My top 3 tips for ensuring adoption after go live

What are my 3 top tips for ensuring adoption from stakeholders, leaders and teams of the change after go live? In my Leading Successful Change program, in Module 5: Measuring Success and Embed, we go through all the stuff around change measures and success metrics. Some are pretty traditional, others a bit out there and different. If you can link the change to having a direct impact on customer experience and customer satisfaction, which has a direct impact on sales, that’s always great. You can also do it on team experience and team satisfaction, which may have costs and you could get data from HR on the value of retention and the costs of attrition (people leaving the business) and hiring. 

Adoption Tip #1: Manage “through” the change

In Module 5 and a little in Module 6: Inspiring Through Change, you also learn about inspiring through change, which is the T of the VIBRANT Change Framework that I use to guide my students through my LSC program. Managing “through” change means paving the way for future changes, but also it is managing through that individual change as well.

The Project Manager literally might be contracted up until a week or two after go live and then boom, they're off on another project. I’ve worked on projects where the project literally hasn't even gone live yet and people are already assigned and allocated to other work! That project ended up having to stand up a mini embedding project, because they were like, “This has not landed properly, we have to do more work here.” You need that evidence of those metrics. Listening sessions and feedback within the first 2-4 weeks after a go live is essential because you have that evidence and can go, “Hey, we actually need to do some more work.”

It's okay to have to train more after go live. It's okay to have to set up more rhythms or ways of working after go live. There might be new roles that have to get stood up because actually, people need to have X, Y, Z. In one change, they set up little group clusters around each state and that only happened in Embed, it wasn’t identified in the original project. By having change success metrics that need to be tracked and measured beyond go live (so the definition of success is not project delivery and project go live), it keeps you relevant because you’re like, “Cool, in 3 months’ time we are going to do this pulse check, in 6 months’ time we need to see the customer satisfaction results.” And so it helps you to keep that conversation going and start to seed that you are not going to just drop everything after go live. 

The likelihood is that because you are working on projects, you will get allocated and assigned if you are staying within the same company. If you're leaving the business? Too bad, so sad, you can do a great handover and recommend what needs to continue beyond go live and where you think there's still opportunities, which is what I’ve done. If you're going to stay in the organisation, you can keep a few rhythms going afterwards. You can keep tabs and checks and I recommend that you do. It's not until maybe 3-6 months after a project launches when you get the real gold around how it's going, 1-2 weeks is not long enough. People are still in transition. The dust hasn't settled yet, but that's when a lot of projects close… which blows my mind! But usually the objective of a Project Manager is to go live. Once they've done that, they’re like, “Well, why would I stay after 2 weeks post?”

So really look at managing “through” the change and how you can set things up. Start the conversations at change planning. Say it’s 3 months before you're going to go live, seed the fact that you want to do a pulse check 3 months after even then. Don't spring it on people a week before go live when they're all running around like headless chooks. It’s why I say with VIBRANT Change, show people “through” all the way through from the very first conversations - I’ll drop continuous improvement into stakeholder sessions and stakeholder meetings from the first time I meet people.

Adoption Tip #2: Keep rhythms owned and going

The second tip or advice that I'd have for adoption after go live is if you've got a Change Champion network or Subject Matter Experts or Process Owners, make sure they're set up with an ongoing rhythm, that that's being built as a community and a culture rather than as a workshop or activity just for the change. They can be part of the people who keep leading it moving forward. And so again, as part of your handover, you might go, “Great, I’m handing the baton over to this particular Change Champion.” I’ve done that where I had a culture network on a big global cultural transformation I was working on. And so I’ve gone, “Yep, cool. Here's who's going to do more of that facilitating work after I’ve gone.” Keep those rhythms going even if you as the Change Manager move on. That would be the same for any change networks or advisory committees because they can all really help out around continuous improvement. They can be the brain's trust when you go to do continuous improvement at say the 6 month mark or the 12 month mark. 

And give reasons for them to meet even beyond the go live. I think teaching capability is a great way to get bums in seats. If you go, “Every quarter, you're going to come together as a Change Champion community and you're going to learn a new skill.” It's a great way of getting bums in seats, because people are like, “Oh good, I get something for free.” Then at the same time you can harness them to be like, “How are things going in your business area?” You don't have to do that as the Change Manager. You might have moved on, but it's handing over to somebody to keep some of those rhythms going at least for 6-12 months. And then sometimes those things take off and have a life of their own and they're there 5 years later. So, communities or networks that you've set up, try and harness them beyond the change. 

Adoption Tip #3: Be sure future changes won’t break yours

What's probably going to be your bigger issue is that another change will get planned that is going to break the change that you just did. It's not about change sticking, it's about that change then breaking because something else comes in. That’s about those levels of program and portfolio management. 

Before you finish your work on the project, try and get a forward view of what else is happening in the pipeline and what could impact. It's absolutely okay for things to affect and to shift and change your project, but projects are often working in silos, their own little dark corner, coming up with the “best thing in the whole world”. And literally $2 million has just been spent over here and the thing that they're implementing is either exactly the same or it's going to completely unwind and break what you put in. If before you close, you can get a forward view of all the changes coming down the pipeline for the next, say 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, then you can give guidance to the business, whoever you're handing over to, you can say, “Hey, heads up this project over here that's just been approved or this one that's over here, they might have impacts.” 

And you can introduce the projects to each other. I’ve done this before where I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m heading off, but you might want to talk to this person, you're going to have these projects happening. I think you could really learn the lessons from the one that's just launched.” And then the one that's just launched can help be embedded by the one that's coming down the line and try and set up some of those introductions before you go.

Lata xx

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