Wayne Manuel is the Vice President of Operations at Avista. His role has evolved significantly since he first joined the company as Chief Information Officer, a position in which he completed a full strategic plan within his first months. Over time he transitioned into a broader operations and technology role, and today he serves as the executive sponsor of the ERP implementation, signing contracts and meeting regularly with implementation leadership to keep the program on track. Wayne and I sat down to talk about the origins, challenges, and philosophy behind Avista's ERP initiative. My questions focused on understanding how a project of this scale gets off the ground, what resistance looks like from a leadership perspective, and how the organization plans to bring its workforce along through the change. During our conversation Wayne walked me through how the ERP vision first took shape. After joining Avista as CIO, he conve...