Overcome Resistance to Change

Transcript

Who’s ready to talk more about change? So we heard you in the last session. If you either watched it live or watched the recording from Adobe Experience League, it was back in November. We heard your feedback. Good stuff, but Carrie, gosh, we want more Q&A. We want more time to chat, so let’s do that. So that’s what we’re here for. We are gonna just do kind of a quick review just so we’re all speaking the same language, dropping in some poll questions along the way.

But just hello and welcome. So happy to have you. Same intro slide, I think it’s the same. I did add a couple of professional bullet points. I think I had none on there last time. So just wanted you to know a little bit about my background. I’ve been in marketing ops for a long time.

Guess what? You’ll learn that as I continue to go through here, but I think I really put a lot of weight on listening to team sentiment, and that goes so far when it comes to change management. And so that’s what we’re here to talk about today. As promised in the registration, we also have a special guest host, Lee Berger. So introduce yourself, Lee, welcome. Hi, you got it. Hello, everyone. It’s been a while since I have joined one of these specific to change management. So I’m really excited to be here today.

Carrie is going to be your presenter and I am going to be here to layer in during the Q&A and the discussion part. My specialty is really in the neuroscience of change and change as it relates to organizational development. And then of course we’ve got the work front overlay there. So I have led, I could probably bump up my number a little bit there, but let’s just call it a lot of organizations through really significant SaaS and change endeavors. And so I’m excited to hear what questions you all have today and what scenarios you can share with us and let’s see what we can do. So thanks so much for having me.

All right, back to you. Thanks, thank you so much. So like I said, we’re just going to do a very high level review. I literally timed it a couple of times so that it is fast. And we will leave a lot of time for discussion and kind of interaction. And please, please blow up the chat, come off mute, fill up the polls, because this is even better when we have the group participation.

So let’s get into it.

Okay, last time we talked about the natural human instinct, fight, flight or freeze. Our brains are hardwired. We talked a lot about that automatic response. So even when we’re faced with a threat or a change at work, the responses fall into those three categories, believe it or not. It might not be as dramatic as like, you’re ready to fight someone with gloves on like this little guy, but truly, it comes out in the form of resistance and fear. So you guys all being here today, your leaders of change, we just want to talk to ourselves about how we recognize it, how we get ready for it and how we prepare to address it.

So what is change management? Just the reminder here, it’s an application of a structured process and a set of tools leading the people side of change. Okay, so we are trying to achieve an outcome. We’ve heard that phrase, people process technology, change management is really about focusing on the people side, right? If you can guide people through that change journey, you’re gonna mitigate risks and you’re not gonna pop back to the current state, which is what sadly 70% of organizations experience when they’re doing major digital transformation.

So on that note, let’s do a poll. Cynthia, gonna queue you up girl.

We wanna ask, and we’ll kind of pull this up later, but how would you rate your company as far as their current change management culture? And be honest, this is anonymous, no one cares, but we’re just trying to get an idea of like how do people feel about it? Is your org super great at it? And you are like here to just say amen and talk about it? Or is it just a sometimes, is it rarely or is it never? Kind of seeing the numbers come in here.

It looks like as predicted, kind of bucketing around that middle section. I love to see the sometimes over rarely. So that’s a positive.

Honestly, one of the objectives of this first poll was to really just get some comradery going on the call. I mean, I think I want you to see across your community that there are a lot of companies that are amazing at change management. So if you ever have, we’re feeling like you’re floating on an Island, you are not. And that’s exactly why we have these community sessions. So we’re here for each other. Okay, so framework.

Last time I told you that there’s a basic kind of, there’s a recipe for what good looks like.

We talked about this being one of the recipes. Like there’s many different formats. I’m gonna dive a little deeper into the ad car model, but we start with this because it’s just a visual and powerful to be able to see how if you are missing an ingredient, there’s a consequence, right? So if you don’t have vision, people are confused. If you don’t have processes in place, people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, right? This is commonality when it comes to not having all the right ingredients to your change management approach which is why we say it’s not discretionary, okay? So I think we all agree on that. That’s why we’re here. So remember ProSci, okay? Again, this is just a little review. So we’re all speaking the same language. They are leaders in change management. They are a global company. They’ve done extensive research and these are what they have built out as the foundational building blocks to manage successful change.

I felt like, cause I re-listened to the last call and I felt like you start to become a broken record a little bit, right? Like ad car, ad car. But I think the kind of the point is that we’re getting you to see the commonalities and the themes and how they ladder up to these buckets. So I said it last time too but if you wanna grab a screenshot right now we are going to be referring back to these letters. So go for it if you want. But again, you’re gonna get all these materials and the recording and whatnot afterwards.

