grown so much that a new software solution is necessary.

In either case, the IT team becomes a key component of the growth strategy. And often, stepping into this new role comes with unexpected challenges — not just for IT, but for everyone.

Two Communication Gaps That Make a Growth Strategy Stall

To successfully implement a new software solution — especially one as complex as an ERP — an IT team needs support and resources. Unfortunately, they’re often starting from a place of already being stretched thin.

When we’re pulled in to help organizations move through a major change initiative, I often see communication gaps on both the leadership side and the IT side. It’s poor communication patterns, not malice, that lead to IT teams getting so stretched.

The leadership communication gap

Most manufacturing companies going through major growth have small IT teams that report to the controller or the CFO. The reporting lines aren’t necessarily functional. This leaves IT decision-making in the hands of leaders who don’t always understand the breadth and depth of what the IT team does.

In this very common situation, leadership pushes IT continually to do more with less — less budget, less overtime — until IT hits a wall, critical activities start slipping through the cracks, and leadership agrees to additional headcount.

This isn’t because leadership doesn’t appreciate IT! In fact, in my experience, leadership teams know very well that they can’t live without the IT team. They truly value them and want to support them. They just don’t have a thorough enough understanding of the various IT skillsets, and they don’t understand that not every IT person has the capabilities or capacity to accomplish every IT activity that needs to happen.

The IT communication gap

IT people are doers, through and through. Yes, I’m generalizing, but I have yet to meet an IT person I wouldn’t categorize this way. They want to perform well. They have pride of ownership when it comes to the projects and responsibilities they’re tasked with.

So in addition to being pushed by leadership, they’ll push themselves far beyond where they should be raising a red flag and asking for help.

When it comes to implementing a growth strategy that includes an ERP, this two-way break in communication can cause critical issues.

The Capabilities and Capacity Conundrum

“There are few things more disheartening to an IT professional than a software implementation gone awry.” I read this in a review of a book about why new systems fail, and I thought it captured my experience with IT teams perfectly.

With a software implementation like an ERP, you’ll often need pretty robust infrastructure upgrades. In an organization with a tiny IT team (or a one-person show), it’s unlikely that IT has gone through a project like this, cradle to grave.

They might not have the full set of skills (capabilities) necessary to implement the project successfully.

And even if they do happen to have the skills, they might not have enough manpower (capacity) to see the project through to completion.

The really tough thing is that they might not know if they have the capabilities and capacity until the project is underway. At that point, raising the red flag and asking for help could be, frankly, embarrassing. Some people might worry that they’ll even lose their jobs.

I’ve personally seen years and hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted when the IT person or team doesn’t have the capabilities and/or capacity for a software implementation and doesn’t feel like they can ask for help.

Get the Right People in the Right Seats for a Successful Change Initiative

A change initiative that involves a software implementation like ERP needs more than just IT people to be successful — because it’s not an IT project. It’s a full company project. You need a project manager, business analysts, application system administrators, and sometimes programmers and developers too.

And the average small-to-medium-sized manufacturing company doesn’t have these resources.

Trying to implement your growth strategy without the right resources is devastating and demoralizing for your IT people. They’ll come up short left and right.

Eventually, the project collapses and leadership is desperate. It’s not a good position for anyone to be in.

So what’s the remedy? Believe it or not, it’s not going out and hiring a bunch of new employees.

The Remedy: Communication Before Kickoff

Before you start a software implementation project as part of your growth strategy, you need to get your communication right.

Have honest conversations with the IT people or person early on and in private to find out what capabilities and capacities exist today, and what will be needed moving forward.

An authentic dialog before the project kicks off is the absolute, most important thing you can do to not kill your IT team with your growth strategy. And it must establish a sense of trust so that your IT people feel like they can speak to leadership openly and honestly when issues arise.

In addition to getting a clear idea of what your IT team’s existing capabilities and capacities are, it’s also a chance to discuss new professional development opportunities with them. Perhaps the necessary roles for an ERP project — systems admin, business analyst, technical analyst, etc. — might be ideal roles for people from your IT team to grow into. Maybe this project isn’t just a growth opportunity for your company, it’s also a growth opportunity for valued individuals on the IT team.

Your IT people are going to try really hard to deliver. Giving them a platform for honest communication about the challenges they’re facing or are going to face will go a long way toward a successful implementation. And it’ll help your entire organization avoid capability and capacity emergencies on the road to growth.

Need some pointers? We often facilitate these conversations for our clients, and I’d love to talk best practices with you. Get in touch with me here.