Technology and Process Change.

Most kids today have never seen an actual floppy disk. They know the icon means “save”. Over the years, where and how information is saved and accessed changed significantly. In the days of floppy disks (and writable CDs and thumb drives), working on a group project meant making several copies of the disk so each person had one. When anyone made a change on one copy, none of the others would update. The final days of work on the project were spent consolidating work into a single file. Even with email to share project pieces back and forth, one person had to consolidate everyone’s work.

When I entered the working world, tasks were very much like one big group project. Several employees would update deliverables and, in the end, it was consolidated into a single product for customers.

By 2009 processes changed. Instead of saving individual pieces of data locally, we used a centralized system. Software ensured formatted deliverables, we just entered the data. Clicking “save” on my PC, meant validated work was passed to a company owned data center 1700 miles away on the ninth floor of a building in Chicago. There was no need to compile work across all 2000 employees. It compiled as we worked! That data center had to cost a fortune, but it housed all our company’s data. The cost for rent, electricity, and 24/7 IT support was surely worth it, right?

By 2012 it was all gone. The risk and cost associated with keeping everything in-house were simply too high. A single natural disaster, malware, or IT screw up could wipe out all our work. The solution was the “cloud.” Not simply a data center, but the ethereal server farms somewhere in the world. It was impervious to being wiped out by a single event. It also freed up overhead for investment in new services. The way forward was obvious, but that didn’t mean there weren’t bumps along the way.

My experience in migrating to the cloud was as a passenger. However, I picked up considerations along the way.

3 tips cloud migration

Who are you going to call?

When saving work locally, it became part of my responsibility to format and secure the data quarterly. Being fairly technical, I didn’t have much trouble adhering to those standards. However, it was a challenge for all employees with various backgrounds and proficiencies to follow the same standards. If a piece of data wouldn’t merge properly when packaging the final product, it could be an exhausting investigation to figure out what happened and how to fix it.

In 2009, our internal IT department oversaw a large database stored at the data center. The software ensured proper formatting, so managers could trust consistent product delivery. If there was a problem, we all knew who to call: IT. If there was an issue packaging the final product, the managers and IT worked it out.

Once on the “cloud”, who to call became unclear. The IT professionals were on the vendor side now and they treated all client data the same. If there was a problem, who should help? The vendor? Only a privileged few had access to the vendor, and it was on their schedule, not ours.

When migrating to the cloud, it is important to consider the impact and roles the IT department will play post-migration. They may no longer hold the keys to the Porsche, but if the Porsche is in the shop, it’s good to have a spare mechanic or driver around to ensure the business runs smoothly.

Don’t forget apps

Running apps in the cloud became a big deal around 2017. Some benefits include no installs, centralized tech support, on the fly company-wide updates. On the downside, if apps are proprietary, should that IP be out there in the open world? Working for a data-driven company that used proprietary software, this became a concern.

The solution was to create an entirely new piece of lite, online software. The legacy software would do the grunt work, while the cloud-based software would handle the rapid data input. Of course, the two had to talk to each other, and it required more people to validate the data on the back end. The faster, more efficient “cloud” based solution, turned into an amalgamation of tools and responsibilities, causing confusion across the board.

Consider how all employees will interact with the software. Do apps even need to be in the cloud? When migrating to the cloud, think about the benefits of running software from the cloud or whether customizing an off the shelf solution is an option. Allow extra time and roll it out in stages to build on successes.

Anticipate employee adoption

When migrating to the cloud, the saved data location changes. Don’t overlook changes to the literal “save” button. The user interface can completely change and impact skillsets in unanticipated ways. For innovators and early adopters, this can be an exciting new world, but those fearful of change can potentially bring down the boat and delay full adoption of cloud-based systems and software.

The first time I went through a similar migration, we had trainers and champions communicating a consistent positive message. They advocated for the new tool and the benefits it would bring. They were quick to point out improvements and show us the software in advance. Our office looked forward to discussions about the new system as we lamented the challenges of the old software. This was due in large part to the solid communication channels established by our training department. The 12 trainers, leveraging the early adopters, spread tastes of the new system across 2000 geographically dispersed employees.

When go-live was close at hand, a massive training initiative was executed within a month of the go-live date. As can be expected with complex systems, there were last-minute delays, and the release of our new cloud-based infrastructure was pushed back. Fortunately, our training team anticipated this might happen, and post-go-live materials were repurposed for just in time training.

When migrating to the cloud, it’s about more than bits and software on a computer. Software stability and employee preparedness must meet at the same intersection. Be prepared for the human aspect of migration. Communicate a positive message through the early adopters and take advantage of flexible training delivery tools such as microlearning or just in time training to ensure a smooth transition.