Same idea with the ad car model just basically like flipped a little bit. If you are missing elements or of these building blocks there are consequences. So if you don’t focus on awareness and desire you’re gonna risk delays in implementation. You’re gonna risk lower productivity and higher turnover. Because people weren’t aware or it wasn’t made important to them to have a successful change. If you don’t reinforce it at the very end which we’re often told is a common common problem people just revert back to what they were doing before. They go back to comfortable. So again, just another example of just, there are consequences if you decide to kind of skip some steps to change management.

So definitely talk in the chat you guys if any questions are coming up, I’m gonna keep going and we’re gonna do another poll here. This is my attempt at a word cloud. Let’s see how this goes. So in one to two words, cause it’s a word cloud, right? So we gotta be succinct but like what is some of the most effective ways that you’ve seen people embrace change? So I’m, oh, so Karen bribery. Yes, stick it in the word.

I mean, it is true. I would say that’s like reinforcement, right? Part of reinforcement is incentives.

Ambassador, executive sponsorship. Okay, you guys are filling in this word cloud with exactly the words I was hoping for. I love it, love it. People who are typing in words that you’ve actually experienced, like it’s happening at your company and you have examples of it, we’re gonna have you come off from it later. I’m gonna bring this back up so that we can talk about what has been successful. So thank you for your participation.

Empathy, yes. Empathy is so big, yeah, that’s awesome. What do you think Lee? Is this, are you just drooling over here? Yeah, yeah, I love seeing the leadership support that’s popping up in empathy because empathy specifically as like an emotional intelligence capability is one of the number one things for effective change management.

Yeah, yes, I love like free stuff. And again, yeah, reinforcement incentives, that is a clear way to drive people to take action on the change that you’re looking for.

Okay, let’s keep going. The last session we focused on the milestones of your work front journey. And so I’m not gonna go deep on that again cause that took a lot of time. It was meant to, that was kind of the point of the last session, but I’m just gonna bring up kind of that map.

I did, I kept the slides in the appendix. So again, when you get the recording and the deck, you’ll have those all again, cause they have resource links and all of that. But I just wanted to remind like why we are layering in ad car building blocks.

And let’s see.

And focusing on how change management isn’t a set and forget. It’s not a one time and you’re done, but you are doing it as you go. And we know many of you on this call are inheriting instances. Like work front was around before you got there. Maybe, maybe some of you are brand new to it and you implemented it, but often you’re taking over what someone else did. And so you’re down here in this life cycle and you did figure out how to maybe make up some time or make up and revisit some of the building blocks that were missed throughout the way.

So let’s another poll. All right, this is setting us up for future discussion. So of these building blocks, do you think has been the most difficult to accomplish in your work front experience? Where have you maybe felt some stumbling, some barriers? Just watching it, watching it fill up here.

Interesting desire. So if you remember that acronym that goes with desire, it’s what’s in it for me. That’s how we create desire. We are making the work front work meaningful for each person so that they understand the benefits of the system. And we talked a lot about that last time, but it’s good to see that that’s a spot to focus.

Reinforcement. I am shocked, but so excited that awareness is super low. And here’s the why. I felt like last time I shared a monologue about why you should have a calm strategy around why work front. Why are you guys doing work front? Why is it important to your company? That creates awareness and it’s looking like people are feeling really good about that. So that’s awesome.

Any surprises, Lee? No, not really. I think like the desire piece and when we talk about what’s in it for me, it really goes hand in hand with leadership, being able to paint a vision and to help folks understand like how they’re connected to the bigger picture related to work front. So that resonates with me and working with customers as to why that’s a gap for a lot of folks. I think reinforcement too, because a lot of times there’s, excuse me, a lot of energy at the front end and then we fatigue. We get like in the middle of the ocean going from New York to the England, so to speak, and you’re kind of in the abyss. And so it’s hard to keep that momentum going to get to that reinforcement stage sometimes.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome, good point. I know I don’t need to say this again, but please anyone raise your hand or come off mute or type in the chat if you want to share and add to this discussion. We are going to get to actual participation moments, but we’re happy to have it along the way here too.

Here are some activities under each of the building blocks. I shared this, I think more as a takeaway in the last one, but just wanted to flash this here again, because as we’re thinking about what are some good ideas on what and when you’re preparing for your change management plan, what are some of the things that you can actually physically be doing? We heard that in, I think there was like one comment in the survey, give us more executional examples. Like what can we be doing to actually make this happen? And so let’s, especially like under this desire, what are those activities that really can move the needle? So comms, key messaging, Lee, I think you said that without me even having to cue it up, continued stakeholder engagement so that people are realizing what’s in it for me. Well, it’s important to your leaders, right? And then having a resistance plan. So we’re going to get into that a little bit as we go through here. Any questions or comments that people want to make about some of these activities? I don’t see anything in the chat, but certainly I’m off mute.

