Part of the innovation challenge is adoption, a smooth transition and adoption is the holy grail.
In our planning we’ll spend time thinking about user adoption or switching on a new system and turning off an old one. Most likely we have spent time thinking about the benefits to the new way of doing things – cost reductions, efficiencies, greater revenue, etc.
But, how much of our goal, the reason for the change, the benefits to be captured gets lost in translation or transition? How much of the loss can be attributed to the change being too abrupt?
I often see projects which have planned and budgeted well for the build phase and even for the ‘exiting the old system’ phase. Most have planned and budgeted for moving data from the old system to the new, etc. Some have even talked out ‘user journeys’ of moving from the old to the new.
But few go beyond the technical and beyond their project.
Most of our organisations are complex systems, so a change in one area affects multiple other aspects of the organisation. Furthermore, most of our organisations are part of wider ‘sector’ or ‘industry’ systems, which are more and more interdependent. So in our transition work we need to spend time with our stakeholders to understand more how the work they do is used by others or needs to be shared with others and how that happens.
Most of us understand the web in which we work, who needs what information, who needs to be talked to in which manner, and so on. We develop processes and ways of being to survive and hopefully thrive in our own way. When change comes, our web and way of being is threatened. The more our user journeys for the transition can take this into account; the more we can plan for it, the greater chance of a smooth transition.
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