Learning new technology platforms can be difficult, even for experienced techies. It’s even harder for those who aren’t tech-savvy. Many organizations are introducing low-code platforms as tools that are easily learned by everyone. Users are called “citizen developers,” people who may be required to build apps but do not have technical backgrounds. Companies use experiential learning approaches to teach these new platforms. You may be surprised to learn organizations use hacking as a learning tool.

What Is Experiential Learning?

Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience. Recently, I had the privilege of leading an experiential approach for learning Microsoft’s PowerApps platform. To prepare this client for PowerApps, we used a Hackathon. This is where hacking as a learning tool comes into play.

The Hackathon is a fast-paced, three-day, team-based, competitive event. In this event teams are formed, use cases are assigned, and teams huddle to design and build business-enabling applications. At the end of the event, teams pitch their solutions to a panel of judges like the television show Shark Tank. The judges determine the winner. Prizes are awarded.

During the Hackathon, participants enjoy music, food, snacks, and beverages, while learning new skills leveraging the low-code platform. Participants attempt to prove their ideas for new business applications in a friendly competition. This is an opportunity to accelerate innovation. Participants work through new concepts while broadening knowledge and a company’s internal network of new developers.

The Hackathon Process

• Hackathons are usually made up of 20 participants from across a company or business unit. Individuals with software development experience or anyone with a little computer savvy and desire to learn is welcome to participate. Participation is not limited to IT professionals.
• To start, participants attend the (one-day) App-in-a-Day Session (prior to the Hackathon). They get introductory training in PowerApps or whatever low code platform you’re introducing.
• Between the App-in-a-Day Session and the Hackathon, participants can use what they learned in the App-in-a-Day Session to “play” in the low code sandbox environment. They can explore other online training and information before the hackathon.
• The Hackathon itself usually runs for three days. At the end of the third day, the judging takes place.

Have you considered using hacking as a learning tool? Think about hosting a hackathon. It is a great way to parachute your employees into the wonderful world of low-code apps. Give it a try!

You realize that your old business model can’t keep up with your growth strategy. The increasing disconnect between your operating processes and the systems that supports them are becoming more obvious. You are reading everywhere about “digital transformation” and “business disruption”, and even your management team and shareholders are all “experts” in these subject matters. They keep asking, when is your organization jumping on the bandwagon? If this is you, don’t worry, you are not alone.

You are part of the 84% who believe digital transformation is essential to your company’s future but only 3% have actually successfully completed an enterprise-wide implementation. You must redefine your technology landscape and deploy a robust project that will impact all areas of the business while avoiding disrupting the organization’s day to day operations.

Embracing technology transformation is easier said than done. But minimizing business disruption and dips in performance levels is not as hard as it seems (we know it sounds too good to be true, but trust us — we wrote a whole book on business technology change). The key is establishing some guidelines to support it.

How to Support Your Digital Transformation

Frame it. Communicate with your employees. Over and over. State the “from… to…”; share your vision and how you will realize it.

Explain it. Unexpected disruptors deviate your employees’ focus. Don’t panic and fill in the blanks, make sure they get the information needed as the transformation progresses.

Resource it. You need a dedicated core team for the transformation. They are responsible for the end-to-end implementation of the project. The core team is supported by a network of appointed subject matters experts (SMEs) and change agents. This group provides advice and serves as an extension of the core team inside the organization. Finally, stakeholders/users ensure the business keeps going.

Stage it. Break the project in small chunks (90-day mini projects) to allow the organization to digest the change, manage the disruption and appreciate the benefits of the transformation. This makes it easier for you to manage budget and resources.

Practice it. Create a plan for users to adopt the key skills necessary to embrace this transformation. Expose them to prototypes, simulations, test environments and allow them to practice and become familiar with the future state.

You will soon realize one-time projects will no longer be enough to support the pace of technology transformations. Instead, you will need to constantly plan, frame, explain, resource, stage and practice the ever-changing technology landscape that your organization will demand to stay relevant and competitive.

Social engineering is a term that’s been around for a while and so have the methods used by hackers to manipulate employees into giving up sensitive information. As cybersecurity technology continues to improve, criminals are finding more human ways to hack into our systems. Criminals understand that companies are aggressively educating their employee to watch out for flash drives in the parking lot and emails with enticing links, so they adjust their approach and find innovative ways to trip you up. Next week’s scam will be different than this week’s, so the key to defending yourself is to understand their game.