All right. All right. Let’s keep moving.

Did I get there here? Okay. I double tab. So recognizing and managing resistance. Okay. So let’s go a little bit deeper on this.

Why is this so important? So resistance to a change could come from multiple sources and reasons, right? It’s dangerous if you leave it unaddressed. I mean, that’s just the end of it. So getting in front of it, trying to anticipate maybe what people are going to be resistant for, that’s all good and fine, but you can have the best laid plan and then be faced with some things that you weren’t anticipating.

So let’s see. Oh, I was just looking at the chat. Okay. I’ll keep focused here because you guys are totally in it.

So I did share these last time, but we sped through them. So let’s pause for a second. Understanding the reasons for resistance. It’s important to understand that there could be different concerns or motivations, right? Causing the resistance. What is resistance? Well, it’s an underlying fear. It’s a fear of the unknown. It’s that fight, flight or freeze response.

We talked about how if you missed some of those building blocks to effectively managing change, there’s going to be consequences. Okay. So you’ll notice that this list of the reasons, they really tie back to those same themes in the ad car model. So that’s why we continue. I start to feel like that broken record, right? But okay. Lack of awareness. The first bullet point that’s awareness, or obviously awareness, lack of skills, their training, that’s knowledge. That’s the K. Lack of incentives, lack of free stuff. Like one of the words in the word cloud, that’s reinforcement. So by taking the effort to sit and listen and working to understand what causes, you will be able to identify what building block to revisit.

And I think there’s a lot of folks on here, just kind of system admin forward brains, like probably a little bit project managers.

You need a checklist. You like a checklist, right? Or at least I do. And so that’s a good way to bucket, like what are people afraid of? And now how can I formulate a plan around it? And going back to those activities under the building blocks.

One thing I wanted to share, does everyone here agree that you sometimes have the best thoughts when you’re washing your hair in the shower? I always say, it’s a shower thought. So this morning I was thinking about personal experience that we had here within Adobe, where we were pushing out a change to our org and it impacted our cost-functional partners. And we were frustrated that some of our cost-functional team members weren’t kind of accepting the change or going through the new process like it had been rolled out. Well, we decided that they were missing the desire. They didn’t understand what was good for them. And so our team managers, along with our team, we actually created a road show deck and we made sure the messaging in that deck was, here’s why it’s important. Here’s the benefits that you’re gonna get out of this new process. And we went to each one of the teams managers and became guest speakers at an upcoming team meeting. So some of those things are, we might hear from folks who have hundreds or even thousands of Workfront licenses, Carrie, that might not be sustainable. Okay, that’s all right. Think about what the messaging that you’re posting in your COE, think about your Wiki, or whatever you have at your company that supports your Workfront practice. But think about isolating some of the teams that you’re hearing the most resistance from, or maybe they’re just the loudest voices that you feel like are impacting the rest of the company. Go to them, take the time to start doing your road show and actually having verbal conversations so that you’re using those empathy skills and you’re listening and you’re trying to find and uncover those reasons for resistance.

I just wanted to pause and give that example because I thought it was a positive one from our team.

So strategies, so going through those reasons for resistance, obviously what you end up hearing is gonna change how you approach it. So again, I start to repeat myself when it comes to the ad card model, but if these building blocks are skipped, these are the consequences, like I’ve said. So we’re not gonna focus on the why Workfront message because I feel like I did a monologue last time, go back and listen to it if you want.

But I wanted to spend a little bit more time and I think this is kind of feeds into the example I was thinking about, which is inviting participation and collaboration.

One of the most common, common reasons that ProSci has identified as people saying that they’re resistant or they’re feeling resistance to change is that they didn’t get a voice in the change. They didn’t get to give their opinion.

So they’re frustrated or they aren’t coming along the journey because they didn’t get a chance to weigh in. So again, thinking about how can you scale that or how can you choose a small team, do a pilot, do a POC, do a little bit of a road show, what does that look like at your company? So let’s hear it. Any comments in the chat? Lee, Cynthia, how are people, anyone brave enough to come off mute and share some examples? There’s a lot of conversation happening and some good questions.

Nothing yet specifically.

Okay.

For those people who put the great ideas in the word cloud.

And I was gonna say, the why work front road show deck, I mean, I’m noodling on it. I wrote it down. So that might be something that the scale team creates. So just wrote it down. Yes, and if we can even, we can tab forward to the appendix cause I still have some of those slides in here. So, but yeah, I mean, maybe a whole session. I love it.

What else? All right, let’s, oh, let’s see.

