The people side of digital transformation - interview opportunity for the Work Life blog

[Claire Cook]

Hello! I'm working on a blog post for Work Life that focuses on the importance of investing in the people and practices part of a digital transformation. I'd love to understand more about the change management strategies and practices you are implementing to support your teams and staff through a digital transformation. Please share advice/thoughts/etc in the comments! 

[Christine P_ Dela Rosa]

One of the things I'm seeing, @Claire Cook, is that change management is emotionally taxing because the resistance to change is high. A lot of changemakers' jobs is managing anticipation, difficulties with the actual change, and then sustaining change. But who's job is it to support the changemakers? It's kind of like how people who hold space for others also need people to hold space for them.

From those who have tested Atlassian Team Playbook the "stakeholder communication" Play, I've also learned how much over-communication is necessary. It's not just a hard job to communicate what's happening, but it's thinking about communicating what's the come, how to solicit feedback, responding to feedback, and then communicating actual updates all along the way. So another way to support folks is to help them prepare for such a hefty communication journey. It sounds like in retrospect, that's an area that lots think could have been improved.

And finally, ambassadors are essential to any good digital transformation. I think any tips on identifying those folks, helping them flex their skills, and multiplying behaviors like that would be helpful. How do you not only find these people, but grow them?

Excited to see your piece when it comes out. Do link it back here for us to see once it's live! 

[Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__]

Hi @Claire Cook , I can confirm that resistance to change is so high in most of the cases. @Christine P_ Dela Rosa  already mentioned it is great to find some innovators in the teams who have mind set more to the future.

I think there is at least one more thing to do... I think that even resistant people can hear when something help them to do a better job. So you need to present them as much advantages as possible...and if there are some disadvantages, they often look bad during discussions, but if you collect the good data, you can find out that disadvantage is not so bad as you thought.

[Vero Rivas]

Hi @Claire Cook 

    Resistance to change is something innate in people, basically because change is always scary, dizzying, but when you try to change something, you have to involve people from the first minute, wrap them up and make them understand that they are the most important thing, when " you impose" a change almost always does not work, when you do it in an inclusive way success is not guaranteed but at least the resistance is less

Cheers