What is the biggest obstacle to using the product?
So you work for a design firm and 80% of your population uses an Apple Mac. Somehow in the procurement process, you forgot to ask your talent management vendor if they support Safari. Turns out that your vendor only support MS Internet Explorer. While I honestly can’t see this happening, I’m sure it does on less obvious levels and processes.
Perhaps in another example you simply have some major senior contributors that are acting as obstacles in your change management process. Identifying the way to approach these individuals and either neutralize them or convert them is not simple, but can be done.
Obstacles come in many forms, but the root causes are usually quite simple. Either you’ve done poor change management, or you’ve done a poor job in the requirements and design part of the project. The good thing is that once you’ve identified the obstacles, it’s usually fixable.
As always, when evaluating those small areas where a few people use process and technology differently, figure out if these are real opportunities or simply outliers from the norm. If a global change is warranted, don’t forget the change management process to run concurrently with the implementation.
