Digital Adoption & Business Transformation Requires Leadership
We often hear that Change Management is a critical success factor for Digital Solution and Business Transformation initiatives. Even with today’s solutions taking on enhanced usability and an increased focus on the employee experience, we still need to address and execute well-structured change programs. Unfortunately we continue to see examples of projects that are challenged as a result of under-funding or lack of focus on activities to address the "people" change. Let's take a quick look at what change management really is and identify what is needed for success.
Myth-bust: Change management is only training and communications
Activities such as training programs, communication campaigns and organization / job / role alignment form what I call, the core minimum of "traditional" change management. Transformation programs and projects incorrectly assume that if you train and communicate you have fulfilled your obligation to ensure adoption.
In my various change implementation and project review roles, I have experienced first-hand what works well and what does not. Recently I was consulting on a project requiring assistance with their solution adoption. The program had developed a successful ‘training and communications kit’ however it was only achieving a 30% user adoption rate. This is a common challenge when you assume a successful training model will result in high adoption rates. So what is the solution?
Leadership Sponsorship is the single most effective variable to driving adoption
We switched gears and focused team efforts on the “leadership network”. We identified the right influential leaders, built out targeted “leader to employee” messaging and worked to keep this priority project high on the leadership agenda. Within a short period we were able to drive solution adoption to over 75%.
Although the new online digital tool was easier to use and brought better departmental compliance, there was a cohort of change resisters holding on to their paper-based forms. This was a unionized environment and we could not force everyone to use the new solution as the internal policies had not yet been changed. Addressing the remaining dissenters in this environment therefore required policy change and performance reporting to track compliance.
3 Steps to building adoption
I bring the above example forward to illustrate that programs must look beyond their training and communication efforts to drive adoption, and look at the other levers to driver success. Each solution that is deployed or transformation program that is implemented is unique; the culture of the organization needs to be taken into account to build out a customized adoption program. Here are 3 simple steps that you can take to increase adoption on your next change program:
1. Encourage and support end users to use the new solution through “traditional” change management;
2. Use leadership sponsorship and endorsement to influence end user behavior;
3. Address internal policies, governance and performance reporting to enforce compliance.
Now, go drive that adoption!