The Tides of Change

I organized and participated in a training yesterday for the roll-out of E-QIP across the 8 medical centers in our network. E-QIP is a system that will allow candidates to submit their background investigations to us electronically. E-QIP is one of the E-Gov initiatives to automate HR administrative processes and with over 40% of my department's time spent on administrative tasks, I welcome any piece of technology I can get my hands on.

Implementing E-QIP will require some changes to our current process and the changes themselves are not significant. This will also provide us with the opportunity to make other changes to our related processes. What struck me most during the training was some of the comments I heard from another medical center along the lines of, "management will never support this" or "they will never let me do that."  Comments like that drive me absolutely crazy.

Yes, there will be bumps in the road; yes, there will be resistance on some fronts; and no, I don't expect all people to welcome change with open arms. What I do expect is for you to identify those bumps, figure out how to transition over them and to, above all, keep the end gains in mind. Some we will be able to implement, others we will not and that should not stop us from even trying. We must be able to anticipate, listen to and address stakeholder concerns and show how making these changes will enable us to serve them better.

Times are changing and you can either be riding the wave or not and be in it as it crashes on the shore. I know where I plan to be, how about you?