A why work front deck would be amazing. All right, I’m gonna note that, keep going. Does anyone wanna come off mute and share a troublesome spot that they’ve run into so that we can have some group thank you? I see there’s a couple of questions that we’ve not been able to answer yet that I could voice. If that’s all right. Yeah, thanks. Okay. I love it. Thank you. One of the questions is, what if you find you have to constantly do the road show to the same people every time you meet with a team? So have you tried redoing the road show? I mean, and I say that in that, I’m sure there was a lot of work done to what the content was in the road show, but I think it does, if it is like a repeat not gaining their acceptance, it feels like there is some sort of message missing or something just isn’t hitting the mark with that team. What do you think, Lee? That was me.

It was more so the by follow up, about the ego monster.

And I mean, literally her sitting down across from me, crossing her arms and asking me to pitch it every single time. And still to this day. And she just continually gets away with it. I mean, our senior vice president has even in meetings with me, will say she’s not getting any more programming until she starts using it. And then we’ll see that she has more programming. So there’s that inconsistency as well, because then her director will be like, well, she’s my superstar.

Okay, but I finally went to the AVP and said, you know what? I got enough work to do. So you can just keep doing what she’s doing. And I just won’t be able to provide you any analysis on that team. And you know, that’s so sad because I’ve got enough on my plate.

But my boss will like bring it up and keep it planning. And I’m always like, just try.

But that’s a big issue is like dealing with ego monsters. And that’s been my biggest change management. But I have other people who are like, why didn’t I start using this earlier? Totally, I know, right? And you wanna put those advocates like on loudspeakers so that everyone else is hearing it. But Kat, thank you so much for sharing and just being vulnerable about some of those, the tough times. I think that if from what it sounds like, you are doing everything in your control, which the number one thing I heard there is that you’re managing upwards and saying, here are the consequences of that team not being in Workfront. And that’s going to impact reporting. And if you’re okay with it, we’re just gonna keep on going over here. I’m not afraid to say, you know, I’m not afraid. Cynthia knows we’ve had this discussion before that. I’m not afraid to just kind of like say, well, this is it, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

Anyone else have like a secret sauce or even a tip that you’ve been able to take it? I see Gerald, you got your hand up.

Thanks for taking my question. So not so much a solution, but a different kind of twist on a bit of a implementation problem here. So my situation is we currently have a Workfront install in my company. It’s kind of underutilized because it wasn’t a very well kind of conceived installation. So I’m being brought in to kind of revamp it, improve what we’ve got and then do like a version 2.0. So in a way, my audience is kind of already tainted with what they feel is a poor experience in Workfront. So I’ve got some kind of some minds to change. Thank you.

No, I appreciate you sharing that. And I think a similar theme came up the last on the first session too, which is, what do I do when I’m facing a team that already has negative sentiment? Like it’s already buried within them. What are some tips about overcoming that? And I think it’s perfect that this slide is up right now saying creating a safe space by encouraging experimentation and learning. I think Gerald and this is probably, I’m singing to the choir here, but approaching the teams that already are frustrated and simply showing that vulnerability and saying, hey, we hear you, we are working to make a change. I think building that trust and rapport, acknowledging that there are gonna be improvements made based on the negative experience they’ve had is gonna go a really long way.

Leigh, anything to add there? Yeah, I completely agree with what you’re saying, Keri. I think if we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, like it’s just fundamental to be seen and to be heard. And so one of the things that I try to employ is making sure that just because you have a voice doesn’t mean you get a vote, but everybody should have a voice.

So yeah, I agree.

Thank you.

Madeline and then Martin, I think, or, I’m sorry, I’m only saying the last thing. Madeline? Hey, about the person who was just talking about you’re coming in facing already a preconceived notion around what Workfront means for you or how you feel about Workfront. I’ve been there too. And I think something that really helps is to align on the language used around Workfront from the people who are trying to right the ship. So when I came into a company that they had had an instance for years and it wasn’t implemented very well and no one was adopting it. And so the reason why I came in was to turn that around and get everybody back on it and using it. So it was kind of an uphill battle to start, but the leadership talking around it was, I think they were trying to have some kind of empathy by, they would always talk about it like, oh, you know, Workfront, we all love Workfront, ha ha ha. Ha ha ha, like jab, jab. Yeah, and the more that they were doing that, it’s really just reinforcing the misconception of it. And so I had a conversation with them about, let’s change how we talk about it. We need to align on language around it. And the more that we just kind of joke about it, it’s really just making that feeling stronger with people. So I think once we stopped doing that, it did help, and fast forward a year and a half later, people were fully back on board.

We got there, but it’s a note for everybody that I think having the same messaging and aligning on languages is key.

