Consumers expect a new relationship with businesses, which means internal teams need a new way to work – one enabling them to access information quickly and collaborate rapidly on any device at any time.
Business transformation is at the heart of every business especially inside everyday processes and driving innovation with purchased productivity tools.
The good news is many companies are turning to Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365. The bad news is adoption is sorely lacking. The culprit? Change management. Recent studies find more than half of companies point to poor change management as the top reason for their SharePoint deployments failing.
Join Heather Newman, Co-Founder, Chief Evangelist and Chief Marketing Officer of Content Panda, as she uses real-world use cases to provide you the blueprint for a successful change management project:
Planning and sponsorship
Awareness
Learning
Readiness and adoption
You’ll leave this session with a clear understanding of the pitfalls to avoid and proven tips to jumpstart business transformation and how to implement with your change management initiative for your Office 365 and SharePoint platforms.
SPTechCon Austin 2017 - Without Change, There Would Be No Butterflies: 4 Steps to Business Transformation (Change Management)
1. Without Change, There Would Be No Butterflies:
4 Steps to Business Transformation
Heather Newman
Evangelist and Chief Marketing Officer, Content Panda
3. IMPROVEIT! BOOK - ESSAYS ON SHAREPOINT
ANALYTICS & ADOPTION
The paperback and Kindle
editions are available on Amazon.
The free eBook is available here:
http://www.improveit.how
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6. Adopt a Panda
Enter to win a
World Wildlife Fund
Adopt a Panda Kit
(Value $55 USD)
Soft plush version of your adopted animal
5" x 7" formal adoption certificate
5" x 7" full-color photo of your species
Species spotlight card, full of fascinating
information about the animal
Shipped to you post-event
9. The only thing that is constant is change.
-Heraclitus
“You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view…Until you climb
inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do
is the act of change.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans
10. However, people HATE change.
Actually they don’t hate change, they
hate fake or not thought out change.
11. The fact is that businesses do not have emotion.
Products do not have emotion. Humans do.
Humans want to feel something.
And humans make mistakes.
12.
13. Steps for Successful Change Management
1. Planning and sponsorship
2. Awareness
3. Learning
4. Readiness and adoption
When I was a kid I was fascinate with butterflies, I grew up in the Midwest where we had these tiger butterflies, monarchs and huge moths. I collected them, only after they had died. But they did end up on pins on my collection wall.
Example of child, positive, interesting, negative
In this stage of the butterfly’s life (which follows right after hatching from an egg) the main task is consumption. The caterpillar’s purpose is simply to eat as much as possible in order to fuel the growth that will take place in the future. During this stage the caterpillar will outgrow and shed its skin as many as four or five times.
This represents the learning stage of growth for me, where I am consuming as much knowledge and training as I can about something new I want to understand and master. As part of this process I usually read, attend workshops, listen to webinars and consult with teachers to take in information so that I will be prepared for what comes next. There is also some “shedding” of ideas during this phase as I sort through what fits or doesn’t fit the project. This is often a stage of great excitement and energy for me as I enjoy the flow of creativity and inspiration it brings.
I’ve written about the importance of executive sponsorship before, but it bears repeating: change starts at the top. Of the companies who report having failed SharePoint deployments, lack of senior management support was one of the top three reasons. Find someone with a SVP or C-level title next to their name to drive “top-down” messaging and act as an active communicator on the value and benefits SharePoint offers throughout your implementation. Once you have your executive sponsor in place, have a project team including executives and department leads across the organization so that this is a truly enterprise change management initiative.
I can’t stress this enough: SharePoint must be seen as a business solution, not just a new technology. SharePoint isn’t a new card access key to your office building – treat it the respect that it deserves. Clearly explain why you are moving to SharePoint so you can frame the rest of your change management initiatives within this context. The business case will set the stage for the rest of your change management project – the goals you set and the actions you take. You’ll want to start by defining goals that will give you the greatest return on your investment. What are the quick wins you can show to the rest of the business that will inspire and excite them to use SharePoint? Once you’ve defined your goals, they are the foundation for a subsequent awareness campaign.
If you are completely overhauling the technology employees use on a daily basis to do their jobs, you must spell out the actions you want them to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing. Common fears I’ve heard from Content Panda customers include fear of change, looking stupid to their peers if they ask too many questions, and a decline in their job performance because the learning curve is too steep. These fears cause a lot of stress, which then turns into conversations amongst themselves sapping time and draining business productivity. That’s why you must be very, very specific. Call out the elephants in the room – not only will employees read these behavior changes and nod their head in acknowledgement, it will mean they know you know exactly what it is they are doing and why it’s not working. This will help you focus awareness and training materials on the actual tasks you need your users to learn on SharePoint.
When you develop these goals and objectives, it’s important to have a formal set of success criteria to measure the impact of your deployment. Determine what should be measured, and how you’ll collect this quantitative and qualitative information. While your success criteria will depend on your specific business needs, there are several you should always include such as user satisfaction, employee engagement, and adoption velocity. By measuring changes that occur as a result of rolling out SharePoint, you will have a way to quickly track what’s working, what’s not, and what you need to fix. Surveys are great for this.
This is the most intriguing stage of butterfly development, which appears catastrophic from the perspective of the caterpillar. When the little crawler is fully grown and can eat no more, it simply dangles from a branch and spins a protective cocoon around itself so it can safely rest and digest all the food that has been consumed in the previous stage.
