Technology has long promised to make our lives better. While in some ways it has, we can all relate to yelling at our computer or cell phone as we try to do something that we can’t figure out how to do it. I have certainly been there.

One of my favorite thought leaders in how we can work differently to deliver on the promise of technology is Richard Sheridan. He cofounded Menlo Innovations and wrote the book, Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love.His premise, which I completely agree with, is that how we work makes all the difference in the experience for our teams and outcomes for our customers. You can sign up for a virtual tour describing Menlo Innovations’ culture here.

One aspect of Menlo’s approach is something called High-Tech Anthropology where they go out into the world to study the people they intend to design and build software for, learn what their goals, habits and workflows are, and make sure that whatever they are designing will delight the people that one day will use the software they deliver.

I love this philosophy and would invite you to consider the following questions:

• What could you do to make the interactions with our team and technology delightful?
• How do we make it easy to use our systems?

Technology is embedded into every part of our lives, both professionally and personally. New technology and features, increasing regulations, cybersecurity threats, and evolving processes combine to create a river of change. This means that, as IT professionals, we are constantly asking others to adapt and change.

In my 30+ years of working in IT, I have had a lot of opportunities to try different ways of approaching change and “we invite, we don’t demand” is a mantra that I repeat often and is shorthand for an approach to change that I have found to be both effective and enjoyable.

1. Invite stakeholders to help evaluate and select the solution as early as possible
2. Do a small experiment or pilot to test the solution
3. Broadly communicate what is happening and why it is happening
4. Give as much choice as possible in the situation
5. Make is easy
6. Provide training to support people making the change

I will share an personal experience that used this approach.

When I first started at Temple University as the CIO, we needed to select a modern Learning Management System because our LMS vendor had announced they were ending the development of the product we had been using for over a decade. I had many faculty and staff come into my office advocating for moving to a new learning management system (LMS). The issue was that there were two competing solutions with strong advocates for both.

We created a selection committee that was split evenly between the two solutions. The committee included faculty, technologists, instructional designers and students. That committee worked to identify and prioritize the requirements for the new system and arranged to do pilots of the two options. This allowed us to work with the systems and vendors before we committed.

We invited faculty to participate in the pilot of the two solutions. As we did all the necessary integrations and testing to prepare to pilot both solutions, one of the solutions failed technically. I viewed that failure as a success of the process. We continued with the pilot of the remaining solution, Canvas, for the spring semester with over 1000 students and almost 30 faculty participating. The selection committee designed surveys and focus groups to get feedback from the faculty and students and the feedback was incredibly positive.

After the end of the pilot, the selection committee unanimously recommended moving forward with Canvas. Our next challenge was to figure out a way to support faculty to move the almost 30,000 existing courses in 12 months to minimize the amount of time our students had to navigate two systems. We announced in June that we were moving to Canvas and why we were moving. We told faculty they could move anytime they wanted in the next year.

The IT team made it easy for faculty to decide course-by-course whether to teach in the old LMS or move that course to Canvas. The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) designed workshops to teach faculty how to use Canvas and the easiest way to move their course content.

Because we announced the change in June and the fall semester started in August, we hoped we would get 20% of the classes taught in Canvas in the fall. It became clear quickly that the faculty were engaging. The transition faculty workshops kept filling and CAT kept scheduling more. In the fall, 40% of the classes were being taught in Canvas. Many faculty members chose to teach one course in Canvas in the fall and the pilot faculty participants were champions for the change and incredibly helpful to their faculty colleagues. By spring semester, that number of courses being taught in Canvas had jumped to 80%.

By inviting broadly, we created advocates across campus for a change that mostly needed to be done by faculty. We assisted faculty in the change by giving them the choice of when they moved their courses, making it extremely easy to create a class in Canvas and providing training and support so they had the information and skills they needed to make the change.

The team and committee were energized through the project and the relationships between the committee members and the teams across campus who were involved were strengthened. “We invite, we don’t demand” is more than a change management checklist, it is a mindset that tries to create engagement, not compliance.

How does this resonate with you?