I thank you so much for sharing that. I couldn’t agree more and emphasizing that, why Workfront messaging and getting it all, you know, kind of pounded out from the very beginning with your executive sponsors and your governance committee, and then just reinforcing it and literally keep continuing to refer back to it exactly what you said, Madeline. Then you’re all using the same language, you have the same tone and it’s all, you know, it’s planned out. I have a comms roadmap later in the stack too, felt like it got a lot of love last time. So we can pause on it later if there’s time, otherwise you’ll get it at the end. Maddie Martin, how about you? It’s funny, my name is also Madeline. So there was a moment of confusion a second ago.

The second it came out of my mouth, I was like, oh geez.

It’s both the same way, wow. I do, yeah.

Yeah, just kind of piggybacking off of all of that, in my experience, people resisting change, something that’s helped me has just been, if I have the time for it, which is unfortunately a big if, getting down and finding out, you know, who really doesn’t like this tool, who are kind of the main naysayers and having a person to person conversation where it’s not you versus me. I know I kind of represent the tool to you. It’s you and me versus the problem that we’re facing. So why is Workfront not work? And that just applies to like anything in life, any conflict you have with anyone in your life. It’s not you guys versus each other, it’s you two versus the problem. Anyways, we’ll get off that soapbox. Yeah. I wanna know why they don’t like the tool. Usually it comes down to one of a few things, which might’ve already been addressed. I do apologize, I came in a little bit late. You have the people who just, they just don’t like change, it’s scary, that’s human nature, totally understandable, being really understanding about that instead of, well, we’re doing it this way and kind of forcing people, having that empathy helps the users to trust you. I always approach them with, my goal is to make your life easier. My goal as an admin is to make your job easier. So if the tool is in the way, let’s have a conversation about that.

I love it. And then, yeah, usually you can also drill down into, they find out that their issue is actually something really easily solved. It’s just a quick configuration and then a tweak to a custom form, something like that. So being able to speak to the users on that level has been really helpful for me.

Hey, I think I’ve heard it said on many occasions on Cynthia, Nicole’s and Leslie sessions about how powerful the login as capability is for a system admin.

And that came to light to me. And while I talk here, we’re gonna put up the next poll.

So we’re gonna talk about resistance. Maddie couldn’t have set that up any better. Let’s do another word cloud or honestly, extra credit or type it in the chat or do the word poll, but extra credit, this is for Cynthia, go find a gift that represents what you’ve heard before from some of your colleagues or being frustrated with Workfront. This is our tab, we can vent a little, we don’t have to always be so cheery cause we know this can be hard.

But what I was gonna say is the login as power. We had, I was working with a company that recently did a project naming convention change. And while they really put a lot of thought and effort into it and what was gonna be the naming convention and what was first and what was second, whatever. What they missed was the people that are in the tool every single day, they work in a certain way and they pull those projects up kind of by tab in this case, there may be better ways to do it, but that’s the point. They didn’t realize how people were working. And so the new naming convention literally stopped them in their tracks, like they could not work the same that they had used to, that they were used to working.

Now, how can they solve it? They actually really thought a lot about this new project naming convention and they like it. And it’s a good for the requesters, but they need the people in the tool who are day-to-day like using it to really, to be able to do it. So maybe it’s setting up a new dashboard. Maybe it’s a new view, you know, but I think being able to log in as that person and see what they see, goes a long way. I am dying at these gifts. They’re so good.

Cynthia, this is all for you, all for you, my girl.

Oh yes, poor attitude, intimidated by the complexity. I can appreciate that.

I think it was Gerald, they said, you know, maybe the original implementation wasn’t done super great. The UI, the user interface and how people are experiencing it, it’s so important. And Workfront can be complicated. Guess what? The reason why is because it’s such a powerful tool, but as admins, you guys bringing it into using the power of layout templates, project templates, things that are gonna get people’s eyeballs focused on, the dashboard, exactly what they need to see. Those are all ways that you can try to overcome some of the resistance.

Maddie.

It’s me again.

I just wanted to add, I do think that another really common cause of resistance, that’s like, you know, resistance is kind of the tip of the iceberg, all of these things exist.

In addition to just change and all of these very, very valid answers, I think people also sometimes just will misdirect their anger at other things. Maybe they’re frustrated by other things in their role and Workfront is just the tool. So we kind of get the brunt of that. Yeah.

Couldn’t have set that up any better.

So I think moving into kind of the next exercise, but really, really wanting people to come at me cause this is the power of this community.

I divided change resistance kind of by persona and I did this exercise and I encourage you to think about it like this as well. We also started earlier kind of, you know, gave the nod to like going team by team. So maybe it’s not by role, but it’s team by team or whatever and listening to what some of their resistance is. You couldn’t have said it better. Maybe they’re voicing a concern, but what are they actually afraid of? And I completely agree. Hello, this is like therapy session. The fear iceberg is real. There’s usually other stuff going on, but at the end of the day, your point, your role is to address it and to combat any perception that’s out there. So I did want to focus on, you know, just some ideas that our team kind of put down on paper.