Though the chrysalis appears unchanged from the outside during this stage, there is dramatic transformation taking place inside: the body of the caterpillar is slowly dissolving while the previously dormant precursor cells of the emerging butterfly (“imaginal cells”) gradually develop, migrate together and create a brand new being.
In my own process of development, this stage is the one I most often misunderstand. I usually don’t recognize the need for rest, retreat and recovery when I am trying to grow or create something new and therefore, I miss out on the emergence of inspiration that comes during these times of relaxation and “cocooning.” Instead I take the caterpillar perspective and view this stage as a crisis or downturn, while I frantically try to push my growth forward at all costs.
You already established which key behaviors you want employees to exude last week – now is the time to focus your communications on the essential scenarios and subsequent tasks they will need to learn. Studies find it can take at least 21 days – three weeks – for someone to truly break or adopt a new habit. If you have employees used to working a particular way for years, one email and a training session won’t perpetuate lasting change. Develop your initial plan, and then think about how you can revisit your communications throughout a prolonged period of time – say, one year – and keep interest high.
You can’t just send one email announcing SharePoint and expect that it will promote lasting change. Create a set of communication tactics reinforcing your key messages over a period of time – and in different channels – that will inspire, inform, and motivate your target audiences to use SharePoint. As you plan out your communication tactics, make sure that you identify your target audiences, diversify the different ways (e.g. email, video, in-person events) you communicate to your audiences, and how often you will send out these communications.
Just as you should diversify your communication strategy, you also need to diversify who you have inspiring employees to adapt to change. This means recruiting SharePoint champions, employees who provide informal training and support to others in your company, to create a learning community. You’ve heard of “early adopters” who always have the latest Apple gadget – but SharePoint champions help penetrate the “never adopters” who absolutely refuse to ever use a new thing, as evidenced by their flip phone with no connection to the Internet. The beauty of having SharePoint champions is they can support these employees on a peer-to-peer level.
Offer employees a forum to ask questions and give feedback. This is the only way to learn what works, what is failing, and how you can specifically fine-tune your implementation to maximize success. The more inquiries you have come in, the easier it will be for you to group common ones together and provide a Frequently Asked Question list to highlight to save employees the time of having to request help. There are also software solutions that can deliver help in-context, right at the moment of truth when employees are trying to perform an action in SharePoint, giving them the answers they need immediately. The methods may differ, but it’s important you set up an environment to take questions and feedback that is proactive, nimble, and easily adaptable.
This seems obvious, but considering training is the top reason why SharePoint implementations fail, start with the basic who (your audience), what (employees’ specific tasks), where (employees will use SharePoint), when (timeline for training), how (SharePoint will prompt change in how your employees work), and why (reason change is happening and why employees should care) of training.
Every company is different, but there are consistent guiding principles for creating a training schedule. Account for the time necessary to create multiple phases and understand that it will take several months to implement. Expect to go through the following training phases: planning, pilot, awareness, training, follow-up and support.
Training comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s important to remember to strike the right balance between showing the “how to” and supporting the training long after it’s completed. Depending on the amount of time, facilities, equipment, geography, and money you have, you could consider using some of the following methods: classroom-style, small group presentations, virtual/online, and on-the-job training. We’ve found the most successful training incorporates all of these different methods, with a clear method for employees to request help or further information after the training is completed
Just as you did when you started communicating awareness around your SharePoint implementation, make sure you keep the lines of communication open after you’ve completed your training so users continue to feel supported. Consider having an internal online group – you can use Yammer, Office 365 groups, or integrate SharePoint community features – that gives you an outlet to share best practices, establish topics of interest, participate in discussions, and build community among users.
At last in this final stage, the fully developed butterfly is ready to emerge from the chrysalis. After breaking free, the butterfly’s wings are still folded and wet and more rest time is necessary to allow blood to flow into the wings. Finally when the unfurled wings are fully dry, the butterfly is ready to take flight and share its beauty with the world.
During this stage there is an intentional “breaking free” that has to occur with proper timing before “flight” is undertaken. When I have gone through the other stages and am finally ready to display my new project or growth to the world, I have to leave behind the old way of doing things and move forward with courage and some risk-taking, while recognizing the fragility of my new “wings.”
Your support and help desk is the first line of defense against users encountering SharePoint problems. It’s vital to empower and inspire these teams to do their best work, as the level of support a new user receives can directly impact just how satisfied they are with SharePoint – and how deeply they adopt the platform. Expect to receive a lot of questions as users start to really dig into SharePoint. We understand that for your support and help team, this may be only part of their job. Establish an automated system so you can reduce the total number of inquiries support teams receive.
Consider it a requirement to regularly assess just how satisfied new SharePoint users are, as satisfaction has a direct correlation to adoption and usage. Throughout your pilot and live rollout, distribute user satisfaction surveys to gather data about your users’ knowledge and experience with SharePoint. This way, you can quickly understand where you are succeeding and failing, and even better, iterate rapidly so you can improve the experience for the next waves of users you onboard to SharePoint.
Satisfaction is important, but at the end of the day the success or failure of your SharePoint deployment will hinge on two factors: how often are employees using the platform and how many of them have actually adopted it. Usage and adoption metrics take time to become truly digestible – it will take six months or longer, since user adoption will not happen overnight. It’s best to match your reporting timelines with how you report other major impacts to your business, which could be either monthly or quarterly. Use feedback and survey forms, product-related games, and standard usage reports available to SharePoint and Office 365 customers to measure the success of each phase of your roll-out with quantitative and qualitative data.