Lands Registry ripe for radical surgery

Last week I watched the evening news with bated breath as the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands Dorothy Angote took the extremely plucky step of shutting down the Lands Registry and unearthing “missing” files.

With one swift move, she was sending a strong message to the registry mafia that hid the files and only produced them against payment of the usurious finder’s tax.

For the bold step of unearthing the files, she gets an A rating.

For the incredible faith she has that this action alone will kill the mafia, she gets an A+ rating.

For the fact that it will take nothing short of an apocalypse to rid the Lands Registry of its mafia, she gets a D rating.

What the Lands Registry needs is a colossal change project to computerise the land records.

But as anyone who has ever experienced a change project will tell you, there are very many constituencies to manage when you try to introduce a change project within an organisation.

The first constituency is made up of the employees who are excited and can quickly see what the benefits of the change will bring.

This constituency will form the “Early Adopters” and they need only to be informed to buy into the change.

Sadly this constituency ordinarily makes up less than 20 per cent of the institution.

The second constituency is termed as the “Early Majority” made up of the employees who after being informed need to be supported to buy into the change.

Support to this constituency can take the form publicised recognition and reward to achieve the change deliverables.

The two are really the easy part in the change journey.

The “Later Majority” forms the third constituency and in addition to being informed and supported, this team needs to be negotiated with.

This team probably has more personal fears than the other two constituencies and will be made up of employees who feel that the change being introduced will in some shape or form increase efficiency that will make their jobs redundant.

For some, it may not even be fear of redundancy as much as fear of being seen not to be able to cope with modern technology.

Example from my previous life.

Over 10 years ago, we were involved in selling electronic banking products to parastatals.

The system that we were selling would reduce the amount of paperwork required to get a payment out to a creditor and more importantly allow the payment to be sent from the customer’s bank account directly to the supplier by the click of a mouse.

In the process of trying to find out why the senior accountant of one institution was the most resistant to purchasing the product— yet it would ostensibly make his life far easier — we came to discover that the poor fellow had never ever used a computer and was appalled at the thought of being trained in the same group as his subordinates.

Clearly undaunted, we forged ahead and arranged an individual training session for the man in a private room with the trainer fighting to keep a straight face as the senior accountant lifted the computer mouse in the air, waving around in endless circles and cursing out loud at why nothing was happening on the screen.

The institution purchased the product and the senior accountant became one of the strongest advocates for the introduction of the e-payment system as a result, since he could now demonstrate to all and sundry that he was computer proficient.

The two most dangerous constituencies which happily constitute a minority are the “Laggards” and the “No People”.

By this time, the change team has converted its efforts from informing, supporting and negotiating to convincing and enforcing.

In some cases, it even requires the change team to ignore this constituency. But ignoring these employees is nothing short of perilous.

John Kotter who is a leading expert on business leadership warns about this constituency in his book, Leading Change.

He says: “Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help to maintain the status quo.”

Drawing again from my recollection of past change efforts, we were introducing an outsourced wage payment system for a parastatal that had over 12,000 employees, majority of whom were blue-collar workers.

What we knew going in was that the management had undertaken Herculean efforts to rid the payroll of the ghost workers that lurked therein.

By outsourcing the actual payment of the payroll to the bank, the courageous management believed that this would unearth the ghost workers since it was an outsider that was making the actual payments rather than employees who could be enticed to look the other way.

Needless to say, when the first payroll was run, there was a near riot as some workers started inciting their colleagues to strike against the “sale of the parastatal” to foreigners who were out to get rid of Kenyan workers.

Of course that was not true. But these workers very nearly succeeded in getting management to stop the entire outsourcing exercise due to the tension and workers who were ready to down their tools until the old order was restored.

It took the sheer guts of the CEO at the time to put his foot down and insist that the outsourcing was going to go ahead, which action enabled us to smoke out the ghost workers as our cashiers would only pay the names on the list against which a national identity card had to be produced.

The CEO was smart enough to realise that the rabble-rousers were made up of the “ghost workers” who were determined to ensure that the new changes in the method of paying out wages must not be allowed to work.

Don’t join

The Lands Registry mafia may actually constitute a minority in the total employee count at that department.

However, they will do anything to ensure that any changes being introduced by their fearless Permanent Secretary, including computerisation of land records, will not succeed.

Even as a minority, the magnitude of their desire to maintain the status quo should never be underestimated.

As a parting shot, a man goes to the doctor and says “Doctor, I’ve become a compulsive thief.”

The doctor prescribes him a course of tablets and says, “If you’re not cured in a couple of weeks would you get me a widescreen television?” If you can’t beat them, don’t join them.

carol.musyoka@bungani.com