The Change Agents

{6} Communicate and disseminate. Develop a communication plan that allows you to talk over and over about the rationale, the timing, the progress and, eventually, the results of the change.

{7} Create a training and reinforcement strategy. Once people understand what’s changing, and why, and when—then you can teach them how to use the new application.

You could attach different labels to those steps and add more, Nordquist says. But her point is that technology training, per se—teaching people how to use the new software—is roughly number 7 on the to-do list, not number 1.

The Learning Part

Iyer and others agree that it is often possible (and smart) to customize new software applications to match current practices, rather than vice versa. Whether converting from a paper process to a computerized one or switching computer applications, “think about what parts of a current process you can keep” in order to minimize disruption and make learning easier, Iyer advises. Can the screens maintain a consistent appearance, offering learners a “bridge” between the old system and the new one? Can the new application allow people to list standard information in the same order as the old system? For the same reasons that automobile designers don’t radically change the layout of car dashboards year after year—causing drivers to relearn where to find stereo and heat controls in each new car—”keep things familiar whenever you can,” Iyer says.

To that thought, Koyama adds that special incentives to users may be built into applications, as well. When helping to introduce new customer relationship management software to a client’s sales operation, she says, “sometimes we’ll build in a real-time function, such as a commission calculator [for the salespeople].” This gives them a personal reason to enter all of the customer data that the company wants to collect.

As for the training process itself, Kapocius stresses that timing is crucial to ensure a smooth transition: People should learn the new application shortly before they will begin using it on the job. Run them though a training course four months before they get the chance to practice what they learned, and they will forget most of what you taught them.

Intimidating as computer technology may sometimes be, learning to use it—or new versions of it—is rarely the biggest challenge in working life. This applies as much to IT professionals as to everyone else. McCabe says that since large American corporations began outsourcing software development to India, a major new headache has arisen in many IT departments: How do the American developers communicate and collaborate with their Indian counterparts so that projects run smoothly?

Technology supplies the medium, of course, but it doesn’t eliminate the basic problems of communication, collaboration, and project management that have brought people to grief since the Stone Age. Teaching employees to use the “tool system” is probably manageable. But if you aren’t careful, those people and processes can kill you. 

Disclosure: Jay Novak, editor and publisher of Twin Cities Business magazine, sits on a board of advisors for Adayana, Inc., and has received company stock as compensation for his service.