Blog

An IT project is a series of steps linked together in a sequenced chain of events leading to the final business outcomes.  When a link in that chain is broken a project suffers.

• Identify the business requirements
  • Research available options
    • Design and spec the needs
      • Select the best possible solution
        • Procurement & deployment
          • User Adoption (aka training users)
            • Business results flow

Projects that Underwhelm

We have all witnessed projects that have underwhelmed their sponsors. Outcomes fall short of their ROI or take much longer than forecast.  We hear stories from hundreds of Project & Change Managers lamenting the challenge of engaging employees to the detriment of a project’s expected outcomes.   I suspect that you could write stories about your own challenging experiences.

Checking the Box

Projects have a timeline and a deadline.  Managers need to complete a project and move on to the next one.  We mistakenly view training as an event to be checked off as done.  Our belief is that we did our job (checked the box) and now it’s the responsibility of users to complete the last link.  This may be a reasonable expectation but quite often there is a flaw in this chain link.  We need to understand why this break occurs and how we overcome it.

A Human Perspective

Since humans have existed, learning has been a part of our evolution.  But our natural mechanisms to adapt or adopt have not kept pace with the speed of technological advancements we experience today.  Take as a small example, prior to cloud computing companies would change or upgrade the software on a yearly basis.  Cloud software changes now occur in months. The control over when to implement a newer version has shifted to the software vendor.  What was once a project is now a continuous process.

Group dynamics teach us that 10% of a group of people will quickly self-learn and engage with a new tool or process.  These are the self-serve portal users.  Another 80% will slowly adopt as they see more and more of their peers engaging unless they are guided to accelerate their transition.  The last 10% will hold out as long as possible.  Humans learn in sequenced steps.  This is how we are taught in school.  In business, the pressure to implement technology and move on is in conflict with our biological design.

What are the biological factors we need to take into consideration?

How We Learn

Our brains are 2% of our body mass but burn 20% of our calories.  This was a problem 200,000 years ago when we were hunters/gathers.  So our brains learned to be more efficient.  This efficiency, which allows us to do more while burning fewer calories, we know as “Habits”.  An unfortunate outcome of habits is that we unconsciously resist changing them so that we burn fewer calories.

The understanding of how our brain works and subsequently how we learn has grown dramatically in the last century.  The last decade has also impacted our social behaviors.  Increasingly fast-paced movies (frames changes per minute), smartphones, and hyperlinks have created a “Social Attention Deficit” problem.

Equally important, sociologists discovered that we naturally forget 80% of what we are taught in only 2 weeks.  It is referred to as “Memory Decay”.  We also know that vision, hearing, and reading text are processed in specialized parts of the brain so appealing to all 3 enhances learning and retention.

Adapting the Learning Approach

Training tools have evolved (video, portals, web searches…) but integrating the needs of our biological and social influences is lagging.  This gap is a key contributor to why technology adoption rates of >30% are often reported.

_

Common Errors to Avoid

Absence of Targets:  Training plans have targets for completion but rarely are User Adoption targets set.  Business results rise for projects with measurable goals for adoption.  A good plan could state that 25% of users are fully engaged with X software by 30 days, 50% by 60 days, and 80% by 90 days.  If user adoption is an important link in the chain then setting targets and measuring them makes sense.

Self-serve Portals: They are great for employees when there is a direct personal benefit like career advancement (e.g. management training).  For software system adoption they are training tools that only a few will ever access.

More is Less: Learning programs that offer 100’s of courses seem like a great buy.  They do have their place but they’re only a great fit for employees who are self-motivated.  For end-user technology training, these programs are confusing, overwhelming, and offer too many choices.  Keep it simple.

Content Creation: A learning video that is longer than 7 minutes is very difficult for users to consume.  Typical screen-recorded videos suffer from too much wait time between screen refreshes and unnecessary mouse movement.  Users need fast-paced input with a professional voice-over narrative and occasional text popups that reinforce key points.  The structure of any content should start with a quick overview of the lesson and end with a short summary of what was covered.  Also, the “shelf-life” of content has decreased to mere months as a result of cloud computing’s continuous version updates.  Constantly keeping content current and having a process to update end-users on a frequent basis is a new paradigm to address.

Absence of Quizzes: No testing is taboo and a single quiz immediately following a video helps but it’s only testing our very short, short-term memory.  A sequence of follow-on quizzes (2-3), spaced over a period of time is key to offsetting Memory Decay.  Quiz scores are less important than the user realizing what they did and didn’t remember.

Content Overload:  The need for one-and-done training was necessary for in-classroom training where everything they have to learn is taught in a condensed period of time.  Schedule coordination and travel costs are barriers to a segmented learning approach.  Online learning has eliminated those problems yet the legacy approach of one-and-done still lingers.

Self-experience Learning:  We too often assume that users can figure things out on their own when they have been using similar or older versions of a product.  Yes, they can but it takes much longer than planned, is unnecessarily frustrating, and will only be a few features they’re already familiar with.

Repairing the Weak Link

A better understanding of human behavior and learning techniques that can improve user adoption helps achieve greater results.  Adjusting our perspective on the underlying fundamentals of why and how employees adopt new technologies creates a stronger link between a project and its success.

If this is something that you think may make your initiatives more successful, I would be happy to discuss more options and insights. Email me at john.breakey@fivel.ca. or contact us at fivel.ca 

Want a deeper understanding of how employees view change? Go to https://fivel.ca/digital-transformation-what-we-miss/