I received an e-mail recently regarding my last post. It suggested that the one missing component to ensure a solid return on technology investments was a focus on change management. I couldn’t agree more! Woodrow Wilson said “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” In the past couple of months, I have met with two different business owners who follow that way of thinking. In both cases, they want to implement new financial management systems they know will provide many great benefits over their legacy systems, but both are waiting for their accountants to retire!
Technology implementations and their related costs shouldn’t be viewed an as expense, but rather as the investment in the growth of the business that they are. To put the above example in investment terms, these two small business owners are taking an ‘in the money’ type of strategy. In both cases they figuratively have a ‘call option’ to adopt the technology that can be exercised at any time. This type of view means that there is ‘option value’ to waiting, That is, adoption should wait until benefits are above costs. There may be large benefit to the systems they want to implement; but the costs, primarily the impacts of change to the organization, are viewed to be too great. This view is common. Many IT projects fail not because of the technology, but because human beings resist change and uncertainty. Here are a few ideas to get your employees onboard with your next technology investment.
Go Grassroots
No one likes to be force-fed anything. How do people react when top-down decision making happens? Typically, they happily nod their heads during meetings and implementation discussions only to silently object or work against things. These actions undermine the project and lower the overall return on investment. Getting employees engaged with the decision making early on, helps to eliminate buy-in issues. We have worked with more than one company where the demand for implementing a new system came from the bottom-up. In those situations, huge hurdles were removed before the projects even started. Louis L’Amour wrote in The Lonely Men, “Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.” If you get people to be part of a decision for change, they’ll believe in the positive outcomes and be on board from the start.
Training Matters
Many companies view training as an area where they can cut corners instead of solidifying an investment. Companies that do skimp on the training investment fail in two areas. The first is the actual implementation of a new piece of technology. They may select to self-teach themselves with tools such as online help to save money. This tends to leave employees frustrated and only knowing the exact functionality to do their jobs. Second, over time as new employees are hired or upgrades are installed new, or even existing functionality goes without notice. This ‘application erosion’ silently adds up to a significant impact. Both of these scenarios detract from the value of a technology solution. Just last week I met with a company who has made large technology investments, but has never given their staff sufficient training on how to fully take advantage of the investment they have made. A small amount of training solved a number of issues they were having and made their investment exponentially more valuable.
As a very smart reader pointed out, change management is a really big part of successfully implementing a new technology in your business. Make sure that the input of your staff is provided in the decision making process early on and don’t skimp on the training investment. These two relatively simple ideas will help make sure people are on board and capable of being successful with the new direction or tools.