For Vince Burkett, 2007 was a year of not having a choice.
After a series of acquisitions that brought five software companies together to form Ventyx, Burkett had 1,200 people and five
ways of doing everything, and that needed to change.
“It was a challenge to try to create a way of doing business that
was uniquely ours and behaved like one company,” Burkett says.
This was vital not only for the sake of Burkett and his employees,
but more importantly, customers only wanted to deal with one
point of contact instead of five.
While change was necessary, it’s not easy to get people to accept
new processes and procedures, so before you can start, you have
to first get buy-in.
“One of the key parts of the process is not to skip straight to the
change and try to sell people on the benefit of the change,” says
Burkett, who was named president and CEO in January after previously serving as chief operating officer. “Back up and establish
why the change is even necessary in the first place, and really
make sure you don’t skip past that. ‘Let’s look at the facts and
circumstances, and now let’s look at the marketplace and
what’s happening on the financial side of the business — can
we all agree that an altered course is necessary?’”
Without a reason to change, people simply won’t.
“If you go straight to, ‘This is the change we’re going to
make,’ and try to sell the value without the recognition that,
‘Yeah, we need to change,’ then you get a lot more resistance
than you would otherwise,” he says.
With a motive for change established, Burkett was then able to
begin making the companies into one cohesive unit by aligning
systems, constantly communicating and creating metrics.