Behaviors Hackers Capitalize On to Steal Your Data

You know me. Criminals depend on getting your trust quickly and the fastest way to get there is to convince you that you’re all part of the same team. They will go to great lengths to convince you that they are part of your ecosystem – a fellow employee, a trusted partner, or a valued customer. They will pretend to be someone that you will want to please and not disappoint. They will replicate your company’s email footer, steal your company’s hold music, take on identities from your IT employee directory, and even use your firm’s acronyms and terms.

You’re nice. They know that if they follow closely behind, you’ll hold the door open for them and that it’s hard to question a smile. They are masters at being sympathetic and helpful, the kind of person that you want around and would never double check. They will put you in situations to get the information they want and make you think they are helping you while they do it. “Someone put a ticket in about the network running slow in this building. Would you mind logging out and logging back in for me real quick? Maybe I can speed things up for you.”

You’re frustrated. Hackers love to commiserate. They count on common frustrations in every work environment – slow computers, ridiculous rules, clueless executives, etc. They use these frustrations to create common ground for conversations and justification for coming to your rescue. “Just another day in paradise. It’s inventory time again, do you mind letting me in the server room? I’ve got about 15 billion serial numbers to take down by the end of the day, or the suits in accounting are going to have my hide.”

So how do we combat these tactics? Should we stop being nice, or wanting to help our colleagues? Of course not, but we do need to have a degree of skepticism and be particularly aware of people we have never seen, even if they seem familiar and seem to know us. Also, we need to be aware of how these familiar people make us feel and what are they asking of you. Feeling obligated is a warning sign. Focus on your actions outside of the reasons why you are doing them. Are you giving up your password, or letting someone in a secure area? Forget the story or circumstances and focus on what they are actually asking you to do. Criminals are clever, but they count on you behaving a certain way in order to get what they want. Focus on your behaviors and you will be fine.

Do I need to be on this call? Is this mass email directed at me? We’ve all had these thoughts at some point. It’s because we live in an era of constant change, where communication is king. Everyone needs to know everything so nothing slips through the cracks. Seems plausible, right? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on communication. It is critical, from the smallest software update to the grandest transformation. You can’t expect success without spreading awareness, but not all communications are created equal. If you want your audience to embrace and adopt your change endeavor, it’s not enough to send an email, you need to change behaviors. To do that, you need to change habits; literally, reshape the brain. You can’t just communicate, you have to focus attention.

Elements of meaningful communication

Focus on what though? You need a target and the desired end-state. Identify the key behaviors you want your audience to exhibit and the enabling habits that lead to those behaviors. With these in mind, you can develop an action plan of short, achievable objectives to build momentum, develop good habits, and drive behavior change.

Establishing an action plan is just the first step. You need to get the word out and gain traction, but you can’t do that with broad messages, they need to be focused. Too often we overvalue information because we don’t want to miss anything, so we over-correct and send too much. It’s like blasting a fire hydrant when all we need is a trickle of water. Your people only need to know what’s relevant to them, which means communication needs to be focused, and more explicitly: timed, measured, and specific.

How to focus attention

Information must be delivered when people need it. It’s too easy to dismiss something months away, and no one appreciates last minute updates. A good way to navigate this “Goldilocks Zone” is to establish an overall communication timeline to match your project milestones. Post it publicly around the office, on SharePoint, on the project website, in Slack, or even in a custom app. Set the expectation for deliberate email updates about your project, and then reinforce your communications with a push notification, a banner on your website, an alert in SharePoint, or any other tool you can leverage beyond email.

Timing isn’t enough, you need a measured approach to the information you send. Develop a meaningful content schedule aimed at delivering the right amount of information at the right time. Highlight the important details and avoid minutia. Nothing makes eyes glaze over like diving into the weeds with technical jargon about a system update. On the other hand, a simple announcement doesn’t carry enough weight, and people may feel lost. When is the update occurring, and how will it impact your recipients? Satisfy your audiences’ needs and questions without overwhelming them.

You read that right, plural audiences. You can’t send the same information to everyone and expect it to be relevant and impactful. You need to make sure each person gets the specific information for their role in the organization and the project. A sales VP and a customer service representative do not need the same exact information. Just like how training needs to be role-specific, you can’t tell everyone everything and expect the information to stick. Customize your messages and resources for each role, organize your SharePoint to support this role-based approach, build separate pages on your website for each audience, and push out notifications and alerts tailored to those affected by the upcoming change.

It’s not enough to simply push information out to everyone. Identify your key behaviors, build an action plan of achievable objectives, and then build a communication plan and content schedule to support your action plan. Leverage tools to reinforce your communications and build momentum. That’s how you focus attention. That’s how you transform.

