Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #41: From digital adoption to digital dexterity

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Reality Bytes #41: From digital adoption to digital dexterity · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:01
  Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
• 0:07
  Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers, Welcome to another Reality
• 0:12
  Bites. I'm just back from Boston where I was able to meet up with
• 0:19
  Tim and we recorded a special episode in the Next Link offices in the same
• 0:23
  room together, so we're very excited to release that, but it'll be out
• 0:27
  next week. You're hearing this before that comes out. It features Patty black
• 0:31
  Stuff, part of a run of great, great shows, which includes last
• 0:36
  week special with the Great Andrew Hewitt that was called the Future UC rock Star
• 0:42
  AI Automation and Digital Adoption, and I mentioned it because digital adoption is going
• 0:48
  to be our Reality Bites theme this week as well. I'm joined by Tim,
• 0:53
  Meghan, Oriana and Sean. Really looking forward to a conversation. But
• 0:57
  I thought i'd mentioned the Andrew Hughes It recording first, very briefly, because
• 1:03
  he said something very very interesting which I feel tease us up for today's discussion
• 1:07
  very nicely. We asked Andrew, Tim and I about what he considered to
• 1:11
  be the future of the service desk, the future of the help desk.
• 1:17
  And Andrew said he doesn't think it's fully going away, says technology is weird.
• 1:22
  You're going to still have stuff happen, but the nature of it is
• 1:26
  going to change. Instead of it being a place where you just call when
• 1:29
  things go wrong, it's going to be somewhere you go when you need to
• 1:32
  learn how to take advantage of new capabilities, where you gain access to new
• 1:37
  adoption capabilities long term, and it becomes he says, the center of decks
• 1:42
  in the organization, the center of experience focused on enablement of the workforce in
• 1:48
  general, and obviously this is we feel the direction the service desk is really
• 1:53
  moving in. And you have this whole area of digital enablement, digital adoption,
• 2:00
  digital transformation, and digital dexterity, which of course next Think is well
• 2:04
  ahead of the curve with. If you've been listening to our shows this year,
• 2:07
  you'll have heard about next Think's recent acquisition of app learn, which specifically
• 2:13
  empowers it with digital adoption capabilities. And it's something we're going to delve into
• 2:21
  a little more deeply today, and we're going to do it looking at an
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  article Tim wrote last year late last year, cool Calm and collected how to
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  handle any digital adoption project. So I got to start with you, Tim,
• 2:34
  and ask were you psychic? Did you know when Next Think's investment was
• 2:38
  going? Or were you just prescient? Did you just cool the direction of
• 2:42
  travel? Once in a while in my younger years, maybe I felt like
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  I was psychic a little bit. But as the brand of age Tom,
• 2:50
  there's the psychic abilities are gone. But I think the article really came about
• 2:53
  as as a decades long struggle with deploying technology and both as an IT person
• 3:04
  pushing tech out to employees, but also as a business owner needing to adopt
• 3:08
  technology for my own teams. Putting technology out is not an easy task.
• 3:15
  One thing I like about the article, Tim is that you sort of you
• 3:19
  first of all, focus on why are you enacting a digital kind of transformation
• 3:27
  project in the first place, right, laying the groundworks for being clear about
• 3:31
  what the purposes of what you're trying to achieve, And that's kind of what
• 3:35
  your first one to four kind of installments on the list really really go into.
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  So I wonder if you sort of just be specific about that first of
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  all, and clear adult the listenership what should drive a sort of digital adoption
• 3:51
  project in the first place. I think it comes from managing and leading teams
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  over a large or a long number of years where it people just love the
• 4:03
  technology. They love the new stuff. The old stuff frustrates them. You
• 4:08
  know, there's this desire to get their hands on the latest and greatest.
