Latest Contributions by MichaelGreen

Corporate Culture can be a brick wall that stops progress or just a boulder in the stream of work depending on how you interact with it! At this year’s GIS Manager and Leaders Summit, we had the opportunity to openly discuss the value of persisting through and adapting approaches consistent with corporate culture. Clearly GIS Managers carry a passion for geospatial awesomeness, yet it can be challenging to bring others in their organization along for the journey of expanding the value gained by GIS. I had fun exploring this opportunity for geospatial leaders to share their experiences to Thrive in the face of Adversity as they grew their Geospatial Programs within their organizations. Each successful leaders shared their experiences and had very different approaches to adapting to their corporate culture. Here are their key points shared:   Louis Hill – Director of GIS Administration for Planning and Development Services of Kenton County Adapt your approach for each team you engage to match their culture to minimize resistant mindsets and expand GIS without disrupting their flow. Build trust through earnest intentions for their team’s best outcomes Deliver consistency over intensity by following up and maintaining a schedule of touchpoints with these teams. This builds further trust through reliable outreach. Jennifer Lana – Previous GIS Manager for Cobb County Earn executive support through stakeholder growth by building a strong user community of practice. Include executives in solutions to challenges within the business. Shift your language away from technical talk to business conversations. Trisha Brush – LOJIC Director, Louisville Jefferson County Information Consortium Take the time now to build a team mindset that serves the team in later crisis. Lean on your team and trust they can deliver on crucial activities. Be intentional and model the desired behaviors you want for your team.       ... View more

There are many impactful change management components that can increase a technology solutions’ adoption rate among users.  People coming to UC get excited about so many new capacities or expanded utilization of their platform that will bring value to their organization.  Leverage these components to increase your success rate: Preparing for Change is a strategic activity that should happen at the beginning of each project where you create strong alignment between people, the goals of the project, and the sponsors who will advocate for the technology’s use.  Managing Change is a series of initiatives that are integrated into your project plan to assist people in accepting and embracing the new capabilities or workflows of each project.  Reinforcing Change is the best practice to cement the new workflows into an everyday routine.  People interacting with technology brings your geospatial efforts to fruition.  Come by the Guiding Your Geospatial Journey area to talk with experts about people focused change management activities that can enhance and increase your technology adoption rates.  Additionally, here are several people-oriented sessions that are happening at UC: Technical Workshops Tuesday, July 9                                                                                                         Location: SDCC - Rooms 8:30 am Helping the Workforce Survive and Thrive in Times of Technology Change SDCC, Room 16 A Wednesday, July 10                                                                                         Location: SDCC - Rooms 8:30 am Get the C-Suite’s Attention with Strategic Workforce Planning SDCC, Room 31 A 1:00 pm Increase GIS Adoption the Agile Way SDCC, Ballroom 06 F 2:30 pm Workforce Development Planning in Three Simple Steps SDCC, Ballroom 06 F 4:00 pm Helping the Workforce Survive and Thrive in Times of Technology Change SDCC, Room 10   Spotlight Talks                                                Tuesday, July 9                             Location: SDCC – Expo: Guiding Your Geospatial Journey Spotlight Theater       10:30 am Making It Real: Use Training to Make Your Tech Dreams Come True   Wednesday, July 10                          Location: SDCC – Expo: Guiding Your Geospatial Journey Spotlight Theater       4:00 pm Focus on Training to Go the Distance     Expo Area Stop by to connect 1-on-1 with Esri Staff and talk more about Change Management and Adoption Strategies in our Guiding Your Geospatial Journey area. Tuesday, July 9                9:00 AM–6:00 PM Wednesday, July 10        9:00 AM–6:00 PM Thursday, July 11             8:00 AM–4:00 PM ... View more