With great tech comes great responsibility…or something like that. If your business isn’t talking about some type of technology change within the next year or so, it’s coming. The presence of the global population online continues to increase year-over-year. 5G is coming, making your smartphone faster and decreasing annoying buffering times (yay!). “Digital transformations” are happening everywhere from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to Walmart.

New technology is one-size-fits-all, right? Not exactly. Before an organization selects a new tool, it must first determine that the solution is necessary to its business. Let’s say a competitor is using a new shift bid app – does that mean it will work well for your employees? Maybe. Not all tech is the right tech. We consider these three factors to determine the best tool for digital transformation: risk, time, and money. First identify your organization’s needs. Next, consider a tool to meet those needs, then make your case for the solution using our recipe.

Great! The case has been made and approved by the powers that be. New technology is on the way. Your people will easily accept and love the change. Not so fast. Like most change initiatives, any form of digital transformation is in danger of failure. In fact, a Harvard Business Review survey of 400 executives found that only 50% said they’re successfully completing digital transformation projects. With change comes fear and with fear comes resistance. In our experience, there are three common reasons why employees don’t want new technology. Like the rest us, your employees are anchored in the past; if new technology failed before, they definitely remember that negative experience. Strong change management is not a nice-to-have, it’s necessary for your transformation to succeed.

Once you set a strong change management foundation, it’s time to consider training. No matter how intuitive you think it is, learning new technology takes practice, and employees need a safe space for that.  Most new tech can be taught in a training environment or system simulation. Use this chart to help you figure out which solution is best for your organization.

The cake has been baked and it’s time to go live. It is critical to keep stakeholders informed as the migration draws near. You need to prepare your users for the changes to come with a series of communication pieces. We’ve put together this time table to inspire your go-live approach.

Last year global businesses spent over $1 trillion on transformation technologies.  Digital transformation isn’t going away, and it’s a hefty investment. When it’s time for your organization to make a technology change, don’t be one of the businesses that misses its target.

I’ve told you about The Change Book and The Learning and Development Book. Today I’ll describe the third book capturing our favorite principles, tips and lessons learned gathered from our collective decades (centuries?) of experience. It’s time to get to know The Technology Change Book.

Technology is a massive investment. It often takes significant money, time, focus, and energy. If you’re going to undertake an implementation, you need to do it right. The Technology Change Book will help.

Just like the other books in our series, you don’t have to read the whole thing. Each chapter stands alone. Flip it open to any page and start reading from there. You’ll find powerful, concise and easy advice from our seasoned practitioners.

The Technology Change Book covers things like making a case for technology change, budgeting for a tech implementation, and how to prepare for disruption.

We’re very proud of this book, but we’re biased. Listen to some of our fans:

“It’s refreshing to have an easy read to help understand a complex change challenge. Change agents will be grateful to have this guide by their side!” — Todd Jick, Professor, Columbia Business School co-author of Managing Change

“Here is the roadmap for 21st century technological change. It provides powerful tools in an accessible format to help you manage technological change. With clarity and wisdom, the authors take the mystery and the confusion out of the change process. An important and highly useful book.” — David Brandt, PhD, co-author of Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers

Get to know our book – and let us know what you think! We’d love to read your review.

My granddaughter is about to celebrate her 1^st birthday. I can’t believe how fast a year has gone. My daughter asked me to help create a birthday video using pics and video clips we’ve all taken this past year. We set up a cloud-based storage location for all family members to contribute to the video. It was easy to set up and seemed intuitive. Well, sort of. Aunt Martha did not find it easy to use or intuitive.

This is one of the big myths of cloud-based applications: They don’t need a robust training solution. Wrong! You must remember:

Aunt Martha isn’t in the cloud. An effective training solution must consider your audience. You might have tech-savvy audiences, which means your training solutions can be quite nimble and fast. Aunt Martha needed me to sit with her and walk her through each step, several times. She asked me to write down the step-by-step instructions. She then insisted I set her up on “speed-dial” so she could call me if she had trouble.

Aunt Martha doesn’t know the process. The cloud-based application is a tool. It enables people to do their jobs (like create an awesome baby video) more effectively. Sometimes the application supports the processes through customization or workflows, but sometimes those are add-on learnings for users.  Aunt Martha didn’t know how to take a pic on her phone and then transfer it to the cloud drive. She didn’t know how to find pics on her phone! This meant I had to give her training beyond just using the cloud application, to make sure she could follow the process. I also had to incorporate these extra steps into the existing training, so she could see how it all fit together.

