Driving Adoption

Getting a new system or process setup is a challenging process. You need to build buy-in for the idea, convince folks to spend money and time acquiring it, and then actually go and get it. Getting to this stage is a big accomplishment… but the work is only just beginning.

Once you’ve got a new system or process, you need to convince the broader audience of your organization to adopt and use it. Many teams will spend a lot of time and resources on implementing the system, on to run into challenges with adoption as they don’t give it the same focus.

The acquisition phase of a project typically involves a smaller, more focused group, the adoption phase expands the focus to a much broader audience (sometimes the entire org!). This means that while the general form of securing adoption is similar, you’ll have to use different tactics and strategies to communicate with them.

Identifying Users

Adoption begins with identifying who should be using the platform. For example a new legal system might impact all of Legal, but also other users who would submit requests. A new ticketing system would impact support, but may also need to include folks from IT to help administer it. A new knowledge base may impact the entire company, but have a deeper impact on some specific individuals as well.

Many times these folks may seem self-evident, but making time to dig in and understand who will be expected to use the platform is still important. Not only will it validate your assumptions (something that in itself should be done more) it will also help uncover other groups who may not be as obvious. Identifying who will be impacted is also critical to the next step - understanding what they’ll be doing with it.

Understanding Needs

Once you’ve identified who will be expected to adopt the new platform, you’ll need to determine what they’ll be doing with it. For example knowing that HR will be expected to use a knowledge base is one thing, understanding how they’ll be using it to craft and share their policies is something else entirely.

Depending on what resources you have available this may also be done in conjunction with outside help (e.g. whomever helped implement your system). That said, this step should always include some representation from the impacted teams - after all, they know their processes and needs the best! Work with those groups to identify champions - individuals who are engaged and motivated to help out. Champions will help you not only uncover use cases and processes, but also help in future steps - building documentation, evangelizing and more.

Training Development

Once you understand what the target groups will be using the tool for, you’ll need to get detailed training and enablement information together. This could take the form of vendor-provided recordings or other off-the-shelf information, but it should be supplemented with tailored training for your team. (I find that off-the-shelf information is great for more generic processes, e.g. “how to enter XYZ record”, but specifics vary wildly between groups, so having details unique to your org is critical).

This is also a great place to involve your champions, or other individuals from the impacted group, as they can help build, or at least review, the training material. This will both help catch weak-spots, but also make buy-in a bit easier as you can have those individuals help train others.

Your training should also consider different methods - written, recorded and live - to help capture the broadest possible audience. This does take some more effort, however, having different mediums available helps ensure more folks actually take the training.

Communicate

Communicating typically happens at all stages of this process, however, now it is beginning in earnest. Not only will you be communicating status updates to stakeholders, here you’ll be sending targeted information to groups that will be expected to use the platform. These could take the form of detailed schedules explaining when things change, index of training, invites to live training and more.

The goal is to ensure no one is surprised by the change, as well as that everyone understands the impact of changing to a new system…. After all, it will require everyone to change their habits and how they work, so they should clearly understand what is happening.

Communication shouldn’t only come from you, however… work with executives and leaderships to help spread the message (one trick I like is to get a short video of execs endorsing the platform.. It’s a very low lift that can have a huge impact). Working with individuals who are well-known in the target group and having them send comms is also a great way to help increase the impact of your communication.

Followup

Once the system is live your job isn’t over - it just changes shape a bit. You’ll still need to focus on communicating updates, expectations, stats and more to help support the team. Follow-on training is also always a good idea, as are showcases drawing attention to ways the tool is being used (e.g. “look at the amazing work HR is doing - you can do it too!).

Many teams find it helpful to schedule regular reviews of their adoption - quartlerly or twice yearly. This gives them a set time to sit down and review how things have been going, determine next steps and improve offerings. This step is commonly missed, however, regular reviews give you a great opportunity to improve adoption over time.

Conclusion

Adoption is one area that many groups struggle with - but it doesn’t have to be a challenge! Taking time to pull together a team and supporting the impacted groups is always worth the time spent.