User Adoption Insight Over Margaritas
This far into spring many Seattleites are more than ready for the first glimpses of that odd, warmish bright thing in the sky. When I lived back east we called it “the sun”. But sometimes, like this last Tuesday, we have to pretend and somehow manufacture our own sunshine.
Which is how a group of friends and I found ourselves at our neighborhood’s most brightly painted Mexican place. It was with near-salivating anticipation for our dry, near-perfect summers we ordered our pitcher of margaritas. Or…ok, maybe it had just been a long day for each of us.
Being the most technically-inclined person of the group – to the extent that I’m the only one with an iPod even – I try to be the one who kicks off our usual how-was-your-day round-robin with the briefest description of what I did, just to get my IT-related day behind us so we can talk about things that are common to the whole group. That day, I’d designed a Power Point presentation for an upcoming conference on user adoption in the cloud. When the conversation turned to the cloud my dear friend Jane, an office manager, recalled how just hours before her bosses sprung a new cloud-based Power Point-like software on her, telling her their whole organization was moving to it and she needed to learn it. Oh, and while she’s at it, convert all the other slide decks their office regularly uses too.
“It seems to me we’re always upgrading or switching to something totally new and the technology changes so fast, no one can keep up. It’s like technology’s moving so fast, we’re just running along behind doing our best to catch up, but we can’t. None of us can. It just moves that fast and changes that often. It’s not the technology’s fault. It’s just that as humans, we can’t change as fast as it does.”
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but grin over my salted rim and say, “Precisely. And that’s where user adoption consulting comes in. We’re the ones you bring in to help you navigate through all those changes, with all those personalities and competing interests, and we set you up for the long-term. Because you know it’s going to change again. ”
Curt, a school counselor, looked at me and said, “So…it’s not the technology. It actually has nothing to do with the technology…it’s all about the people…and how they manage and get through the change, as individuals, as departments, as whole organizations.”
And it was like the sun came out right there at the table: the heretofore somewhat abstract notion of “user adoption” finally made sense to everyone at the table. Here was a real-life example they each could relate to; they’d heard it from someone going through it and heads nodded in recognition.
So while this last Tuesday afternoon didn’t set records for instant sunlight over Seattle, having my friends see a real-world example of what I do on a daily basis was definitely something to toast to.
What Can Warren Buffett Teach Us About User Adoption?
IN THE NEWS
In a recent interview on CNBC Warren Buffett said that he could end the federal deficit in five minutes.
"I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than three percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. Yeah, yeah, now you've got the incentives in the right place, right? (Laughs)” – Source: www.CNBC.com 07 July 2011.
What Warren Buffett knows that most people seemed to forget (or just ignore) is that you need to develop meaningful incentives that reward the desired behavior and work performance you want to receive. This simple concept is as true for politicians in Congress as it is for users of IT systems in your organization. User adoption is ultimately about changing user behavior. So how do we effectively change behavior? Looking to another part of life, there is evidence from public efforts to change driver behavior that programs that combine incentives with enforcement and consequences are more effective than programs that only focus on motivation alone. The Washington Post reports:“The campaign against distracted driving has provided another illustration that American drivers are more likely to respond to safety initiatives when they carry the threat of punishment.
...Publicity efforts alone, such as the “Buckle Up for Safety” campaign, were high-profile failures, but the “Click It or Ticket” effort that followed is credited with increasing seat-belt use. The weeping victims of drunken driving who appeared in public presentations and in the media captured widespread attention, but experts say sobriety checkpoints provided stronger motivation for the use of designated drivers.” - Source: www.WashingtonPost.com 11 July 2011.
OBSERVATION
A common problem of most IT implementations is a focus on sending out 1-way communications, without developing truly meaningful incentive programs that drive desired user behavior. Many IT projects focus their communications on the typical, yet ineffective “What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)” message, but do little or nothing to define how they will measure user adoption and the rewards or consequences for meeting or missing adoption goals. In effect, the approach to user adoption found in many organizations is a “Buckle Up For Safety” campaign when a “Click It or Ticket” approach is needed.CONSIDER THIS
- If you want to improve user adoption, you need to make sure you have specified user adoption targets and defined policies that align incentives and rewards (including consequences) with desires behavior. The rewards and consequences must be strong enough – and meaningful to end users – to actually influence user behavior.