When someone, for example, is like, hey, my clients have a specific, okay, this actually happened to me when I was at the agency. My client have a specific reporting need and this new, you know, work front thing doesn’t match it. Well, we sat down with our system admin. It took time, man, but we built a report. We built a dashboard that was familiar, at least in some ways. We talked about the custom fields. We talked about who had to fill out what before the statuses and we spent time with the system admins to get something that our clients would be comfortable with.

So, you know, I want to say that there’s an easy button for some of this, but there isn’t usually.

So I’m just going to reveal this whole slide. I don’t know why the animations are being weird, but these how to address and combat perception, often it is about investing the time and the listening and pitching the benefits. I am a customer success manager by trade. And so my approach is often, hey, like what are all the good things that have come out of this? It’s short-term pain, long-term gain. And that is about thinking of and getting folks on your side when it comes to the benefits.

Any other like examples that people want to share? Yeah, Jennifer.

Hey, I am a project manager and I’m coming at this from the user side and trying to help with our system to improve things. So for me, a lot of my concern is comes that we have so many different channels of communication. We have Workfront, we’ve got Teams, we’ve got Outlook, and it’s so difficult to kind of, we’ll get an email and it’s so easy to miss it and it won’t go into our project sites and tasks are missed. And it’s really hard to capture that. And so it’s how can we control the channel of information and get things into Workfront so it is all captured? And Lee, do you remember your dear friends at Prudential who made t-shirts? Oh, if it’s not in Workfront, it doesn’t exist. Yeah. That’s right.

Yeah. Jennifer, we’ve had some examples where Teams, right here in this first bullet point, really pushing the benefits of a centralized solution and you nailed it. It is about the communications are coming from everywhere. And so how communicating outwards that, hey, we wanna get your work done, but we can’t if it’s all spread across all of these different channels. And so really pushing and talking and training on the benefits of that centralized solution, the update stream so that all the project comments are centralized into one spot. I think it was the PRU team who was up on stage at Summit one year that literally wore t-shirts that said, if it’s not in Workfront, it’s not real. Yeah, it doesn’t exist. So, it’s a little heavy handed but also done with a smile. So I think getting that executive sponsor and your communication messages, Jennifer, I think is gonna be some of those secret ingredients for you. Great. I can see a lot in the chat about a plugin.

Is that, how does that work? I’ll post the integrations. I’ll post the outlook. The teams and Slack integration and also I’ll even post the cookbook cause Lindsey Dink is in the chat and she did a bunch of stuff in Teams. So we’ll post all of that. Great, thank you. Love it. I see Madeline and I see both Madeline’s. You guys, yeah, but tell me what you’re thinking.

We’re having thoughts at the same times.

Another common thing, it kind of goes with your first line item about like I have my own spreadsheet. A common resistance point in a lot of organizations is kind of around reporting or I use this Excel for something that looks this way and you could get yourself in a really deep rabbit hole of building a report in Workfront that tries to look exactly like that. But I think something that’s better is to just back up a little bit and align with them that, hey, what is the objective of this report or of this Excel, whatever it may be. The objective is to do XYZ. So in Workfront in a report, yeah, it may look a little different. Workfront’s not Excel, it’s never going to be. It’s not PowerPoint. You don’t have to like defend Workfront that it can’t do certain features as other tools. I think where you can meet in the middle is aligning on, it’s gonna accomplish the same objective though. So if I translate this objective of what you need, which I’m not taking away, I’m just moving that and showing it in a different way that’s within Workfront. And sure, you could still try to throw on some conditional formatting and make it a little closer, as close as you can, I think it helps people to back up and just realize like, okay, well, it’s still accomplishing the objective. Don’t get lost in the colors. Yeah. Yeah, no, very well said. And you’re right, because it’s like analysis paralysis, like same idea, you can try so hard to make things, but it’s almost like, are you better off just kind of starting from scratch and saying, what can we accomplish even though it looks different? I love that. I’m gonna tap forward as other people are talking because we also kind of did this exercise. Geez, the formatting is kind of messed up here. Sorry guys. But just thinking about it from different personas. So I wanted to throw these up. We often get some of the most resistance from requesters. So Jennifer, this maybe speaks a little bit to something, what you had said about like, can I just email it in? And so how are we, I think one really great way is sharing outwards, the benefits of visibility and creating as you have dashboards or reports that are showing everything in the pipeline. For example, people start to realize what’s in it for me, why do I need to put that request in? Oh, so my work shows up with all the rest of it. So continuing to kind of focus on that, but Maddie and then Kat, I think, I’m looking at names here. Catherine, Maddie and then Catherine.