• 4:14
  But if the if the tech doesn't serve up business purpose and you can't articulate
• 4:19
  why you're doing it, then you really have to think about whether or not
• 4:25
  it should be done to begin with, Right, is it something that is
• 4:28
  going to solve a business problem? Is it something that's going to solve a
• 4:30
  usability issue? Is it there? Sometimes you're forced into technology because it may
• 4:35
  be serving a purpose just fine, but the vendor stops supporting it, so
• 4:39
  you have to migrate. We've been in those situations with operating system migrations and
• 4:44
  office migrations. You just you get every ounce of juice out of the tech
• 4:48
  that you can and then it goes end of life. So there are multiple
• 4:53
  reasons to migrate, but you need to make sure you understand what they are,
• 4:57
  they're well articulated, and that when you're done, you can you can
• 5:02
  measure and communicate the fact that you solved those or or delivered on the reasons
• 5:08
  for the change, and when you think about what we've heard from app learned
• 5:13
  this year, when we've kind of like dug into Next Thing's new investment in
• 5:16
  this technology specifically, how has it made you think differently about the process of
• 5:21
  digital adoption within software and more specifically, So I would you know, in
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  looking at the article, and I may go give it a V two for
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  the new year, and we're when we're in April, it's it's strange to
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  think about it as a new year, but I may give it a little
• 5:39
  brush up. But the way I look at the article or the top of
• 5:44
  this list of eleven, my spinal tap list of eleven, you really need
• 5:48
  a prerequisite, and that prerequisite is fix your existing environment. Right What you
• 5:54
  have out there right now is a foundation, and you build on top of
• 5:58
  a shaky foundation and it's going to crumble. So any new digital transformation that
• 6:01
  you push is only going to be as stable as what you're pushing it out
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  to. So that's why I love the des platform as the foundation to stabilize
• 6:12
  your existing environment before you go about making big massive changes. And then why
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  I like bringing in this digital adoption capability into the Next Thing platform is you
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  can go through all of the benefits and visibility that DEX allows you to do
• 6:29
  during a migration, testing, validation, watching your rollout, measuring things.
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  But at the end, as your employees now start to use that technology,
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  that's where this app learned capability comes in, where you're not only seeing that
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  they're using it, but are they using it successfully? Are they struggling?
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  Are there issues? Link that with employee engagement and ask them questions, put
• 6:54
  in primers and prompts and training within the application to help guide them along.
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  There's so many things that happen after technology gets installed that it is in the
• 7:03
  dark about. And I'll go back to that light bulb and are as a
• 7:08
  customer our project edison turning the lights on. You can now not only turn
• 7:12
  the lights on for your testing and your deployment, but then light up the
• 7:15
  employee experience inside the apps and are they adopting it appropriately? And by the
• 7:20
  way, measure the migration off of the old platform, have they stopped using
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  the old one? And really I think it rounds out the whole thing.
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  Adding it to decks, I think is a no brainer. Excellent, Megan,
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  We was a pressient as Tim, were you thinking about digital adoption late
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  last year, like me, did you only start thinking about in the context
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  of decks more specifically and software in particular this year, and what have your
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  reflections been on it so far? Well, I could humble brag and say
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  that two years ago I wrote an article for the Decks of Digital Dexterity,
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  but it was only because I saw it was an SEO keyword with some volume,
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  so it was not opprescient in any way. People will think we're cynically
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  searching, that we are, but no, I think I think the topic
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  of digital adoption is really interesting, and I think it's something that like any
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  employee of any business can quickly kind of have an opinion on because I think
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  we've all had the experience of having a new technology rolled out that we're like,
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  how do they want me to use this? What's the point of this?
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  And if you don't have if you were not enabled in the right way
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  to use a new technology, then you might not use it. And then
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  that's going to go up the chain. It is going to say was this
• 8:39
  investment really worth money? Like are we really making the most out of it?
• 8:41
  And it might be that that software is the perfect software for your company,
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  but you didn't enable employees in the right way, and so by forgetting
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  about the like human element of digital transformation of digital adoption, the project fails
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  not because the technology was wrong, but just because people weren't enabled. So
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  when I was reading Tim's article, like, I really liked that his first
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  point was that employees need to be engaged early and often when a new technology
• 9:07
  is being considered. I think that that's really key, not only so employees
• 9:11
  know that change is coming because everybody hates change, but also maybe to give
• 9:16
  it an opportunity to find out how employees want to be working, Like what
• 9:22
  sort of workflows should we expect to in this new kind of platform or whatever
• 9:28
  you're rolling out, And can we set ourselves up for success by anticipating how
• 9:33
  employees might use this, how employees want to use this, and either set
• 9:37
  up training through something like app learn or however else you want to enable people.
• 9:43
  And that kind of links me to the other point in Tim's article that
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  I liked was make training employee friendly, Like, really think about the human
• 9:50
  beings on the other side of the project who have to use this, And
• 9:52
  I think if you layer that in, which is what app learn does,
• 9:56
  then your project's going to be more successful or has a higher likelihood of being
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  successful. That would be kind of my take on it is. I think
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  that that Tim's article and also app Learn and everything we're kind of working on
• 10:09
  with them, it brings the human factor even to more prominence in the project,
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  and I think helps it be able to think about that human factor and
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  be able to take action and really create processes that weren't for people and make
• 10:24
  it. Think about it. We live this in our daily lives right.
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  Think about when teams changes without awareness, it just drops on us, or
• 10:31
  where did my mute button go? Or where did the screen layout is different?