Planning a new technology deployment that will impact how people perform their work? Here are five ways to influence adoption. In consultations with Esri customers, I have met many GIS managers and senior management who feel the Esri technology they already have could be used in new ways to solve business challenges. Their challenge is figuring out how to influence large groups of people to adopt geospatial tools—in other words, figuring out how to get people to change.   Through these customer engagements and research, I’ve honed in on five practical change management activities that help increase technology acceptance and use. The five activities are not coordinated steps in a process. Together they are powerful, but each on its own can lead to increased adoption. Try one or more—you may find a difference maker. 1.    Integrate a people plan into the project plan.   Adding people-focused change management to a project plan helps ensure these activities do not get moved to a later phase. If that procrastination occurs, there is a high likelihood that impacted managers and their team members will not be eager to adopt the new technology when it is deployed.  Work with the project’s primary sponsor to identify the groups that will be impacted and the people who represent those groups (line of business managers, supervisors, etc.). You will need to make a concerted effort to engage and support frontline managers so they will embrace the change and in turn, help their team members embrace the change.  This is also the time to identify the impact of the change. How many groups? How many individuals? How much will established workflows change? Scale the people-focused change effort to match the impact. Including change management in a project plan can make it easier to gain executive sponsorship. The executive’s role is to influence large groups of people toward a common goal. When you include people activities into a technology project plan, executives are more likely to be confident in supporting your effort over time. Their days are full and they are always seeking to support the right activities. 2.    Start detailed planning on day 1.   In a lot of technology implementations, people-oriented tasks are scheduled at the end of the project. This delay creates a challenge for employees who are expected to do something differently right after the technology releases. To accelerate adoption, spend time planning change management activities during the project planning and design phase. Many activities will start later in the project timeline, but planning ahead simplifies change management execution prior to, during, and after the release. You will give yourself the time needed to craft a robust plan (and adjust it as needed) to help impacted managers accept the change and make sure they have the knowledge needed to support their team members by the go-live date. The ultimate goal is to build excitement around the new solution and make sure impacted employees are eager to start using it on release day 1. 3.    Focus on the 80%.   With most change efforts, there are three groups of people: doers, tryers, and doubters. Just like a traditional bell curve, there are only a few doers and a few doubters. The majority fall into the tryer category. Focus change management activities around this group. Tryers are usually ambivalent to change. If you make it easy for them to move towards your future state, they will move. Work with managers and supervisors to engage tryers and cement new workflows into everyday activities. Once convinced that the change is positive, tryers will join the doers and you will see high adoption.  Many believe that moving doubters to doers results in complete adoption. In theory that’s true, but it’s hard to change doubter mindsets. A good compromise is to focus on one or two key influencers in the doubter group and make their experience with the new technology great. Once influential doubters become doers, they often become valuable advocates.  4.    Gamify change.   In their book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution (McChesney, Covey and Huling), the authors share three actions that help compel people to participate in achieving a goal:  Create an engaging goal. Track goal progress using lead metrics. Give people purposeful actions, and they will strive forward. A goal is engaging when it clearly communicates both the business perspective and the benefits individual team members will get from achieving it. To effectively track an engaging goal, focus on “lead metrics.” Simply put, there are lead and lag metrics. Lag metrics measure the final outcome, while lead metrics measure progress toward the final outcome. For example, if you want to lose weight, your lag metric may be to lose 5 pounds. Lead metrics could be reducing your calorie consumption by 300 calories per day or exercising 30 minutes, three days per week. Each lead metric moves you toward the final outcome.  For technology adoption a lag measure could be the number of active users. It could also be something qualitative; for example, managers report their employees are more engaged in the work they do every day, which can increase retention. For an ArcGIS deployment, lead measures could be the number of story maps that are created or used during presentations, the number of new people who view a map, or perhaps the number of times employees use a spatial analysis tool to improve their decisions. If you can, create a scoreboard that everyone can see and use it as a motivational tool to move the lead metrics higher.  5.    Be a passionate futurist.   Effective change leaders are focused on helping people adopt new technology to create a better future for the organization and themselves. Launch a change effort by creating a story that paints a clear and exciting picture of the future—and tell that story often to anyone who will listen. When you can, let people describe the future for themselves. For example, ask team members how eliminating paper-based workflows will free up their time for other work. The more they talk about how using new technology will benefit them in the future, the more the future becomes a place they want to be. Leading change requires you to do more than repeat talking points. People can sense a lackluster effort and that can negatively affect their view of the change that’s occurring. When you demonstrate real enthusiasm for the benefits the new technology will bring, you are helping to create a brighter future that everyone will look forward to. Genuine excitement is contagious. ----------------------------- What activities have you found most helpful to increase technology adoption? ... View more

