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Early in my career I was working on a strictly internal business process tool. I'd cut my teeth playing with public, free web tools, so had my head around the i

Early in my career I was working on a strictly internal business process tool. I'd cut my teeth playing with public, free web tools, so had my head around the idea that I would have to entice adoption. In a meeting with one of the executives, I was fretting over whether some feature was user friendly enough, and I asked, "but what if they don't use this part?". He looked at me baffled, then responded, "then we'll fire them." And as brutal as it sounds, he was right in that case, at that company. There were rigidly defined process rules for the front line workers, and as long as instructions were clear, people followed them. So I think there's a balance to be reached here, and I've had to come to peace with the idea that sometimes the answer is to hire an army of temps for a week to do some slogging task, rather than automate it. Sometimes.

that_guy_iain 4y ago
I think a good example of an example from the blog where simply "we don't do that is" the deployments. I've been at multiple companies where they had multiple rules about deployments and often one of those was we don't do deployments late Friday.The whole "what if they do" is solved by we fix the issue we cause and tell them not to do it again and if they do we remove their ability. The "how do we ensure they read it" we make it a requirement and if they don't get rid of them. The 2nd type isn't smarter and wiser as the author wants to protray. They're just someone constantly worried about what ifs. There are always what ifs. And often these what ifs are minor problems if they do happen.
alwaysbeconsing 4y ago
While what the exec said is strictly true, I think you are still on the correct side of the equation. Just that the question shifts for a mandatory tool from enticement to "how do we make this helpful and useful or at least not horrifically painful to use?" Because humans are endlessly creative at exercising their choice even when it seems to have been taken away. In the most extreme case they will leave the company and talk about how terrible the processes are. More likely they will be somewhere on the spectrum from doing the bare minimum to malicious compliance. Even for a rigorous and required process you still have to get some buy-in or you won't get the results you want from people.

that_guy_iain 4y ago

I think a good example of an example from the blog where simply "we don't do that is" the deployments. I've been at multiple companies where they had multiple rules about deployments and often one of those was we don't do deployments late Friday.The whole "what if they do" is solved by we fix the issue we cause and tell them not to do it again and if they do we remove their ability. The "how do we ensure they read it" we make it a requirement and if they don't get rid of them. The 2nd type isn't smarter and wiser as the author wants to protray. They're just someone constantly worried about what ifs. There are always what ifs. And often these what ifs are minor problems if they do happen.

alwaysbeconsing 4y ago

While what the exec said is strictly true, I think you are still on the correct side of the equation. Just that the question shifts for a mandatory tool from enticement to "how do we make this helpful and useful or at least not horrifically painful to use?" Because humans are endlessly creative at exercising their choice even when it seems to have been taken away. In the most extreme case they will leave the company and talk about how terrible the processes are. More likely they will be somewhere on the spectrum from doing the bare minimum to malicious compliance. Even for a rigorous and required process you still have to get some buy-in or you won't get the results you want from people.