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  And just think about how we would adopt that change if we had some
• 10:41
  notice that it was coming and a little prompter to say here's your mute button
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  and here's the layout of the screen. I think it's just we live at
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  daily the struggles of adopting something new without wearing awareness totally. Tim, I
• 10:52
  absolutely hate it when a new piece of software, just like pops up.
• 10:54
  Teams is a great example. The new Teams just opened on my laptop one
• 10:58
  day. It's like, wait, what is this? And for my laptop,
• 11:01
  for some reason, it just does not recognize my microphone the new Teams.
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  So I've spoken to it and they're like, don't worry, we're not
• 11:07
  going to force you. We know the issue exists. You can still use
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  the old teams and I think that that's like, I'm happy to switch to
• 11:15
  new Teams once it's ready for my device, But if they forced me onto
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  the new one and then I was just unable to use my microphone at worked,
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  like, that's that's obviously not a good solution. And Suan, I
• 11:28
  know you were a person who actually more than anyone, alerted us, probably
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  because you published the piece two Teams pressure article back back last year. And
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  I think certain kind of vein of thought in that article stood out to you,
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  right around incentivizing digital adoption in the employee base and the ways that can
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  be done. Talk to us about that kind of employee level encouragement that the
• 11:56
  teams can strategize with. Yeah, for sure, two of those points stuck
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  out to me were incentivizing things and maybe even gamifying something to get folks to
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  adopt a tool. I think it makes it a little bit more engaging than
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  just force feeding them. I've done this so with projects here at next Think
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  and then in previous employers with e learning projects. Any sort of gamification you
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  can add to it just makes it much more engaging and as well just when
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  you're trying to teach someone anything, whether it's a software tool or even back
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  in school. I've done this in the past with other companies where I've tried
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  to base like a training methodology and something called the Blooms Taxonomy of Learning.
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  It was developed by a fellow called Benjamin Bloom who's an educational psychologist, and
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  it's essentially just like if you envision a pyramid. It starts with the most
• 12:52
  basic steps, which is repetition remembering things, and then you move up to
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  understanding, applying, analyzing, valuating, and eventually creating something. So when
• 13:01
  you have full knowledge of any area, you're able to kind of apply it
• 13:05
  and create that thing. And I think that's important whether you're learning how to
• 13:11
  use a new tool in business or you're in university or in life. And
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  that's that's something we try to apply with the Deck certificates that we have online,
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  and I've done it at other places. And then I'll just finish with
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  this. The other point that stuck out to me from Tim's article was about
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  gathering routine feedback. We kind of mentioned it already, but it is super
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  important. When we rolled out the deck SERTs, we did that with a
• 13:33
  pilot group just to make sure that I was going in the right direction and
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  that you know, this was something that would be scalable, And that's so
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  useful once you do bring it to a larger audience, just to kind of
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  make sure that you know you're delivering things that people expect and want to learn
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  from. You integrate in the deck SERTs into your answers so smoothly shown.
• 13:56
  Because you would like to draw attention to anything in particular, I feel like
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  I would never do that now, No, I would never do dexerts exerts
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  exerts them on the show. Yeah, let's take a quick quick aside for
• 14:09
  listeners. There are two new deck certifications live right there are somewhat new.
• 14:16
  Yeah, they're they're up there on the deck hub. You can access them
• 14:20
  and maybe we'll send out some more campaigns around them link links in the show
• 14:28
  notes as ever, listeners, So Honor, I feel like this whole area
• 14:33
  is kind of teased up nicely to the question testing validation and and and getting
• 14:39
  employee feedback coming back into it, What are your thoughts on this theme at
• 14:46
  large and in those areas in particular. Yeah, I love everything everyone else
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  has said so far about the importance of understanding the human side of change management,
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  the importance of getting feedback both before you start a change, during with
• 15:07
  pilots, and after. And I think that testing and really coming up with
• 15:11
  a testing program as part of your change management plan takes a lot of the
• 15:16
  guesswork out of that. I think people often can see collecting qualitative feedback as
• 15:24
  this very nebulous thing, but it really doesn't have to be, and I
• 15:26
  think it's much more effective when it is part of this structured plan. As
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  Tim mentions a little bit towards the end of the article, right like,
• 15:37
  make sure you have a program plan that scales to your organization and that includes
• 15:43
  all of your feedback mechanisms. So one of the things that I really like
• 15:48
  is really emphasizing that before, during, and after, So before you even
• 15:52
  start to roll out, it's really great to get a temperature check, right
• 15:56
  Because while there is an upfront cost on the human side of making a change,
• 16:00
  that can vary a lot, right, Like, if you have a
• 16:03
  team that's having a particularly severe pain point with the software. They may be
• 16:07
  very excited and willing to make a change, whereas their colleagues you don't experience
• 16:11
  that particular problem, might be more reluctant. So you can focus a lot
• 16:15
  more of your say, education efforts and incentivization to those teams that maybe are
• 16:23
  bearing more cost and less benefit as opposed to teams that are getting benefit.
