It’s Time To Fire Beverly
It was a hot November day in Melbourne, and I was visiting a new client and their team to unpack their business processes for automation.
When I arrived at the office, I was greeted by Beverly — the Client Relationship Manager. She had been with the company for thirty-odd years, and was professional and charming from the outset- albeit with a look of suspicion about me in her eyes.
She took me around the office, showed me where to find drinks and snacks, and introduced me to Tom, the office intern, who would be helping me through the day.
But the charm offensive was just a subterfuge in Beverly’s first salvo in a day-long anti-automation campaign.
The thing is, the business partners did want to automate. They had called me in to consult. Most of the team saw the benefit in it. Just not Beverly.
I’m not naive — I am prepared for team members who see automation as a threat — both practical and existential.
In a simple sense, they don’t want it to reduce their tasks so much that they are out of a job. In a more complex way, people do worry about the feeling of being replaced by apps or machines.
It’s understandable for people to worry, because it’s not a stretch to say in particular industries, some human roles are being replaced or diminished by technology.
In honesty, though, for this business we weren’t reinventing the wheel. The goal was just to reduce a bunch of the manual, repetitive tasks, and to bring their largely paper-based system into a paperless environment.
But Beverly wouldn’t have any of it.
While the business partners and the team were delighted at the idea of never having to handle a massive bundle of paperwork every time a new client was onboarded, Beverly was concerned about security.
When we talked about automated reminders for staff and clients to do key tasks like file documents, or make check-in phone calls, Beverly didn’t think it would work. No reason given. “Just won’t work”, she said.
The client had already signed up, and paid for this process. It was going to happen with Beverly’s buy-in or not.
But I realised I was maybe selling the concepts too hard. And the thing is, if someone like Beverly still has a resistant attitude at the end of the day, they’re not exactly going to help the process once we get to the implementation phase.
So I use my anti-resistance secret weapon…
I ask Beverly: “If you were automating this [part of the business], how would you do it?”…
She didn’t hesitate: “How would I do it? I wouldn’t”.
Sheesh, tough crowd.
There’s always a gap between how someone views automation and what it actually is. There is almost always resistance and friction. But almost always we can get the perception and reality to cross the bridge to an accepted middle ground.
Usually, when we listen, identify and solve problems together, and plan for speed bumps, a team can implement automation in a spectacular way. It doesn’t always go to plan, but we’re ready to deal with issues as they arise.
We try not to fight the naysayers — we educate. We don’t change everything at once — but rather, we iterate. And we don’t aim to replace people with machines, we work with them to give them a more meaningful role in their work with all of the needless, repetitive machine-doable stuff taken away.
In a quiet moment during a break, I got Beverly’s attention and asked her flat out: “Are you prepared to work with me on this?”. Her answer was brief and honest: “What you’re saying makes sense, but we just don’t need automation. Things are working fine the way they are.”
Every company of a particular size or larger has a Beverly. Sometimes they’re called Frank, or Taylor, or Mary, or Ron. But, without exception, they will not be a friend to your automation efforts.
At the end of the day, despite Beverly’s eye rolling, we had a pretty solid plan for automating the company. We were going to start with document automation, work on some machine learning, and develop a client portal platform.
It turned out to be more comprehensive than we’d planned, which the business owners were pleased about.
There was still the issue of Beverly’s concerns. In reality, we can’t always accommodate every issue, protestation, or objection someone has to what we’re recommending.
So, once I had the two partners alone in a room, away from the rest of the group, I had to deliver my final recommendation: “It’s time to fire Beverly”.
Now that I write it down, it sounds harsh. The thing is, you either want automation in your business, or you don’t. If there are hurdles, you need to jump over them, go around them, or remove them completely.
tl;dr: Some employees resist automation. Try to educate, compromise, and work with them. If it doesn’t work, exit them ASAP.
