Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Convince Someone To Give Up an Old System?
First time accepted submitter Vanderhoth writes "I'm currently serving as a new member of a board for a not for profit organization. The board currently has a few other members, and a couple of vacant positions. One of the issues I've noticed since joining the board is the method in which they conduct business is very out of date. The member that maintains our web presences (Bob) has developed a system over the last ten years to allow us to store documents, such as agendas and minutes on a website server.
Some of the big issues are:
1.) The system is very disorganized, there are documents from the late 90's that aren't relevant, but have to be sifted through to find more current stuff.
2.) Often documents are not where they should be and are difficult to find.
3.) No one except Bob really knows how the system works.
4.) No one really wants to use the system because of the monster it's become.
My concern is if Bob decided to leave the organization no one would be able to maintain the existing system and we would be scrambling to put something new in place. I feel, for what we want to do, Google Docs would be an excellent platform for collaborating and sharing documents. The other board members, except Bob, have agreed with me, but are worried that bringing the issues with the existing system may cause offense and ultimately cause Bob to leave. Other than being overly vested in a system he developed, Bob is an important part of our board and a very valuable member.
We're already having a difficult time finding members to serve on the board so it's very important that we don't lose any existing board members. I'm hoping that I can convince the Bob to start supporting some Google docs objects on the site and try to wean him off his existing system to something a bit more manageable and collaborative that can be passed on to new members and maintained easily.
I don't want this to turn into old dogs and new tricks. I'm not that far behind Bob in years and can appreciate the difficulty of being told it's time to give in to something more modern. I'm wondering how the situation could be approached tactfully so maybe Bob will see how much easier a new system could be for everyone, including him."
Some of the big issues are:
1.) The system is very disorganized, there are documents from the late 90's that aren't relevant, but have to be sifted through to find more current stuff.
2.) Often documents are not where they should be and are difficult to find.
3.) No one except Bob really knows how the system works.
4.) No one really wants to use the system because of the monster it's become.
My concern is if Bob decided to leave the organization no one would be able to maintain the existing system and we would be scrambling to put something new in place. I feel, for what we want to do, Google Docs would be an excellent platform for collaborating and sharing documents. The other board members, except Bob, have agreed with me, but are worried that bringing the issues with the existing system may cause offense and ultimately cause Bob to leave. Other than being overly vested in a system he developed, Bob is an important part of our board and a very valuable member.
We're already having a difficult time finding members to serve on the board so it's very important that we don't lose any existing board members. I'm hoping that I can convince the Bob to start supporting some Google docs objects on the site and try to wean him off his existing system to something a bit more manageable and collaborative that can be passed on to new members and maintained easily.
I don't want this to turn into old dogs and new tricks. I'm not that far behind Bob in years and can appreciate the difficulty of being told it's time to give in to something more modern. I'm wondering how the situation could be approached tactfully so maybe Bob will see how much easier a new system could be for everyone, including him."
This.
Read the ancient but still highly useful Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is a textbook example of a situation that can be attacked using the advice in that excellent book. If you sidestep Bob when trying to bring this new system in there is about a 98% chance of significant strife and animosity resulting from such action. If you are able to get on Bob's good side and work with him to introduce a new system, things will go infinitely better. Especially if everyone including Bob thinks it's mostly his idea.
Here's the catch though: You can't fake it. You must approach people with a real, genuine interest in getting to know them. If they are difficult to deal with you have to find some chink in their armor that will make them more approachable. If you fake it you will go down in flames and the Dale Carnegie approach will never work for you.
Any other angle of attack in this situation usually will turn out very negatively for one or both parties.
Sounds like Bob has found a way to ensure his continued employment and everyone around is too spineless to play that game of chicken with him.
Hi,
My name is Bob. I am on the board of a small non-profit, and in my own time I built a document management system for our organization before you could buy such things off the shelf. We use it for records of board meetings and the like. Some idiot named Vanderhoth just joined the board. He is rubbishing my system which I've spent years maintaining. He complains about older documents being in the way of newer ones, but can't be bothered volunteering to help tidy the documents. He wants to throw away the whole system and go with something completely unproven. What's worse is he wants to put our documents on the cloud - at the mercy of a mega-corp that could pull their service at any time, or suffer a security breach. If this little punk had any clue he'd realize first step of moving our documents would have to be tidying them up. But he just moans to others behind my back instead. Now I hear he's posted to a large blog site called slashdot. Next time I see Vanderhoth I'm going to kick him in the nuts! If he thinks he's staying on the board for long he's got another thing coming.
Sincerely,
Bob
Original submitter here, Best suggestion I've read yet!!
I think I may try this approach, Bob likes talking about his system so he may be willing to try and explain it to me from a professional to professional standpoint. I can also point out that he may not want to maintain the system forever so having someone available to take over would keep his "baby" alive. Learning to use his system could prove useful in that if it is a crap system it'll be hard from him to explain how and why he did something. Maybe if he finds himself stuttering and searching for reasons and explications a lot it would be a good time to point out other systems that could supplemented the incomplete or sketchy parts of his system.