There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to change management. There are many tools and techniques. It’s critical that you consider the current state of your team, your culture, and the learning tools that work best for your organization.
To kick off this three-part series on change management, we talked about the basics of change management.
This second post will focus on four core change management principles related to Salesforce implementations. But note, the principles reviewed below can be applied to any impactful change your organization may go through.
- Communication
- Understanding the impact of change
- Creating opportunities for reflection and sharing
- Celebrating
People First
Understanding your people is a critical consideration before you get started.
Taking a people-first approach to change management prioritizes who will be on the receiving end of your plan: your people.
Principle #1: Say it, say it again, and then repeat yourself
Everyone is busy. Life happens. People miss meetings or critical emails. For all of these reasons (and more), you will rarely be able to say something only once and have it reach your whole team.
Part of good change management is communication. This means that you will often have to repeat the most critical points over and over for the team to truly absorb them. One measure of success for this is if you can hear another person successfully repeat the point, to someone else, in their own words. This signifies that the message has been heard and digested.
Principle #2: Consider the Impact
In Salesforce, there are incredibly impactful changes you can make in just a few clicks. The size of the effort or investment does not always indicate the size of the impact on the change to your team.
When crafting a change management plan, consider carefully what this change will do for your users, what they are giving up, what they are gaining, and how long it will take to normalize with a new set of tools and processes. Understanding the impact will help you pace your rollout and set appropriate expectations for user learning and adoption.
Principle #3: Feedback and Reflection are Key
We’ve talked a lot about how we communicate to the team, but we cannot neglect how they will talk back to us. So, in our last post of this series, we discuss leveraging support channels as a key tool for change management.
Creating open, two-way communication ensures that users can get their questions and needs answered quickly. This reduces frustration and improves acceptance of the new tool.
Principle #4: Party!
Have fun! Implementing the Salesforce Platform or a new tool within it is exciting.
Don’t be afraid to have some fun with your plan and with your team.
- Decorate your coffee corner!
- Create a zoom background!
- Play Salesforce Jeopardy!
- Incentivize participation (and fun competition) with a nice gift card to the first person who closes an opportunity in Salesforce.
A good plan isn’t dry and boring. It also should feel like your team and your culture.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve covered four core principles of change management, in our next (and last in the series) post, we’ll discuss using various tools and techniques in a people-centered way.
An excellent resource to further your change management understanding is this Salesforce Trail on how to use the LEVERS model to foster change in an organization.
Red Argyle is a very people-centered organization. We understand that the tools and features we build are used by real people every day. So book a time to talk about how we can help your business grow, and your internal teams succeed!