Yeah, so I just had one tip from the last one on the last slide about the whole like, oh, is big brother watching me? This is something I’ve encountered a lot. I think we’ve all seen a lot, especially when it comes to time and hour reporting.

I’ve had a lot of users worried about logging hours because of kind of the big brother thing. But one technique that I’ve used that’s been pretty effective has been just, obviously we know to show them the benefit, but I do like to use the argument of like, if we don’t know how many hours you have, how can we prove to management that you need more people on your team? Otherwise they’re just gonna keep adding work on to you. Like absolutely go from their perspective and fight again with them, you’re on their side. That’s been a really huge one in overcoming that hurdle.

I love it. Thank you for sharing. It’s a perfect example.

Catherine.

Hello.

One of the ones that I run into is really the fear of the loss of control and the loss of the ability to do things quickly the way their boss is expecting them to. I had HR goals that say, I must do this. And you’re telling me you have to do it a totally different way now in a way that doesn’t, I can’t, I don’t know, could I do 30 of those a day? Can I do 60? I don’t know how to do them yet.

One of the ways that I’ll handle that, especially with a new team, folks that are bringing a whole new process in, is to just ask.

Acknowledge, change is scary. It is hard to move into a new system to change the way you’re working.

What about this scares you? If there’s a couple of things that if you lose them, you’re in trouble or this process is in trouble, what are those for you? Because we wanna make sure we handle them. I can’t always handle them, but at least I can address that we acknowledge them or we tried to find a workaround and I didn’t just forget that their HR goals for Q1 were the best thing and I didn’t even put a field in and let them track it. Sure.

That’s a really great example. Yeah, thank you. That would be one. Thank you for sharing.

Hey, I moved the slide forward to think, consider our creative or our designer’s perspective as well. And I think, because often system, our system admin mindsets, think about how our creatives, our designers, they wanna be designing, they wanna be creating.

And that is just that extra, even kind of stress or fear of work front that they’d rather be in another system. So I think, again, couldn’t have set that up any better, Catherine, thank you for sharing, which is listening and saying, what are you afraid of? What are you trying to accomplish? What are you worried about losing? And then, let’s get into it. And how can we kinda either overcome it or do little bite-sized chunks of change along the way? Hey, Monique.

Hi, Gary. One thing I’ll add, which I came late, so somebody else already said it, sorry, I agree with you now is a lot of people will show their fear because they wanna be perfectionists. And I don’t mean that in like a negative way, people wanna be experts in their jobs. So anytime you’re changing something that they used to know by heart and now it’s different or whatnot, a lot of that comes out of, now I’m not gonna be good at my job. So just remembering that, and that’s kinda why you wanna focus on not only doing training, but also just showing them what it is, what that from to is, and then letting them know that this is different for everybody. No one is an expert in this. I also like to just remind them that things can change. So I think it was Maddie that was talking about the time and how long something takes. If we don’t know, I’m gonna be like, what if we just say it takes five hours? It probably only is gonna take 20 minutes, but what if we just start with five hours, you all lost your time. Once we have an average, we’ll update it. But for now, we’re gonna give people more time because it’s new, because it’s different, because it’s weird, whatever. And then that kinda gives them less of a barrier of intrigue because they’re like, oh, we’re all gonna make mistakes. We’re all in this together. And I have time to kinda explore and figure it out. You got it. I love that. I mean, look at this line right here, third, fourth down. Commit to pilot projects where you’re just collecting data. You need to establish baselines. And Monique, you used all some words that I used forever in my project manager days, which is like, okay, is it 10 or is it 10,000? Like, let’s just get the range in there, and then we can start from there and then revisit it and commit to revisiting it and follow through on that. I think that’s how you gain the trust and gain the rapport.

I want to just tap through. So in the takeaway, I have templates. If you wanna do another persona, not that you need help building a chart, but just wanted to show you how you can do it. Last call, lot of love for the roadmaps.

So what I did is I just gave some examples of blowing it out a little bit separately. So because let’s be real, this is way too much for one screen, and these are all separate initiatives. So I just blew these out kind of in three examples. Do with what you want to them, but they’re just to show the benefits of being able to lay out your plan as a system admin, because layering change management on top of the things that you’re already doing is intimidating. But if you’re seeing it as a plan, you can start to kind of strike where those right milestones are to really make sure your messaging is tight, you’re making time for roadshows, you’re making time for listening sessions.

Here was like an example for new functionality rollouts.

Each one may need a little mini change management plan. Like even if you just change one little thing, you got to think through like, have I communicated this? Or have I talked about what the benefits are? It might not need an entire change management strategy, but you need to at least cross off on the couple little things so that people feel aware of what’s coming at them when it comes to change.

