Interview with a Change Agent

Interviewee: Khalid Soussou, Data Security Systems

In December 1992, Emirates Information Systems (EIS) completed the implementation phase of a strategic re-orientation change process, led by a new General Manager, Khalid Soussou. The outcome of the change process was a radical restructuring of the organisation involving 80% of the workforce being made redundant, a 90% change in the senior management team, and the outsourcing of the entire transportation department.

Rather than being instigated in reaction to a contemporaneous event, the change was instigated because the CEO recognised that EIS’s previous growth strategy via acquisition was not sustainable, and believed significant organisational change in anticipation of increased international competition would help create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Soussou’s appointment resulted directly from the CEO’s felt need for change. Soussou was essentially ‘contracted’ to review the business in order to develop and implement appropriate changes that would re-align EIS along more efficient and effective business prinicples. Consequently, the CEO became the ‘patron’ of change, and Soussou the key change agent.

After a month of informal interviews with managers and employees, Soussou’s initial impressions of EIS were that they were a ‘cottage industry that achieved success through luck rather than design’. He believed the majority of the managers were ‘essentially incompetent – they had never seen a Profit and Loss statement and paid no attention to cost because that was the accountants job’. The culture was characterised by a ‘she’ll be right attitude’, and ‘don’t buck the system – we’ve been doing things this way forever. We don’t necessarily like it, but you’ll live through it.

Concerned that EIS managers and