Assisting cultural reform in a projects-based company using Systemigrams

Abstract

The only sustainable advantage that one business can have over another is the knowledge base of its employees; everything else is in the public domain. If all project personnel know and can share values about best project practice they can then be responsive and adaptive to a changing environment; if not then they will probably resist the change. This paper describes how the Boardman Soft Systems Methodology (BSSM) has been used to support a programme of cultural re-orientation within a medium-sized systems engineering business. The company has recognised the need to adopt a project management organisation in order to survive and prosper in the competitive business environment of the 1990s. Senior management prepared strategy papers and guidelines for employees which set out to describe the new way in which the business should operate. The methodology has been used to create diagrams that more richly describe these new company values, so that they may become a basis for shared values and provide a vehicle for cultural change. The diagrams, known as Systemigrams ( systemic diagrams) have been demonstrated to provide an enlightened understanding of engineering and management process dynamics as a basis for shared values and can be shown to illuminate possibilities for process improvement to ensure alignment with organisational objectives.