This link is to a podcast that I participated in creating to discuss the principle, "Humans lead, Machines learn".  Anyone looking to lead a change effort should listen to understand the importance and impact of their role as a change leader during a digital transformation. "As you're trying to achieve business goals, technology can provide you so much, but it's what people do with that insight, do with these new workflows, it's how they embrace them and actually take advantage of them that makes the difference in your digital transformation." Please share your thoughts or points of interest from the podcast below.  Local‌ ... View more

Securing broad, consistent adoption of new technology that disrupts or completely replaces familiar workflows is hard. Addressing people-focused change management in conjunction with a technology project increases the likelihood that organizations will achieve expected results. People-focused change management will be most effective when the change team establishes a clear vision and strategy. Vision answers the questions why? and why now? Strategy articulates how the organization will achieve change. Developing the vision and strategy occurs in the Preparing for Change phase of the Prosci change management process. Together, the vision and strategy determine a set of tactics, which define what actions will be taken to achieve and sustain the change. Creating and executing tactics begins in the Managing Change phase and continues throughout the Reinforcing Change phase.  Taking the time to craft and document a strong change vision, execution strategy, and set of tactics enables managers across the organization to drive change, rather than react to how new technology impacts their teams. Preparing for Change During this phase, the change champion works closely with the executive sponsor to create a vision that defines the need for change using a people-oriented perspective. In subsequent phases, the executive sponsor will introduce and repeat the vision in regular communications about the purpose and urgency for change.  After the vision is established, the change team creates the change strategy. The strategy assists the change champion in identifying the specific people (managers and supervisors) who will be responsible for shepherding the change among individuals. Leadership uses the change strategy to identify and proactively influence any known resistance challenges before they impact the implementation phase. Managing Change As soon as the new technology is deployed, the Managing Change phase begins. Prosci defines 5 tactical plans needed to drive change. Once the tactical plans are complete, the change champion integrates change management activities into the technology project plan and follows up with managers to execute them in concert with key project milestones. Synchronizing tactical, people-focused change-management activities with the technology project implementation activities helps ensure that individuals are ready, willing, and able to embrace the new technology as soon as it is available—shortening the time to value.  Managers can influence the positive perception of new workflows so that individuals look forward to change. Individuals can embrace the vision of the future and make the choice to implement the change. Reinforcing Change For a change to become permanent, individuals must know their new workflows are supported. During this phase, the change champion assesses progress by seeking feedback from impacted individuals and managers. The feedback determines if tactics need to be adjusted to improve the success of the project. Prioritization is usually a challenge during this phase. Most teams must accomplish their mission with the least amount of resources, which causes a flurry of activity for individuals all day long. During these busy times, managers can lean on the change strategy and tactics to communicate with impacted individuals and ensure they receive effective training and coaching. When everyday activities start to intrude on the change effort, individuals can pause, remember the vision, and reorient their actions to stay aligned with the purpose of the change. When executed effectively, people-focused change management reduces the time that individuals take to embrace a change, adopt new workflows, and use new technology to make an impactful difference at their organization.      ... View more

Resistance to change is natural.  People are not always eager to jump to the newest version or utilizing new capability that might change their workflows.  What are some of the ways that you have overcome that resistance to change in order to get a high adoption rate to new parts of the ArcGIS Platform? changemanagement ... View more