Four best practices for implementing change initiatives.

Training is more science than magic, so why do an estimated 60 percent of IT initiatives and 75 percent of change initiatives fail to gain user adoption? Typically, implementations and change initiatives fail—not specific pieces of training. But that doesn't mean we should blame project and change managers.

The answer is leveraging training and development skills across a broader spectrum by following these best practices:

  • Help people understand the big picture: who, why, when.
  • Provide training that simulates desired outcomes.
  • After their assessment, ask users if they think they are ready.
  • Document success through support calls and user feedback.

Help people understand the big picture

According to Blue Ocean Strategy, "waking people up to the need for a strategic shift" is the number one organizational hurdle that managers face when implementing strategic change. How many of us have witnessed an attempt to leap this hurdle with cascading email chains designed to trickle down to a network of frontline workers?

Like the game "telephone," in which children pass a message by whispering around a circle, the message gets lost. Some workers barely read their email, while others glaze over at another branded communication.

Just as we design objective-based training, we can guide project team counterparts to design objective-based communication strategies. In The Change Cycle Ann Salerno writes, "Change only becomes a reality within a business or organization when its individual members commit and carry out the new initiative, accommodate the new structure, follow the new system, or turn out the new product." That means every affected user should be able to explain the affects in business terms. Here are two examples:

  • Unsuccessful: We are getting a new HR system because we need to cut expenses.
  • Successful: We are implementing an international HR database. Every employee can update personal and withholding information. This frees HR from transactional data entry, and allows me to leverage HR for recruiting, coaching, and career progression strategies.

Be sure every affected employee knows why the project matters.

Provide training that simulates desired outcomes

Given that competence and execution are required in successful implementations, it follows that training should give learners the advantage by simulating the future. The old adage tells us, "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." That means action and discovery learning rather than a sage on a stage. Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies three main outcomes associated with learning:

  • Cognitive: knowledge gained about a subject and how to use it
  • Psychomotor: manual or physical skills
  • Affective: an individual’s perception of his ability.

Research in the areas of behavioral psychology and social learning by Albert Bandura, Ted Rosenthal, and Barry Zimmerman shows that people learn judgment, manners of speech, concepts, information-processing strategies, mental models, and standards of conduct from modeling and observationally derived rules.

Employees need to be able to see themselves performing the desired behavior. Stories, events, and behaviors stick in our minds. Legal counsel at one international firm leveraged this tendency by creating a popular email series in which scenarios of real security breaches were presented with possible actions and outcomes. Participants discovered how their answers stacked up against what actually happened.

Ask users if they think they are ready

The mention of testing kicks off debates about stressing employees, union guidelines, and performance evaluations. The answer, once again, goes back to competence. How will people know they are ready if they don’t have a way to assess themselves? Whether we call it a knowledge check or a quiz, people need a benchmark against the human tendency to overestimate their skills.

The March 2000 issue of Information Systems Research reports that learners who complete an assessment are more likely to have a reliable estimation of their proficiency. Why does this matter? It links back to Bloom's Taxonomy and self-efficacy. Like the Little Red Engine, if we think we can, we are more inclined to persist and succeed in the face of obstacles.

When employees say they are not ready for a new system or process change, ask why. One project team leveraged a deployment delay to target complex high-dollar transactions for which employees said they were not ready. Hosting live Q&A sessions closed the gap, and employees were onboard before the go-live.

Document success through support calls and user feedback

Measuring support calls is nothing new. It is common for project support to stick around for 30 days after go-live. That is why it is equally common to visit a site 12 or 18 months later, and discover that employees have reverted to local legacy processes.

Just as we ask what behaviors identify successful learning transfer, we must ask: What will differentiate the new environment from the old? What measurement will identify successful change? Is no feedback and low support calls a good sign? Can we document success based on that?

Those with a seat at the table know that the answer to the last question is "No." No news is not good news. We must look for something more.

Change requires employees'’ commitment and action. The E in the ADDIE process requires that we evaluate by asking, "What do you do differently now?" When the answer includes "more work" or isn't aligned with business goals, we have an opportunity to close the gap and re-align with desired outcomes.