Expert Insights - Adoption with Leslie Spier

Transcript

Well, hello, welcome everybody. It’s your on-demand work from CSM, Cynthia Boone. I’m back today, very special guest today is my friend, my partner in crime, my coworker, Leslie Spear.

So excited to talk today. And if you attend our events, you probably have seen our faces. But just in case, this is the first time that we are being acquainted. I do want to share a little bit about our background and why this topic means so much to us. So first things first, Leslie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Why do you love Workfront? Why do you love me? That’s what everyone wants to know. I mean, if we’re trying to keep this into a 15 minute video, I don’t think I could fit all those reasons in 15 minutes. So we’ll just have to stick to the Workfront part. But hi, I was a former Workfront customer. I was a part-time system admin, mostly project manager, very, very part-time system admin for a marketing creative team. I onboarded my small team and then a larger team and had to integrate all those things. So I have felt the adoption pain. Let me just say that.

But yeah, I’ve been on the Workfront side now for call it two and a half years. Working together? And working together, living the dream. And hanging out, nerding out with all of our favorite Workfront people. And yeah, I just love doing that. What about you, Cynthia? Same. So also part-time, about five years I did that. And just like you, expanded, dealt with adoption on the regular.

So this is a great topic. And we talk about this a lot, honestly. I know those of you that attend the events, but if you haven’t, this is sort of the heart and soul for the two of us, if I can speak for us. And that leads me to the very first question. And why is it so important? Why do we keep returning to this all the time? Yeah, I mean, I remember the day that this light bulb clicked when you and I were talking about it. I’m like, it’s like laundry. It is never done. I don’t know about y’all, I’ve got a pile of laundry in my room just waiting for me. And that’s how I felt about being a system admin, is there was always a list of things that I could tweak or do or improve or meet with someone to try and understand. And it just felt like adoption’s never done. You’re people coming in and out of the system, features are changing. So I think it’s one of those things that you feel like you should be able to check a box and say, whew, did that adoption thing, like we’re good to go now. But it’s just something that’s always gonna come creeping back up and always be there. I mean, I feel the same way. In addition to that, being either a full-time sysadmin or part-time, it’s still not your full-time job for adoption but it does feel that way. There’s a responsibility and a heaviness sometimes of, oh my gosh, in order for this to be successful, I have to try this and I have to do this. And you feel sometimes maybe you’re alone, which leads us to like, A, why we’re having this discussion in the first place, because you’re not alone. You’re absolutely not alone. And B, for those of you that don’t know, Leslie is the SME in our org for adoption. And so people ask her questions about it all the time. So here’s my first question is, what are you asked all the time when it comes to adoption? I mean, I think the big question is, what’s the trick? What’s the one thing I can do? There really isn’t one thing. As much as it pains me to say that, people are so different. What works for me is not gonna work for the guy next to me.

And it’s just gonna take a little bit of digging, a little bit of psychology. I enjoy understanding how other people think and work. So I think that works well for me in this adoption realm, but I think understanding that like, there’s no one thing that you’re gonna do that’s just going to make it magically perfect for everyone.

And so, okay, that leads me to, if that’s the question you’re asked and there’s not just one thing, what do you wish you were asked more often when it comes to adoption? Yeah, I mean, I think trying to look at it from the perspective of like, not trying to do everything yourself. So I think trying to figure out who else is around you that you can bounce ideas off of, that you can work with, that can help brainstorm things. I think that’s the biggest thing. Yeah, because if you use your laundry analogy, if you just have someone else to help you, I mean, there’s gonna be days that you need help. And even if it’s the two of us, right? Audit event, like you’re not alone and find that team. So I absolutely wanna share that load. Okay, so talking about Workfront, and this is a very loaded question, but what would be your favorite feature in terms of adoption? Like what Workfront feature did you love using? I mean, after talking about how there’s no one trick.

I will say it seems basic, but there’s a lot to be said for reporting and it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. I really enjoyed using the last note cause we made a lot of updates in our projects. So I had reports that pulled in the last note and some conditional color formatting. That can go a long ways when trying to get people to see something, do something, a lot to be said for that. And then, I mean, does it hurt to have a little layout template to get that right where they need it? Yeah, and we were coming from the classic. I was gonna say we were coming from the classic. So the layout templates have come a long way. And I totally agree with that. I just wanna second that report. It’s amazing to me, shocking even, how a little bit of color and a little bit of just like, here’s what they need to see. It’s amazing how it goes such a long way in terms of adoption. So totally agree with that. Okay, here’s something we talk about a lot and we joke about it. Sort of the tattle tale versus the fun version of adoption.

So let’s just talk about the fun. Like what was your fun approach to getting people in the system? What’d you do? Yeah, so one of our pain points that we identified was we had a lot of users with the same first names.

