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Deep adoption; four simple steps


The parallels between trips I made to Daqing, China two decades ago and behavioral observations today around digital transformation are surprisingly similar.  When I was last in Daqing the population was approximately 1 million.  The roads in this remote city were filled mostly with mule drawn carriages and bicycles, very few automobiles. One evening, while eating God knows what, I commented to Chung, our host and translator, "it must be difficult for people not to have automobiles".  Chung responded, it is hard to miss something that you do not know.



That's it!  Most individuals in today's enterprises may only use a few pieces of technology; a transactional system (CRM, Accounting, Work order management), a communication system (typically email and or a messaging service, Word, Excel, PowerPoint), and possibly a special purpose application (AutoCAD,etc.).  While I have my "broad stroke paintbrush" in hand we might as well throw out that odds are people are using a small percentage of the functionality provided within any of the aforementioned tools.



We circle back to the parallels from China, if your employees are only familiar with email and Word for instance, it is next to impossible for most to contemplate what else is possible.  As a result you may move to "the cloud" and feel pretty good about yourself, look how modern I am... Unfortunately the reality may be that you are using these new tools in exactly the same manner as before, stymied by your past experience. 



Your approach, must be completely different. If you have read any of my previous posts you will see a theme around answering the question "why".  Over the last few years I find myself coming back to these four steps in my never ending search for complete adoption, they are:



  1. technical blocking and tackling | the first step, as you may imagine, is getting folks into the cloud. Many tools exist to help you and for the most part you need very little IT expertise
  2. laser focus | many people, even today within an enterprise, are skeptical of cloud technologies. Start with one or two applications from your platform, for instance you might start with email and messaging. Over time you will build confidence and pave the way for introducing new tools (many of which you are already paying for)
  3. digital dependency | slowly deploy core organizational functions from within your cloud platform. For instance, if the majority of your population requires a purchase order number, which you may have been handling on a shared network drive in Excel, move it over to your platform as a tool focusing on convenience and automation
  4. create a craving for transformation | we are now on the highway and looking for a higher gear as your community gets comfortable with the tools at their disposal. You will know you have arrived at your destination when folks begin to ask the question "I'm sure it can do XYZ, can you point me in the right direction".  I have found that showing solutions based on work conditions helps spark creativity in your users



Challenge your organization to answer this question, have you replaced your employees Schwinn bicycles with a modern Ford F150 and discovered they only drive on bike paths?



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Next post:  your face, our face

Thoughts?  feel free to leave replies or direct message

See all "last mile worker" posts here:  http://lastmileworkersolutions.com

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