Weave a new tool into the fabric of a workforce
A new tool unified disparate intelligence collection processes across multiple teams and spreadsheets into one shared system.
While the benefits were clear, changing ingrained processes required an orchestrated approach across comms, leadership buy-in, training and overall adoption.
The below work spanned approximately one year and led to adoption of a tool across hundreds of people.
Ingrained Processes and New Ways of Working
Get educated
While I had worked on software releases in the past, this was a change management undertaking orders of magnitude bigger.
I consulted with experts within my workplace in order to teach myself, and read a foundational book that gave me valuable tools and frameworks for thinking about the work.
Understand our user community, identify adoption champions
I identified three overall “usage styles" — Enter & Read for users who would both enter and read data in the new system, Read for users who would only read, and Aware for teams that needed to know the system exists.
For the “Enter & Read” style, we identified, with management approval, “Adoption Champions” who would be our initial users of the system and help spread it among their teams. This task was included in the employees’ goals for the year.
We worked with the Adoption Champions in a targeted way to explain what was expected of them before we moved into the following steps.
Leadership Adoption Workshop
While management had identified the need for this system many years ago, it was crucial that they deeply understand how the work of their staffs would change once it was introduced. And what would be needed from them to realize its promise.
In a bespoke workshop, we had management work on three activities that helped them wrap their minds around the change that would be coming:
Value of the System
Day in the Life of Staff
Impediments to Usage
Coordinated Comms Management
Knowing how important messaging from leadership would be in getting the tool disseminated, we created a comms calendar leading up to the “official launch.”
We had comms planned both to the whole group from top leadership, as well as from managers of individual teams to their own staffs.
Targeted Staff Trainings
Our staff trainings were arranged in a calendar that aligned with the comms calendar.
Team by team, we presented that touched every user across the group.
For these, we leaned on the previously identified adoption champions — who had already been using the system — to participate and explain what their experience had been.
Official Launch
By the time we reached the “Official Launch,” there was wide awareness and understanding of the system already across the group.
We made a splash, with visible posters and messaging around the office, and had an event with treats. Bribing users with sugar is a strategy shown to works.
Individual User Outreach to Reinforce Usage
We tracked individual usage of the system, user by user, in a spreadsheet.
For several months after lunch, there were dedicated tasks around reaching out to users, asking them how the system was going, offering tips and tweaks to usage.
The real journey begins: capitalizing on the new system
Given that this new system consolidated content that had been previously disconnected, we had countless new opportunities to do deeper and more meaningful work.
We could now analyze who we had reached out to broadly for intelligence, ask who we were missing, make sure we did not over-tax certain contacts.
With AI, yet more possibilities emerged. How might we further capitalize on the incredibly valuable information that our skilled analysts collect to help us make yet more effective decisions?