• 16:29
  Can be your evangelizers, right, they can be the ones who are really
• 16:34
  helping to charge the height machine. So that's one of the benefits of collecting
• 16:40
  feedback beforehand and then having a structured mechanism where, for example, you have
• 16:45
  a set of questions, maybe something very short and simple. I like to
• 16:51
  tell people you know your ideal feedback survey is under five questions, where you
• 16:56
  can send that to people as you roll out the pilot and after the rollout,
• 17:02
  ideally at intervals so you can see whether the adoption has been successful.
• 17:07
  So you can look both at adoption numbers and at adoption metrics. Does the
• 17:11
  pain go away after three months? Six months? Great, your project was
• 17:17
  successful. The tools you're using to educate people are successful. Keep doing that.
• 17:21
  Is it not going away? Well, then you need to know that,
• 17:22
  because otherwise you run the risk of spending a lot of money on expensive
• 17:26
  shelfware. So having those repeated questions that you use the same the same exact
• 17:34
  questions each time gives you a way of benchmarking your progress over time. And
• 17:40
  so that's the benefit of having this very structured approach to what can feel like
• 17:44
  a very nebulous sort of process of collecting feedback. Wonderful when you think about
• 17:49
  the big picture and the kind of think the emergence of digital adoption processes within
• 17:56
  there, do you think about as like an expansion a dex something's novel coming
• 18:03
  into it, or sort of more of a natural extension of what's already being
• 18:07
  done. And what do you think the general direction of travel points to in
• 18:11
  terms of what we consider to be digital employee experience with this kind of novelty
• 18:18
  entering the picture. I think it's honestly a combination of those, and which
• 18:22
  one seems most salient. It's going to depend on your point of view,
• 18:26
  right, So for somebody like me, the connection seems perfectly natural. And
• 18:30
  I've worked with a number of people, including some folks among our customers who
• 18:36
  have that experience, right, We have some amazing customers who have written articles
• 18:40
  for us about their science background and how that informs the way they approach it.
• 18:45
  Right, they have this really lovely article about how the IT landscape is
• 18:52
  like an ecosystem and you can observe it in similar ways. So I think
• 18:56
  having that perspective is a huge advantage. But even if it is novel to
• 19:00
  you, there are so many great tools available to make that connection and to
• 19:07
  start to integrate that part of the process. So I think that yeah,
• 19:11
  I'll just expand on some of the points that some of my teammates have made.
• 19:18
  The baseline up front, as I said earlier, fix your existing foundation,
• 19:22
  but also get that baseline measurement and sentiment, get the feedback up front,
• 19:26
  so you've got the baseline both technical and sentiment wise, and then as
• 19:30
  you roll and as you wrap up, make sure that you're measuring that sentiment
• 19:37
  and feedback along with the adoption metrics. Along with the technical metrics. There's
• 19:42
  a wealth of information that's valuable to it, if not only to make the
• 19:47
  existing project better as you wrap up, but for learnings for the next one.
• 19:52
  There's it I think has an ability to earned from their past mistakes and
• 20:03
  build on based on an employee feedback, build on that to make the next
• 20:08
  one better. Excellent, Thanks Tim, And yeah, so a few things
• 20:12
  came up, and of course of that episode, which I think people might
• 20:15
  want to follow up on. The first is we'll include links for all of
• 20:19
  them we've got. We'll have the links to our discussion with Andrew Hewitt,
• 20:23
  which touches on some of these themes. As I said at the top,
• 20:26
  we'll have links to more information about Next Link's Apple acquisition and insights into the
• 20:33
  plans and significance of that. And we will also have links to Tim's article
• 20:40
  that we've been discussing today. And last but not least, for those new
• 20:42
  certifications or new Ish deck certifications which Sean so smoothly plugged, and they are
• 20:49
  for sustainability and agile decks skills, so lots to delve into. If you
• 20:56
  enjoy this discussion and we look forward to seeing you all next time, Tim,
• 21:02
  Meghan, Oreana, Sean. Thanks so much and see you soon.
• 21:07
  To make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in
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• 21:15
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• 21:18
  Just tap the number of stars you think the podcast deserves. If you'd like
• 21:22
  to learn more about how next Think can help me improve your digital employee experience,
• 21:26
  head over to next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
• 21:30
  Until next time.