In large-scale transformation programs, it takes time to get the majority of members on board. It has always been challenging to convince employees to use new technology or a new process. Even Microsoft has a tough time for people to adopt their technologies. Microsoft commissioned an IDC study and found that developing Adoption and Change Management (ACM) services enable partners to take advantage of a US$9.5 billion market for change management related to its, which grew at 7 per cent annually, to drive customer success and lifetime value.[i]

The business world is highly dynamic; in simple words, it is continuously changing. These changes can often be extremely complex because a business organisation, no matter how small or large, needs to make crucial changes that can have a far-reaching impact on various aspects of the business. These changes can range anywhere from altering the organisational structure of the business model to introducing new digital collaboration platforms like Office 365 or Google Suites. Only very few organisations can manage through these major changes; a large fraction of business enterprises fails to implement a change successfully. A study by Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, showcases that for a business, about 50% of all organisational changes fail. Further, for the rest of the 50%, only 34% of changes have definite success while the remaining 16% have mixed results.[ii] For contemporary enterprises that plan to stay in business, these statistics do not seem quite promising.

Before delving deeper into what can be done to ensure the success rate of organisational changes, it is vital to understand why the current method of managing these changes is failing. According to Brent Gleeson, a writer for Forbes, a major roadblock that stands in the way of successful change management is the fatigue that accompanies the coping with change. Employees often get highly discouraged as failures of past change ventures “plague their mind” and they do not find themselves ready to deal with another one (Gleeson). Furthermore, when new tools are introduced for employees to make use of, they often find it strenuous to understand how to use those tools and get frequently stuck due to not finding immediate assistance. This fatigue shows that change management is frequently not planned for efficiency and the strategy that forms the basis of the management process is rather weak. The tactical and internal impacts of the management process are often overlooked, and the idea of whom the process will impact an organisation is often ignored. In simple words, the culture surrounding the environment where the change needs to be implemented is poor and lacks motivated individuals who are crucial to the process. Thus, if the change management process is weak internally, its impacts will be even softer externally. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to transform the change management process and the perceptions of the internal individuals, which is the need of the hour for countless businesses in the world.

As discussed earlier, while many businesses deal with their flawed change management process that results from poor strategy, others are beginning to adopt the new fascinating technique of playful experience. At INSEAD, I was closely working on EIS Simulation, a change management simulation game used by leaders to immerse in challenging real-life environments and understand the dynamics of change. After leaders play the game, a change management workshop is facilitated by an external change management guru fostering excitement and energy in the folks, which finally leads to a change. 

Playful Ideas to Improve Communication

Steve Jobs has always been successful in creating an emotional connection with his audience and telling the narrative in the form of a story. However, many leaders have failed to take advantage of storytelling to drive the Digital Transformation agenda. During those initiatives, you need a high level of employee buy-in. If people are not ready to change, then it can derail the most carefully planned digital strategy and could make you lose the million dollars that you have spent on transformation initiatives. You need to communicate; clearly, the value it would bring to every individual and what would be at stake if the company fails to implement this. Poor communication is the root cause of change management failure. Playful strategy can improve communication by adding storytelling elements, and it can also improve by explaining the initiative to your people through interactive and engaging animations.

Those stories can inspire employees and change their perceptions. Those tools can enable everyone to create their own stories, and relate to others’, making them feel that they are a part of something bigger. It would allow them to share their values and how they are contributing to achieving organisational success. Now, how do you empower your employees to tell stories? Gamification techniques can be used to recognise their stories that have been seen by many people, and their ideas may be considered for implementation. You can also gamify the communication strategy of change management. At the time of awareness campaigns, end users can visit booths/stalls and play interactive and virtual games like Pokémon, to attain an introduction to new tools or information regarding the change.

Incentivizing and Awarding Power Users to drive adoption

Gamification can be used to create contests and award power-users. Recruiting power-users for building champion programs can help to improve usage and adoption. Eric Von Hippel has coined the term ‘lead user’; lead users are those who need to adopt the product or services earlier than the mass market. You need to involve those leading users in a play to identify the future needs of your internal customers, and it is best to engage them at an early phase of the introduction of the new tools. 

Gamified platform to improve the effectiveness of training

Using gamification platforms to train end-users on new productscan help them to understand how they could use that product to do their day-to-day operations effectively and improve productivity.

In large organisations, millions of dollars have already been invested in hundreds of digital applications. After purchasing digital platforms like ERP, CRM platform, HR software or Office 365, companies always have difficulty in onboarding users and improving the adoption of those platforms. To solve this issue, companies can launch a digital adoption platform for providing contextual assistance whenever employees use any sophisticated technology platform. An intelligent adoption platform can come up with a simulated environment in which people can be asked to perform some tasks related to those digital tools. An artificial intelligence-based game can be embedded that provides real-time instructions to enable users to perform any software task.

There can be common game players for all enterprise applications, and this can be automatically launched by a browser plugin whenever a user is accessing or performing tasks on any platform. This way, you are pushing the information which is related to the task of the person who has to do it. Such playful techniques help in quick onboarding and enable players to retrieve and learn necessary information whenever they need it.

Does your organisation already use any such solution to help your employee in assisting and providing contextual assistance for the entire digital technology stack? If not, then CIO should start approaching consultants to help them find the right solution so that they can utilise the millions of dollars that are already invested in multiple software tools and accelerate the adoption of those tools.

[i] https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/changemanagementframework

[ii] https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/insights/organizational-change-management