How To Implement New Software In A Company

I know that we cover how to convince employees to use like a CRM, but what is the most effective way that you have seen in practice? Like, sometimes the CRM is there, but they're not following the steps, and I just don't know how to persuade them properly. And I just wonder, like, a strategy like paying a bonus is if it is a good strategy, systems are used properly, or what is disappearing that you have seen it?

I was just having a look then. I was hoping it would jump out at me, and maybe it's not published yet, so I'll just tell you what it was. I did— I can give you the interview with the— he was one of the— he was the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Cameron Herald. And there's a bit in that interview where he talks about adoption and how he sells software changes and all those sorts of things. No matter who I've heard it from, it always comes back to the same thing, which is you have to have the team member understand that the, the benefit to them and how it makes their job easier. This is not about you putting things into place to micromanage or oversee or whatever. You need to understand how does it make their job easier to have a CRM? Do they understand what happens if they're not using the CRM and what the flow-on impact is to other team members? They might not even realize, hey, if you don't add an appropriate update on the CRM and we don't know that you're chatting with this particular lead, then when marketing goes and does a broadcast, we're broadcasting an offer to them that might not be relevant to them and we're going to be stepping on your toes. That's an example. You just need to come back to helping to try and identify and surface what are problems for them and for other team members, and then surface those and then show how the software or the solution that you're putting forward helps to solve that. Because I think that's really what it comes down to, is problem solving, which is what business is anyway. And you probably shouldn't be putting forward a suggestion or a change with no particular reason. It's ways to solve a problem. So it's making sure that they see that the problem impacts them. Does anyone else have any suggestions on that, James, or other?

It's really all about the what's in it for me. If you address, like they're saying, the what's in it for me, then the problem will solve itself.

Because if you can surface it up and then come back to it— here's the problem, here's why we do it this way— and then again, it just removes— if you remember those, that triangle James put together about addressing why someone doesn't do something. Firstly, you've got to get rid of the 'I didn't know how,' which is the systems and the processes. There's the bit around the expectation. I didn't know I was expected to do it, or I didn't have an understanding of why that was important. And that's that piece that you can address by saying, hang on, this affects you and others. And then it moves lastly to 'I didn't want to.' And you're trying to get it down to, is it an 'I don't want to' scenario? And again, that's how you might approach something differently. But if it's part of your core values that you're a team player and we work together and we have mutual respect and we're looking at getting the best outcome for the client, you will have a core value that you can relate this back to. And that's the other power move. Any time that you can get it back to a core value, when, if they're on, I don't want to, and it's in direct conflict with a core value, then that's the checkmate move because it's a core value. If you don't follow the core values, you don't fit here. So that, yeah, that's another way to approach it.

Yeah, the best is not really in that way, is more the sometimes we have so much work to do Honestly, we've been working 50 to 60 hours just to finish some workload. And then they feel like maybe if they can rush, they can finish it instead of just going directly. And then the CRM has some bullet points. You have the highlight part, then you have substeps, and then sometimes you can click on one and fly because supposedly what you gotta do. And that is the main concern, but everybody's really nice people. They just sometimes overwhelmed because of the workload. This on time, we need to finish it within 2 or 3 weeks.

Look, there's million different variations to every problem and some nuance may get you to approach things differently. In early days, some of our Sales team members weren't great at doing some of the CRM stuff. We ended up getting an administrative assistant who was an extra layer that would sit in there to help double-check and cross-check. That worked for a little while. Then Melissa was of the opinion that, hey, it's really not that hard. You're here to do a job. You're paid to do a job. We're clear around what the expectations are. Almost like what Merlin was saying in the chat, which is, hey, do you know what else is a system? Getting paid is a system. Do you like getting paid? You're here to do a job. Now, I know that's maybe a little brutal. It also depends on how long the person has been around. As in, if you're recruiting up front and you're onboarding correctly and you're projecting right up front, here's the way that we do things here, you should be able to repel those who aren't going to follow the system. So there's a good chance that a lot of the resistance that you're talking about is with existing team members. So you need to give everybody the best opportunity to hop on the systems train. And if they're not going to hop on the systems train, some people might opt out. And that, that's also part of growing as well. I don't know.