So we had to tag them in proofs, in those updates I was talking about. And it just got really obnoxious seeing the gray avatar for all of them. There were a few people that had user pics, but we really wanted to be able to differentiate a little more quickly to the right person. So we did 20 bucks, I want to say, to Amazon or Starbucks, something like that, and asked people to pick whatever they wanted. It didn’t have to be their face. We understood like not everyone wants their face in this system, but like pick your favorite cartoon character, pick something. We just said, don’t pick the company logo. Cause we had a couple people already in the system with that, we were like, just pick something that is you. And it was so fun cause we got to see people’s personalities and it made our lives so much easier, which was such a silly thing. But for 20 bucks, I would have gladly paid that out of pocket. I think we were able to expense it, but I would have gladly paid that out of pocket for the ease that it brought everyone, for the project managers for their day to day.

Yeah. And people, we talk about this all the time, that the competitive nature, like, holy cow, people were amped. It’s amazing. Like the people that I will never go into work front and said, you know, for this pen, okay, I’m in, let’s get into work front. I want to win that pen. So a thousand percent do not underestimate the competitiveness of people to win something. And also that fun of sharing something that they’re passionate about. I know we’ve talked about this before too. Like we got, we were trying to do the avatar thing. And one of my users put in a picture and I’m like, what is, what is that? And he’s like, oh, I used to do opera in high school. And I’m like, what’s happening? So it’s, it’s so fun to like use work front in order to bring a little levity, right, to work, and also encourage that adoption. So I totally love that. I will say before we move to the next question, don’t underestimate the tattle tale if you need to. We do talk about that push and pull, right? So the primary way we want to get people in is to pull them in through the fun or through the benefits or whatever. But occasionally you do have to build a report and say, Hey, this information is missing. So there’s also that I’m not quite as fun.

Okay. I love this next, like your answer to the next question is something that I didn’t do. So yeah, a little spoiler here, but what is your best advice for people trying to increase adoption? Yeah. One of the things that I found worked really well for me was sitting down with users and watching them work. And granted this was in the office situation. It was a little bit easier, but you can still do that virtually and share screens.

I learned so much from seeing how people clicked to where they were going and it blew my mind. I was like, how do you not know that that’s not there? But I forget. To me, it’s the system that I love. And I spend so much time in it. We’d laugh about like, you’re not a real work front, or if you don’t have 10 tabs open, like we joke all the time. I knew it inside and out. And so it was really eye-opening for me to see like, Oh, they don’t know all these little bits and pieces that I do. So those were great things that could be added to email little tips, but it just was so powerful. And then I think to add onto that as like a secondary piece of advice, I know early on, I really wanted to fix things in the moment. I’d be like, well, if you would just add this and we could build a report and they would get really frustrated because again, they didn’t love the system the way that I did. They didn’t want to see how the sausage was made. They just needed to get in and get out. It was more utility.

So I learned, and my next piece of advice is take those little things that you want to fix those little nuggets, take it away, go work on it, perfect it, have fun with it, and then bring it back and go, Hey, I saw this. I think this might be helpful and be willing to get feedback because your vision may not be perfect, but it typically improved things and yeah, you could kind of go from there. And it’s an effort just again, piggyback on that.

My advice was always, if you can solve for one person, you’re really solving for probably your entire enterprise. Right? So you solve this one thing. It allows you to share that out. Hey, I met with somebody and I did this thing. It helps other people or they get to be now an advocate for Workfront. Like I love Workfront now, because this one thing that I needed, I didn’t know was available. So I totally agree. Like the Watch Me Work is an amazing tip and I wish I had done that. So with that, what is it that you look forward to? I always look forward to our events and connecting with other people that love the system and bouncing ideas off each other. I love nerding out with all those people. I look forward to our events, even our early ones. Yeah. Those are really early for you. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. I feel the same way. Like all of the things, like all the new topics, some of the old topics we’ve talked about, but just getting that community together. Because again, we talked about this at the very beginning of the interview was this idea of finding that network, finding that team and getting some help or a little bit of lift. We want you to have that in your organization, but if you don’t have it in your organization, that’s what we’re here for.

So we ask this question every time, when do you know that you’re ready for change? And this will be in terms of adoption.

Yeah. I think that’s an interesting question because I feel like it happens frequently and incrementally. So it’s not like a one big change. You’re constantly making those little tweaks. I think the one thing to kind of be weary of, or at least have a plan for is if you have bigger changes that are coming.

I think it’s no surprise that the last couple of years we’re all a little tired of change.

So just being mindful of that and knowing your users and kind of what their needs are. Yeah. And picking your time, right? Picking when they’re going to be able to, you know, accommodate that change. I will say this, we’ve talked about this before and we’ll end on this. If there’s something that you’re excited about, that’s also, you know, when you’re ready for a change, like don’t let a potential, okay, well, you’re going to want to adopt this, but if you are enthusiastic about something, some new feature, some new thing, you’ve said it before, Leslie, like enthusiasm is contagious.

Go for it. See what happens. Don’t hesitate because your enjoyment of being a system admin is just as important in terms of adoption. And so if you’re excited, other people will be excited.

And speaking of excited, I love working with you. We have so much fun at work and I’m so grateful. Thank you for this and thank you for your advice and your time.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And come see us. You got adoption. Hey, we’ll keep talking about it. You know, we’re work fronters out in the wild. We love it. And we hope to see y’all soon. Thanks. Bye everybody.