Communications roadmap. This is a really big one, again, that can help you make sure that your users are hearing from you enough, not too much, but then what are those messages sound like? And I think it was Madeline or Maddie who said, this is where you can really lock in what are the messages sound like so that we’re all using the same communication. So again, just mapping it out so that you’re seeing it and you can then create a plan on it. So in our last five minutes, I know it’s not a lot, but if anyone else wants to come ask me, we are here for it. We are here for you and we want to hear like, has there been a super positive and impactful strategy that worked? Tell us or type it in chat. Or is there just a hard truth? I think some of those have come out today. Are there any ones that we missed or maybe something that people want to throw out and get some ideas on? Yeah, David. So I just want to make a note, this is not negative at all. So I just wanted to set this up properly, how I message it in case I messaged it incorrectly. So there’s another aspect to this, which is on the software side. May not be work front, it could be anything, Word, Outlook, any program you’re dealing with. Us here, us 113, 115 people on this call, we can take all the steps necessary to get to the positive results, if we’re not successful, with communication and planning and alignment. But if the end software or the end problem you’re trying to solve cannot be solved with the software, maybe it was misrepresented or there’s an issue where it can’t be fixed from a software side, again, keeping it really general. And that you take that one step forward and it actually takes you five steps back because people want to believe in that piece of functionality that you want to use the software for. And if it’s supposed to be basic or not basic or promised or not promising, you can’t do it. That’s another impact of this whole process that I didn’t hear mentioned at all, it’s near and dear to my heart because I’m going through it right now. So I just wanted to mention that. And I appreciate that, David. And I think you’re right. There’s never going to be the perfect, perfect software. I think one thing I could emphasize was as you’re tracking what those features are that people wish existed or pieces of functionality, make sure that you’re having a visible roadmap out there, that you’re tracking these initiatives and that you’re… So if it’s not part of the software yet, let’s say, at least it’s somewhere, maybe you can’t map it out on a timeline, but that you’re mapping the future needs. And so that- And go the other way, Keri, go the other way. It’s not functionality that’s not in there, it’s functionality that’s in there not working properly. That’s a big roadmap to us. It’s a hurdle for all of us on the call when we’re trying to share for the people that want that. So that’s a definite distinction I wanted to clarify with you because it’s not like it’s not there.

Monique may have some feedback.

Yeah, please. Monique, is that why you raised your hand? I knew like I am in sync. Monique’s got something to say, go for it. This is something that I experience regularly, working for a giant corporation, companies, like the cell leaders things, that’s like, this is the answer to all your problems when it’s like, this isn’t even a problem we have. So believe me, I’ve been in this situation more times than I ever want to be. But two things that I do is one, I let the users know upfront, right? As nicely as I can, I don’t just fully put the software down but I’m like, look, this is what this does. We’re not fully sure how it fits. So we’re all working together to figure that out. And it may or may not fit the way that we want to, but we will find a use for it. And or we will just get rid of it. And then I have had to have those horrible conversations with leadership of like, hey, you bought this thing and it doesn’t really do anything for us, which again, don’t recommend, but that’s why we’re in the spot that we’re in. But my users kind of trust me because they know that I’m never gonna force them to fit like a square peg in a round hole or completely blow up their use case in a way that’s not gonna make sense. And then the other thing that we do is we pilot and we like to do a fail fast kind of thing. So we will throw, like, we’re gonna use it, we’re gonna try our best. If it works, great, we’ll implement it. If it doesn’t, you never have to see it again. And that’s kind of the approach that we have to the new tech that may or may not be what we actually needed to be.

I love it. Wise words, wise words Monique, thank you for sharing.

Okay, so we have- We’re at the end, I know. So awesome. Hey everybody that’s still here, how much do you love Carrie and Lee? Love for Carrie and Lee? Come on, exactly, exactly. Thank you folks. The community is the best. Right, thank you both so much for your time, your expertise, you’re willing to do a part two. Y’all, this is the first y’all of the day. Y’all, they did a part two.

So we’re gonna, exactly, you’re simply the best. We’re gonna send the recording. We’re also gonna do an experience like post. And if anyone wants to share any other like good tips, we’re gonna talk about the road show deck, like kind of like create like a shell, right? So- I love it. Thank you both, so this is, if anything, everyone got to be like, I’m not alone.

And that’s what you always talk about, right? That’s right, you’re not alone. That’s right, it was very therapeutic. You’re not alone. Yes, yes, I love it. Thank you everyone for your bravery, your vulnerability, coming off mute, sharing your stories, sharing your gifts. I mean, that’s why I keep coming back.

I hope to see you all again. Thank you so much and have a fantastic rest of your day. Okay, bye everyone. Thank you. Bye.