New Technology Adoption’This Time Its Personal

We know the statistics an estimated 70 percent of change efforts fail (Kotter) and an estimated 80 to 95 percent of new product launches dont create significant traction in the market, with early stage companies fairing the worst.

Unsurprisingly it is hard to convince organizations to adopt new technology, particularly for companies who are still building market presence and dont yet have an established and trusted brand.  New equals risk and even with a superior solution organizations fear that the adoption process will be costly, time consuming and will not deliver the promised benefits case. At the heart is a concern that a critical mass of individuals will not embrace new technology beyond the innovators and early adopters, they may try it and revert back to old ways of working or resist it completely. As such organizations often remain with legacy systems and products, which don’t fully meet the business requirement.

The technology adoption curve is shifting much more towards the individual personal adoption now leads the way.  Psychologically we know individuals naturally resist change and many factors effect rate of adoption: economic, social, organizational, political and psychological.  The challenge today is there is a lot more change to embrace constant change is the norm and the volume of information to process and action is growing significantly, along with the number of devices and platforms accelerated all the time by increasing social media and mobile adaptability.  To meet an organizations needs a number of individuals need to adopt quickly to form a critical mass to outsmart the competition.

Certain fast growth markets have demonstrated that they will accelerate technology adoption if it optimizes their lives. For example, Africa’s adoption of cell phones.  Penetration of cell phone usage in some African cities exceeds 100 percent (International Journalists Network) driven by the need for information, coupled with Africas rapid urbanization which is driving dramatic changes in the way people share and consume information and use it to improve their standard of living.

My own experience of introducing new technology is whilst it is undertaken with the very best intentions it can often be expensive as the results fail to stick post the initial engagement.   There are lots of change management models, tools, books and templates – many of which involve aspects such as communication and engagement, training, behavior and culture change and benefits realization.  This effort still fails to equip an organization over the long term to increase adoption of new technology.  Reliability, lack of time and confidence to learn, uncertainty that using it will make a difference and lack of support tend to be the reasons cited for why new technologies are not adopted in the long term.  However, the main issue is perhaps that change management effort still predominantly focuses at the organizational and not the individual level.

In addition, in line with technology becoming more modular, plug and play and easier to consume, change management to support end user adoption needs to reflect the new ways technology is consumed.   Change needs to be constant, modular and evolutionary with fewer big-bang transformations.

So what can be done to accelerate end user adoption of new technology and make the change sticky, so it has a long-term impact?  From my experience the following implementation phases need to be considered.

Market Conditioning test and prepare the market

• Design intuitive products – Products need to be designed to be intuitive, engaging and easy to learn so they are accessible to a broader range of users and reduce the costly change management requirement.
• Validate technology with the market –  Before product launch there needs to be various forms of market validation (e.g. focus groups, surveys and product demos) to gather insights as to the receptiveness of end users to the product.
• Spell out the benefits – End users need to be convinced that the new technology is so much better than existing products that it is worth the effort to engage and learn. This is not just engaging the typical early adopters but targeting sales and marketing campaigns to engage the majority.

Enablement Engage the Market

• Develop supporting thought leadership – Product designers need to develop thought leadership in the form of white papers, blogs, podcasts, webcasts and conference presentations, supported by social media to differentiate their solution in the market place from the competition.

Product Launch  – Validate the Business Model

• Use product launch to validate business model and prove business value – This is the opportunity to test the minimum viable product (MVP) against the customer requirement.  The key is to establish feedback mechanisms and integrate customers requirements into future design.
• Allow users to immerse themselves in the technology – Change models need to focus on individual trials of product so users have time on their own devices to explore, use and ultimately integrate into their roles, supported by an organizations bring your own device (BYOD) strategy.

Rolling Launch a Continuous Interactive Drumbeat

• Build continuous customer engagement – Solution providers need to continue to engage customers with enablement support and updated product features based on feedback, plus have new products on horizon – so end users engage in the larger brand potential.
• Drive marketplace eminence – There is a need to continue to engage the broader marketplace via relationships with analysts, media and key influencers who become long term advocates for the product solution.

Enable the Organization to Support Long-term Adoption

• Build a group of product champions – Securing a core group of product champions is important who then become the seed product evangelists and influence in the organization to secure widespread adoption and provide support for less confident end users.
• Secure personal leadership support – Business Leaders need to adopt the technology and become visible role models and catalysts for change across the organization.
• Build a technology adoption competence – Organizations need to have technology adoption as a key competence and target for all organization members, which is embedded into employee selection, development, succession and reward.
• Integrate product into systems, processes and ways of working – This ensures it is harder for an organization to detach from the product and move to a competitor, even for non-mission critical solutions.

To remain competitive individuals, organizations and economies, must learn quickly how to leverage new technologies that offer benefits over traditional products. Large-scale, organization led change management models no longer offer the rapid scale-up and stickiness required. Rapid technology adoption now needs to start at the individual not the organizational level and change management approaches and models need to reflect this.  Individuals need to be able to immerse themselves in new technology on their own devices and influence the design so it really works for them.  New technology adoption programs critically need to be able to answer:

1. What level of individual adoption do I need to build a critical mass to influence change?
2. What messages do I need to use to capture individual interest and awareness?
3. How will I engage both technical and business users?
4. What support mechanisms do I need to put in place to enable adoption?
5. How should I sustain the change over the long-term?

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