Question for James perhaps here that as you systemize, as you get people on board and they get why they're in that seat and what they need to do, et cetera, et cetera. But having then rolled out that system and documented that system, what's the thoughts that you have in terms of what's the accountability? What's the KPIs? How do I know and measure afterwards that what we've now agreed they're doing, how do I know they're actually doing that as the boss of that company? What are the things that I look at? What's the thoughts around that?

In terms of KPIs, so what you're saying is that you've rolled out a system to a team member, they're trained up there. On board with it and you're querying about how you're monitoring and measuring after that point.

Yeah, they're now accountable, right? That's their job. They know what they're responsible for.

Yeah.

What's the way then through one method or KPIs to keep track of that?

I'd say the first port of call is to really ensure that whatever's in their job description really reflects that they are accountable so they can in an enduring manner know that they are accountable. So just because it says it in something like Asana, like, you really want to make sure that mirrors what is expected of them in their job, because otherwise they might come back to say and say, oh, I thought I was just helping out for a bit. Okay, so in terms of how do you set up KPIs, I hate the term KPIs and OKRs. Like, I come from a very non-corporate background. I love calling them scorecards because lots of people like sport, and when you start talking about scorecards, people start to think about competition. And start trying to make sure that they're towing the line. So it's not like it's just to satisfy the boss, it's a scorecard to see how well I'm performing. And so with the, the critical client flow, I know that, Dave, in terms of when you develop scorecards, you start looking at the CCF and go, what are the things that we need as a result from each of these parts on the CCF in terms of what does the business need and what's a reasonable number that we expect? Developing these in cooperation and collaboration with the teams. So if you say we need 20 of these done a week and they go, it's impossible, I can only do 9, that there's not you asking for something that's completely out of reach. So they feel that what you've set is a reasonable tone for what's expected of them. But obviously looking for what's qualitative and quantitative is really important too, because if you're just spitting out a number at the end, then that's not necessarily going to really try and achieve the result that you need. Whenever you do build out a scorecard, don't have 48 different metrics for one person regarding one task. Think about what's a quantitative metric for how many of that they've done, but also look at the qualitative metric for what's the standard that they've done and try and pull that apart. But I'd always start with asking them, what does good look like? And then reverse engineering from that. Does that help?

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's a whole topic, isn't it? And it's every employee in every company. It's, it's to a degree is what is the most important KPI scorecard or that measure? And how does that relate back to this accountability piece, which is being covered because of the way you've gone through the systemization. But yeah, no, it's useful. Thank you.

And I totally weave in values, what Dave was saying before, aligning with the company values. So when we're talking about that quantitative— sorry, the qualitative type of element, we're talking about how well we do it. It's like, how well are we doing to satisfy for us as a business, but how well are we doing it to satisfy the customer and their needs and why they're actually working with us?

Yeah, and I think what I'm doing there, James, is going, we've done that, we've done that, they've bought into the values, it's all done, they're on board, everything's done, right? So everything is perfect and they should be the perfect employee, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. But now in my busy growing business, yeah, the accountability piece or the measure or the scorecard piece is simply because in the business, we need their line manager or the next person up. Yeah, we just need to know that we're doing all the things we need to do.

That's one thing with the scorecard, always a reminder, one of my default answers these days is ChatGPT. If you haven't played around with ChatGPT to set KPIs, it actually does a pretty good job. You can tell a little bit about what the role is and what it is that they're working on and some outcomes. And you say, can you help me pick 2 KPIs? And then you can even refine and say, hey, it'll know, but you can refine around, hey, this needs to be measurable, or I need to make sure that it's moving us closer to this objective for this particular department. So like anything with ChatGPT, it's just a brainstorming assistant and it gets you out of the writer's block mode. Just a heads up, that clip was taken from a session in our Systems Champion certification program, which is the world's first and only program for systems champions to help you build a systems culture and develop an AI-first approach and roll it out inside your organization. To find out more, head over to systemology.com/systemschamp, and I'll see you in there. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]