Digital Transformation through Adoption Change Management

May 2, 2019

Organizations often achieve low adoption with the implementation of new technologies due to staff not being prepared to adapt and incorporate these toolsets into regular work routines. The primary reason for failure of technology adoption is resistance to change, which is mitigated most of the time when companies incorporate organizational change management as part of technology projects. 

So, what does successful change management look like?

  1. First, we recommend re-thinking the problem and consider educating employees rather than informing them about new technologies. If you consider your employees’ work habits, how they collaborate, what their goals are, and ultimately who are the change champions amongst the team, leaders can affect change much more quickly.  
  2. Secondly, look at your training practices. Maybe intense one or multi-day training sessions on new technologies are too much.  Rather, consider shorter learning sessions or "on-demand" e-learning solutions that are focused on the employee’s specific role.  This will allow users to select and use assets most pertinent to their current needs. This will make training more relevant, increase engagement, improve training and job efficiency, and build learner interest.
  3. Momentum is critical, to fuel this, be sure to show incremental results along the way. How employees feel about the initiative can impact success or failure. Leveraging an agile development methodology and adoption change management strategy can help establish momentum. For example, production releases may be done on a quarterly basis while key stakeholders see progress demos every few weeks. These demos can solicit feedback and ensure the right functionality is built-in. It is much easier for end users to see a demonstration and explain if it looks or feels right, than it is for them to review written requirements. 
  4. Lastly, plan for inevitable delays.  All change initiatives have hiccups that you won’t anticipate. Since momentum is essential, address dependencies in parallel. That way, when delays are incurred with one dependency, you can progress on other fronts. You probably cannot go live without production hardware, but you can simulate a go live using alternate hardware. 

A number of other subtle adjustments can be done to create a significant difference but these 4 are a great start towards increasing your Company's adoption of new technology initiatives.  

If you want to learn more about how your organization can use Adoption Change Management best practices to improve your technology initiatives, give us a call. In the meantime, check out

Tags: OCM change management digital transformation

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