Addressing the people “behind the wheel”

Let’s imagine you won the lottery and decided to buy yourself a new luxury sports car. You do your research and make an informed decision about which car to buy. Your choice has all the bells and whistles, and you can’t wait to burn some rubber. You strap on your seatbelt, put the key in the ignition, and start the car. You are ready to go!

Only you’re not.

Because what you did not realize in all the excitement is that you have no idea how to drive a stick shift. The car is stuck in park, and you are going nowhere.

Have we left you scratching your head thinking, “What does this have to do with technology change?” Understandable, but this story draws a parallel to a new technology implementation. Quite often, organizations have the money budgeted for their new tech. They do their assessment and research before making a purchase. They buy the software and hardware and invest in the resources needed for the implementation. They deploy and activate successfully, and then “turn over the keys” to the end users. And like our luxury car driver, the end users are stuck behind the wheel, stalled and going nowhere because they don’t know how to drive the new technology.

This graphic provides a visual depiction of an organization’s typical time to value in a technology implementation. Deployment and activation happen early in the change and provide an immediate value. But over time, that value plateaus if end users are not provided with the adoption and training to fully leverage the technology. Most organizations not only want to get the full value out of the technology itself but also want to see a return on investment in their people. An organization’s “people” investment suffers without proper change management, leaving employees frustrated and less productive as they struggle with new tools, or fail to unlock the full potential of impactful features.