All Aboard the Innovation Train: 5 Hints for a Smooth Ride

It’s easy for team leaders and managers to see the value in adopting a new and improved collaboration or project management solution or process, but it can often be a challenge to get the rest of the department or organization to buy into it. To get everyone on board with these executive-backed initiatives, you need to make a few things happen. We’ve pulled a few of our favorite tips and would love to hear from you about your own tips and tricks!

• Make it personal – Oftentimes initiatives are introduced for what they will do for the organization as a whole and how it will benefit the bottom line. Of course, gaining crucial insights into projects and managing workloads helps the company as a whole, but for true employee adoption throughout, you need to articulate the value in what this new tool means for your employees themselves. Will the new initiative help them to execute projects more quickly? Does it give them better abilities to manage others and track their own tasks? How will the extra work to learn the tool upfront help individual workload in the long run? Whatever the benefits may be, it is essential that you make them known to all.
• Is this thing on? – Provide the proper resources and training for employees to adopt the new technology or process. By firing the starting gun without proper training, your employees will be lost and can become unwilling adopters. Worse yet, insufficient training could lead to incorrect use of the tool that may actually slow down, rather than streamline, operations.  Investing upfront in proper training will give them the tools and confidence to succeed and integrate new tools into their daily work life.
• Do you have my back? – Come from a position of strength when introducing new tools to your organization. A helpful tip is to get some key figures to support the initiative before it is introduced to the entire organization. Speak to a choice group of leaders and employees to plant the seeds of innovation leading up to the change.
• Yeah, but does it work? – Have examples of other companies and departments where the same tool or similar initiative has worked. You can even bring in workers from other departments to articulate their own experience and answer any questions.
• Now what? – You’d like to see your investment pay off in the long term, so be open to and solicit continued feedback from users, and DON’T FORGET to share information back with contributors to reward their contributions and involve them in the results of the process.