- You need a structured program to measure user adoption against defined targets and then enforce your incentive policies. This may include setting monthly user adoption metrics and targets, and then providing regular reports to monitor performance.
- You need to formally assign responsibility for implementing your incentive and rewards program. With “Click It or Ticket”, police officers are responsible for enforcing seatbelt policies. In your organization, it may fall to team leaders, department managers or directors. What matters is that everyone is clear on whose job it is to implement your user adoption policies.
- Don’t forget that incentive programs that are heavily focused on driving user commitment to adopt systems are preferable to programs that only focus on compliance or WIIFM. Of course, even commitment-centric approaches still require that you have a structured program for monitoring adoption and allocating rewards.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
- Do you currently take a “Buckle Up for Safety” or “Click It or Ticket” approach to user adoption? Is it effective?
- Are your incentive systems truly aligned to drive desired user behavior? Do end-users feel meaningful rewards and consequences if they do not use your system? How are they enforced?
- How do you know if your incentive program is meaningful to end users? What do you do to validate that the rewards/consequences actually matter to the individuals whose behavior you are trying to change? Or do you just assume you have the right incentives?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com – an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Read: “Design the right metrics to improve user adoption”
- Read: “Motivating User Adoption: Commitment, Compliance Or WIIFM?”
- Read: "What is IT "Success"?
- Read: “Leadership: Are You Really Committed?”
- Read: “The Myth of User Resistance”
Don’t sell your employees on the system. Fulfill their needs!
OBSERVATION
A common practice – and TRAP – of change management is to attempt to convince (“sell”) end-users that the new IT system is beneficial to them. Change management teams spend several hours trying to “spin” their communications to attain this goal. The fallacy is spending time “selling” the benefits of the system without first understanding the end-users’ actual needs to properly use the system. This pitfall is grossly overlooked.CONSIDER THIS
Change management teams often defend their approach, stating they apply due diligence by defining technical requirements. The problem is the technical requirements assume alignment to the daily practices of end-users. Often we find the architectural design does not compliment the practical application. As a different approach, User Adoption strategy consultants capture the most effective means of utilizing the system through interviews and observation of end-user behavior; this is done in concert with requirements definitions. The goal is not to ignore technical requirements, but to ensure the system technical requirements actually meet the end-user needs. This user adoption approach prevents the temptation to “sell” benefits to end-users, because their needs have already been identified and properly met.THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
When you are about to develop a new IT system, seek out the actual needs (both business and technical) of your end-users. Then you will spend less time “selling” end-users, and more time satisfying their needs.RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com - an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “Does Your User Adoption Methodology Remove Barriers To Adoption?”
Getting Partnerships Back On Track
OBSERVATION
So you formed a partnership with another company, but it is not providing as much value as the effort you invested. In a prior blog article, “To Partner or Not To Partner” we discussed the pre-screening factors that you should consider before forming a partnership. Assuming now that you have already formed a partnership, what do you do if it is not bearing fruit? Instead of debating whether or not to continue this partnership, consider the following assessment.CONSIDER THIS
The following questions will help you gather concrete information to have a fact-based conversation with your partner, with the goal of improving the partnership.- What is the amount of time (in hours) and money that you (compared to your partner) spend developing the partnership on:
- Joint-Marketing Collateral & Events?
- Joint-Client Deliverables and Methodology?
- Educating each staff on partner’s value?
- Is the amount of client work appropriately divided between each partner? Is the allocation of work justified by the differing skill sets of each partner?
- How much time do you spend repairing the partner relationship vs. expand partner accounts?
- Does the partner’s actions change to reflect your suggestions to improve or do they continue with the status quo?
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Partnership should require considerable investment – especially in the beginning – to ensure each party gets the most value. Should you find your partnership is not providing you due dividends, what is your plan to assess the situation and improve the partnership?RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “To Partner or Not To Partner”
To Partner or Not To Partner? How choosing the right partners can add value to sales efforts.
