The performance ideas blog

Tag: change management

  • Is your analytics solution a trusted advisor?

    The trusted advisor?

    Many of us get really frustrated when business people do not immediately embrace our analytics solutions. But let’s step in their shoes for a moment. Trusting analytics for decision making is leap of faith. Imagine you are a manager who is used to listening to his gut feeling and intuition. We can’t expect that person to immediately embrace the latest and greatest analytics solution. As a matter of fact, data can often be viewed as some scary. Starting to rely on analytics can therefore often feel like the proverbial leap of faith.

    Why is that so? When we simplify the feelings that a new analytics user experiences we can identify three major stages.

    1. Reject: Can I trust the data? What am I supposed to do with it?
    2. Accept: I can see the value but I can’t identify the stories
    3. Embrace: This is cool! What else can I do with this?

    We as analytics professionals have the duty to help people make that leap of faith. We have to make it easy for them to get from stage 1 to stage 3.

    Acceptance of Analytics

    A personal story

    About ten years ago, I got really serious about my running and cycling. Instead of just following my gut feeling for developing a training plan, I purchased a heart rate monitor, a cycling power meter and some analytics software.

    Stage 1 – Reject: The initial experience was intimidating. Getting everything to work was complicated and there were a ton of data drop-outs. What about the data itself? It did not tell me anything. All I saw was a bunch of colorful charts and nothing else. I was ready to throw the stuff out of the door. It felt like a waste of time.

    Stage 2 – Accept: After a few weeks, however, things started to work smoothly and a coach finally helped me understand the charts and taught me how to identify a few weaknesses in my approach. Based on those insights, I tweaked my plan a little bit. It was a positive step forward but I was still waiting for the big impact.

    Polar
    Relying on analytics can be a leap of faith

    Stage 3 – Embrace: Studyingbooks and consulting with other athletes allowed me to achieve a real break-through. That’s when I finally learned to really rely on the data. Here is an example: Analysis showed that I had trained too hard for over two years. I needed to change my approach and spend more time recovering. It sounded scary: Train slower to race faster? Guess what – it worked! Once I started to back off, I was able to dramatically improve my performance. And that is my personal story of moving from stage 1 (reject) to stage 3 (embrace).

    Your role

    Don’t expect your users to immediately embrace your cool analytics solution. It is a leap of faith. It is your job to help and coach them. Show them how they can apply their data and the associated insights. Also, make sure that you develop solutions that are easy to use and that communicate clearly. Don’t let them alone. Move them along these three stages. It’s your responsibility! You can also find some ideas how to do that on this blog.

  • User Adoption Strategies – Insights and Strategy

    USER ADOPTION ISSUES

    user adoption strategy
    Fully adopted to his environment

    The other day I was exchanging emails with a prior client. She was quite frustrated about the status of her project. User adoption of the new Business Analytics environment was still much lower than she had originally anticipated. Despite the amazing dashboards and planning models her team has built over the past two years, too many users are still relying on spreadsheets to get their daily work done.

    This story is not unique and it happens across the board. User adoption is one of the toughest things to manage. But it shouldn’t be that hard. My prior client did some research and forwarded me some interesting insights by management coach Marshall Goldsmith.

    DEFAULT BEHAVIOR: INERTIA

    Human beings do not like change. As a matter of fact, our typical default behavior is to continue doing what we have done in the past. Goldsmith points out a typical example: watching TV. When you are done watching a show chances are that you will zap the channels and continue watching something else. It’s as simple as that. Goldsmith states “The most reliable predictor of what you will be doing five minutes from now is what you are doing now.” And there is a negative impact. Goldsmith somberly continues “Very few people achieve positive, lasting change without ongoing follow-up.”

    ONGOING FOLLOW-UP

    There is a keyword in the last sentence: ongoing follow-up. Goldsmith found the following to be true for most people: “On the other hand, if they know someone, like their coach, their coworkers, or their manager, is watching – in the form of paying attention to them, or caring about them, or evaluating them with follow-up questions – they are more likely to change. The key is measurement and follow-up, in all their myriad forms.”

    If you think about it, this is not surprising. We all intuitively know this from our private lives: We only change our diet when we know that the Doctor is monitoring our progress. We start doing those grueling interval sessions on the track when our coach is watching us.

    Unfortunately, these insights are hardly ever implemented in companies. Change management for systems implementations too often focuses on creating a few happy slides and t-shirts that are supposed to outline the benefits of using the new processes. Experience has clearly shown that this is highly ineffective.

    YOUR NEXT PROJECT

    Marshall Goldsmith’s insights are not surprising or new but they are crystal clear. I would like to propose that we leverage this for our current projects. There are a few simple user adoption strategies:

    • Pro-actively schedule quick coaching sessions with important users instead of letting them alone after go-live. Review their issues and help them work through difficulties. This will send a clear message.
    • Eliminate options. Inertia is holding people back and the default behavior is to continue doing what they have done forever. Do not offer that option. Way too many companies allow users to run parallel processes (for example: ability to develop the budget in the new system or in a spreadsheet) to help ‘ease the pain’ of having to change.
    • Monitor usage through system audit tools and publish the numbers. (‘great news – usage of the new Cognos 10 system has increased by 65% last month!’). This will send the message that people are indeed paying attention to this. If you want to loose weight you need to step on a scale, right?
    • Work with management to include system adoption in the annual goals. Make sure to be very specific: “Develop the annual budget in the new Cognos system.”

    As always, it is critical to use careful judgement. Every organization is different and user adoption obviously requires proper system design and usability.

    My prior client is trying some of these things right now. She has seen positive progress so far. What do you think?

    P.S.: The ideas originate from Marshall Goldsmith’s book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It