Technology driven organizations - a two way street of management

The management of technology-based companies to enable them to sustain a competitive advantage in a specific industry is a key requirement in today\´s technology arena. This paper outlines aspects of managing major changes in culture and staff motivation of a technology driven company. The business moved from being an electronics manufacturing-based company to a technical services provider (i.e. complete business solutions from design and development to manufacture) where the core products are medical related. This paper addresses the human aspects of change management; namely the culture of the organisation, employee motivation by means of ownership and "buy in" and a re-education of the workforce to a technology driven mindset. The paper outlines a planned and controlled manner of permeating the cultural change; assessing employees job satisfaction and enhanced motivation at each stage. It describes a change to a technology mind set that espouses innovation, embracing change and ambiguity, and accepting challenge whilst acknowledging that errors and mistakes are mode on the way to achieving these goals. All of the above is achieved by means of a two way street, firstly by obtaining management participation and then ensuring that employees at the lowest levels of the organisation are educated and familiarised with the change. Strong feedback loops are established to ensure that all employees have input to and ownership of the process.