Aunt Martha doesn’t like this one bit. With any training, especially technical training, we tend to focus on the business process and system steps to accomplish tasks. If that’s all you do, you might be moderately successful. But truly impactful, results-driven training focuses on key behaviors. Beyond the system or process, what behaviors are you trying to encourage? Aunt Martha didn’t trust the system. She didn’t trust the pics wouldn’t be stolen or somehow removed from her phone. But I wanted her to share her photos with us – that was the key behavior. So I set up alerts on our cloud drive; they notified me anytime Auntie loaded a pic. When I received a text, I immediately texted her, saying, “I see your added pic. Thank you! Now, check your phone to make sure it is still there.” Over time, she began to feel accomplished and to trust the system and the process.

Many cloud-based applications are easier and more intuitive than ever – for some people. We must not lose sight of human factors outside the application that cause system implementations to fail. Don’t just assume that, because it is in the cloud, it’s easy. Don’t assume that, because there aren’t that many changes to the process, people won’t need training. I followed these principles, and they worked. Aunt Martha shared all her cute pics. And she might not be what you’d consider tech-savvy, but she is using a Google Drive!

When you first learned how to ride a bike, you probably weren’t concerned with all the bike’s parts, the available accessories, or the tricks and techniques professional riders used. You just needed to know when you could ride, where you could go, and how to use your new bike to get there. After all, you had stuff to do; there were places to explore and friends to see!

Getting your first bike is not unlike using a new system. There’s a lot you could learn about the new technology, but your objectives remain the same: you still need to get your job done. When we got our bikes, we weren’t learning backflips and BMX tricks; we were moving faster down familiar streets. We were taught just enough to take advantage of this new tool. Another term for this is targeted, role-based training. You need to learn what it takes to do your job. Everything else is superfluous. It should be the same with any new technology implementation.

Too often, companies implement technology on top of their existing processes and then offer general system functionality training. They expect everything to fall in place just because users have that new tool. I’ve already written a few other posts about making the case for new technology, and how training for that technology must be customized, but I want to explore the problems with this one-size-fits-all approach.

First, not everyone uses a new system in the same way. It’s grossly inefficient to teach all forty features to someone who needs to use only four, another who uses a different six, and so on. It’s costly, not to mention boring, frustrating and counterproductive for those learners. You can save time, money, and sanity by providing just enough training instead of way too much.

Second, system functionality training often exists in a vacuum, with no context for the greater process. Your learners don’t just need to know HOW to do something, they need to know WHEN and WHY. It’s overwhelming to have all that information thrown at you without knowing how it helps you do your job and deliver outcomes for your team or your company. And, for example, if something breaks upstream and people aren’t familiar enough with the new handoffs and overall process, they can’t adjust and correct.

Lastly, system functionality is a dry topic. There aren’t a lot of ways to make it interesting and interactive. But if you teach the system in the context of the greater process, you can craft a story around this new journey. This is essential — if the training isn’t engaging, your learners will struggle to retain their new skills. They might end up with harder jobs than they had before. Change is already hard; we don’t want people frustrated with a new tool when it’s supposed to make life easier.

Instead of teaching general system functionality, you should be providing targeted training for each role in the context of the greater process, which creates a storyline to engage your learners.

It starts by identifying who is affected by the technology change and how much. Where do your processes change? What does each person need to know to keep the ball rolling? Be thoughtful during your analysis: some people might have the same job titles but do vastly different tasks using the new system. Likewise, people in different departments might have similar roles within the system. Make sure you accurately capture your audience, so they receive the proper training.

Once you have new processes, roles, and responsibilities figured out, you can develop an efficient, holistic curriculum that helps your learners achieve their daily objectives. With that in place, any new technology should feel just like riding a bike.

Learning a new skill usually takes practice — sometimes, lots of it.  For some skills, people need to practice in a safe place before applying them on the job.

Consider what it takes to learn to fly a plane.  You wouldn’t want the pilot practicing their flying skills for the first time on your flight!  They need a lot of practice in a safe, simulated environment before they ever attempt to fly a real plane.  The same holds true for employees who will be required to use new technology to do their jobs.  When it goes live, you don’t want their first time with the system to impact the business.

So you need a safe space. That usually means a training environment or system simulation. Which one should you use to let users practice? Here are some pros and cons of each:

So, how will you know which solution is best?  These questions might help you decide:

This should help you ask the right questions and evaluate the unique needs of your project.  At the end of the day, it’s all about making it as real as possible for the learner and ensuring they can “fly that plane” when it really counts!