OBSERVATION
Consulting firms often debate whether to apply their business development effort toward building a partnership vs. seeking direct client opportunities. One key benefit of forming a partnership is the ability to expand sales opportunities while sharing marketing and sales costs. As tempting as it is to form a partnership with the goal to increase revenue while mitigating marketing/sales effort, you also should consider factors that could add frustration and internal cost if there is no alignment between the two companies.CONSIDER THIS
While no one can predict the success or failure of a new partnership, there are some key considerations when evaluating potential partnerships:1. Similar Company Values – this may seem nebulous and non-relevant to a business decision; however many business relations falter because one party valued a particular method of conducting business in place of the other party’s preferred value (for example: Party A pursues business sales no matter how the sale is achieved. Party B pursues business sales within ethical and legal parameters).
2. Matching Customer Profile – increasing sales in general is tempting, but if the new customers do not fit within your identified profile, you may not have the skill set to satisfy that new customer base. The result hurts not only your reputation, but also your new partner’s!
3. Balanced Workloads – just because you formed a partnership, you cannot afford to assume the workload to building and maintaining the partnership will be equal among partner companies. There are many instances where one partner ended up doing most of the internal, infrastructure work for the partnership (marketing collateral, sales outreach, IT systems, document management, etc.).
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
In addition to the above considerations, it is helpful to monitor the amount of business each partner generates for the other. If you or your partner is delivering an unequal and disproportionate amount of the sales opportunities, you both need to look at the numbers and evaluate why this is occurring.1. How often will you monitor joint/shared sales leads? Examples:
- Each week
- Each month
- Each quarter
- Customer type
- Customer demographic
- Pre-determined criteria for justifying contract is not for other partner
RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “Return on Relationships”
WHAT’S WRONG WITH WIIFM?
OBSERVATION
For years many pundits have said that the best way to motivate user adoption is to “sell” people on what they get for using the new system. They argue that you need to constantly tell each person, “What’s In It For Me” (WIIFM). So, after many years of organizations beating the WIIFM drum, we find that most IT systems still suffer from low or ineffective user adoption. Is it time to re-think WIIFM? I strongly suspect that the people who first came up with WIIFM were management consultants, not psychologists.Back in the 1960’s Yale psychologist Victor Vroom[1] developed the Expectancy Theory[2] that basically states that employees will be motivated to take action if:
- There is a positive correlation between efforts and performance
- Favorable performance will result in a desirable reward
- The reward will satisfy an important need
- The desire to satisfy the need is strong enough to make the effort worthwhile
- The reward for adopting the system needs to be meaningful and desirable to each individual employee. Many IT projects do not actually take the time to learn what is a meaningful to the individual and just issue a one-size-fits-all WIIFM message.
- The rewards that we desire change over time and vary from person to person. For example, what motivates a young employee is be very different from what motivates an older employee who is close to retirement.
- Organizations with a poor track record implementing systems, often lack credibility. Quite simply, employees don’t believe the system will deliver the anticipated benefits or that they will benefit from using the system.
- WIIFM messages often push the benefits of adopting new systems, while ignoring the costs/effort involved. Many times it just “isn’t worth it” to the employees to go through the pain of adopting the new technology.
CONSIDER THIS
Instead of trying to sell employees on WIIFM, help them focus on the need to shift their behavior. The psychological theory of Cognitive Dissonance[3] shows us that when people hold conflicting views on a subject they are motivated to change (or justify) their attitudes, beliefs, or behavior. For us, this means we need to help people realize that the business needs, environment, performance requirements, and management expectations have changed and that the behaviors that made them successful before need to shift.THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
- How can you set the expectation that it is no longer business as usual and that employees need to change their behavior in order to succeed in the future?
- Have you explicitly stated what has changed and what are the new expectations for employee performance? For example, have you developed communications that state things like:
- Changes in the economy require that we become more competitive by doing X
- New government regulations require we do X,Y, and Z
- In order to be eco-friendly and good corporate citizens we need everyone to do A, B and C
- How can you shift from primarily 1-way, passive communications, to better engage employees in 2-way discussions? Do you engage employees in dialogue and ask them questions so that they are forced to think about what has changed and how they need to adjust their behavior to be successful in the new reality?
- Have you explicitly stated that how you perform your job is just as important as how well you perform? Do you communicate that it is no longer sufficient to be a great individual performer if the way you utilize systems and processes prevents others from excelling in their jobs?
[1] http://mba.yale.edu/faculty/profiles/vroom.shtml [2] http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_vroom_expectancy_theory.html [3] http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm