Successful Adoption and Change Management: Navigating Human Behaviour

When technology is evolving quickly and businesses are grappling with the challenges of integrating new technologies into their operations, it’s easy to overlook the end users—those who are most affected. After all, the new technology will be better so everybody wins, right? Perhaps, eventually, says Jannae Vannberg, Executive Director of Continuant’s Adoption and Change Management (ACM) and Project Management.

For Vannberg and her team, one of the most critical aspects of ACM is helping every end user not only accept but also embrace the new technology. What role does Continuant play in making this happen? In Vannberg’s words, it’s simple: “We do this by including the end user into every part of the project, from inception to successful implementation. We observe, we listen, we learn what each company and culture needs.”

While some organizations can successfully complete a “DIY” approach to ACM, in Vannberg’s experience, it sometimes takes an external ACM team to bring about needed change. “We aim to manage and mitigate the natural human resistance to any kind of change by involving employees from the outset, making them feel valued and heard,” says Vannberg, adding that  “This means not only leveraging the early adopters, but ensuring that there is consistent communication and training to support those who are slower to adapt and accept new ways of doing things, with all their different learning styles and work roles.”

Identifying Vital Stakeholders

Vannberg and her team conduct discovery and persona analysis, knowing that the involvement of key people can make or break the transition. Naturally, they start with the leadership teams, but no matter how enthusiastically executives drive change from above, it’s vital to include grassroots users as well.

“We figure out who the ‘champions’ are,” she explains. “These are usually people who love change, and also have varying degrees of influence over their peers. We need to find those people, include them from the beginning, give them extra attention with learning opportunities, and ensure that they will advocate for technology change amongst their peers,” she says. “Every business has such champions, but it’s not always obvious to the leaders who they are.”

Vannberg’s emotionally intelligent team are experienced in considering the technical details in “people terms,” where the smallest unforeseen aspect of the technology can create cascading friction and misunderstanding. For example, something as small as a project team forgetting to mention that the new phone system would not require dialling 9 for an external line could cause a major disruption to the business and give the false impression that the entire thing ‘just didn’t work’. With proper ACM, including an effective communication plan, situations like this can be completely avoided, notes Vannberg.

Ruthless Accountability Drives Successful Change

Embracing change management and employee engagement as an essential activity alongside the technical project supports the executive and IT Teams along with the end users through the transition. As Vannberg terms it, her ACM team essentially becomes “an external driver of action through every step.”

Vannberg notes: “A client recently described us as “holding them ruthlessly accountable,” which I loved,” she reflects, “as it’s true, a large part of our work is ensuring our customers projects teams follow the ACM plan as suggested and just do the things! That’s our motivation, to drive them to get it done.”

Vannberg’s ACM team regularly meets with the customer’s project team to ensure that communications (created and custom tailored by Continuant’s ACM team) are sent on time, frequently asked questions addressed, the customer’s executive team has the proper updates, and end users are as prepared as possible for the ensuing change. “Part of our job is to make sure the customer’s executives and IT teams look like shining stars in their organization because end users have embraced the change, and there is very little ‘noise’ during, and post, going live.

As a completely external and interim team, our only interest is to ensure a successful technology transition, says Vannberg. “Continuant’s systematic and tailored approach to ACM means that the customer not only has a successful technical implementation, but their end users are fully prepared for the change.”

That’s what real change management looks like, and it works.