Feb 2, 2021
Acceptance issues and project work
Why ideas fail how accepting changes in your organisation works
Your new eLearning platform is online. No one uses it. The feedback of the very few users is a catastrophe. How could this happen?
Implemented changes do not fail due to a lack of technical knowledge. It often is a lack of acceptance after a change looks completed.
How can you make sure that your changes not to end with the same issues? How is it possible to convince people of a much-needed change project? Why do some leaders seem to have a motivated group of followers while others struggle to meet minimum criteria?
Tech vs Soft Skills
“It is never a tech project”. This phrase, of course, is an exaggeration. When you want to implement, e.g. a new eLearning tool, you need to have the expertise on board. Otherwise, you must hire external people who bring in the experience and knowledge you need. However, everything you implement must focus on the user’s needs. Training, coaching, consultancy, professional, speaking, events and more are aspects you need to consider to make any implementation approach a success. Unfortunately, these aspects often are deliberately ignored with statements like “We do not have the budget for it.” or “We did not plan to do anything like that.” — bad news for you here: your users will not care if you have the budget or not. They do not care if you planned to do such aspects for their acceptance and personal as well as professional development. You either make them part of your project or the project, at the very end, will fail due to a lack of user (meaning: customer) acceptance.
Leadership vs IT
“The IT often blocks everything.”. Seeing the IT as a scapegoat, unfortunately, became common practice. In many cases, it is not their fault when the department shows such behaviour. Of course, you need good leaders for a well-running IT department.
Moreover, it would be best to have acceptance on board level and a general understanding of IT on your organisation’s senior leadership level. When you never appreciate how well your IT works but immediately you blame the IT department for everything which may go wrong, they will, of course, block out every risk they might even theoretically see.
Outstanding leadership makes a great IT environment possible.
Lousy leadership will make the IT department the least popular department in your organisation.
Communication
Investing in marketing and sales is a common practice. Your organisation will not think of approaching a market via marketing and sales without the proper budget allocated.
Unfortunately, when it comes to internal projects, the idea of common sense suddenly seems to disappear. Many senior leaders take it for granted that people will accept projects and their results because their leaders told everybody to do so. This behaviour might have worked in the past, but especially in nowaday’s times with younger generations in the workplace, unquestioned followership is not common practice anymore — for a good reason. It would help if you sold the idea internally as you sell products and ideas to your customers. This aspect is why you need Internal Marketing for every change. This marketing must come along with an appropriate budget. If you refrain from doing so, your project will fail. If you invest wisely, the Return on Invest will be very high. People do not want to obey orders in the workplace blindly. People want to see the advantage and the benefit for them with every change which takes place.
Invest wisely, and you will earn a great return.
