I; and which was the most successful change and why?

Mm; The whole programme has been very very successful. The things that have been easier have been those where the

change

was limited to one division or one function. But the one initiative that I'm proundest of,probably, is the change

in all our

point-of-sale systems- and that's the tills at the front of the stores. We have about five hundred stores, each of

which have up to fifty sales tills. And we embarked on a programme to replace all those tills, their associated eabling,

system software and infrastructure in a very short time period.And a lot of people said we couldn't do it.In fact

we changed those tills at a rate of twenty-two stores per week.And that invoved replacing the hardware and the software

and the technical enviroments for foureen thousand sales tills.We had to retrain a hundred thousand people and it involved the installation

of five hundred tonnes of equipment. That change happened very rapidly and didn't - for every stores,we made the change

overnight and we didn't have to delay the opening of any store on any day.That was a huge commitment and a huge

achievement

on the part of a very large number of people.

I: And what advice would you give to businesses planning change?

Mm: I think it would be to plan very carefully, and especially if there's a lot of computer system change,

to recognise that the computer system change is a tiny piece of what's required, that there are three pieces

you need to focus on.One has to do with people- their attitudes, the culture and how they're rewarded.

Another has to do with the business processes - how they have to change - and the third leg is the computer systems.

It's important to focus on all three and plan very carefully. And I've heard someone from computer company HP

say that in their change programme they put four times the amout of effort into the new way of working

than the old because,by their very nature,people and companies will refer... revert to the old ways of working if

you don'tput a quite disproportionate amount of effort into doing things the new way.