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Social Learning in Financial Services – Tales from the Real World

Social Learning in Financial Services – Tales from the Real World

by on November 11, 2011 in eLearning, Informal Learning, sales, social learning, subject matter experts, Training Development, Uncategorized, user adoption

I sat down with Shane Raymond, Director of Training and Development at RBC Wealth Management, the US Wealth Management division of Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada, to discuss social learning. Shane, a veteran of the training industry, has encountered various levels of success with social learning and I asked him to share those experiences with us.

Rob: What is the audience you’re dealing with at RBC Wealth Management?

Shane: RBC Wealth Management has more than 2,000 Financial Advisors scattered through the country. The financial services industry has evolved a lot over the last decade. In the past, it was about stocks and bonds, now it is more complex than ever. There are many more investment vehicles out there and advisors need to be knowledgeable about areas such as life insurance, long-term care, charitable giving, trusts and estate planning, etc. Given the current economic environment and the …

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The Key to Adoption of Collaboration Tools: Process Integration

The Key to Adoption of Collaboration Tools: Process Integration

by on September 15, 2011 in Collaboration Tools, social learning, Social Media, user adoption

Plenty has been written about why employees are slow to adopt enterprise collaboration tools.  Most opinions on the matter, however, don’t provide satisfying conclusions about why collaboration tools are so slow to gain traction in large organizations.  As with more traditional IT initiatives, the old “senior executive support” mantra is frequently cited as a key to successful user adoption.

For example, in a Klint Finley interview called Five Principles for Improving Social Enterprise Adoption, Yakabod CEO Scott Ryser cites the importance of “political juice.”  Ryser says:

You need a champion with clout, supported by a cross-functional team of people with a good mix of experience, credentials and authority.

While executive sponsorship may be important, it’s not enough.  In fact, executive support is a good example of what a logician might call necessary but not sufficient.

Certainly, it’s true that guidance like this from Ryser is valuable, along with …

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Need to Change Behavior? Just Follow the Wizard

Need to Change Behavior? Just Follow the Wizard

by on August 8, 2011 in ERP Training, Organizational Change Management, user adoption

Sometimes it’s hard to take something seriously that promises to solve an age-old, complex human problem.  If a product or service promises to “Burn Off Pounds Fast!” or “Eliminate Stress Now!” most of us are, justifiably, skeptical.

The challenge of changing human behavior for positive business outcomes is a similarly elusive pursuit.  That’s why I was skeptical when I first encoutered BJ Fogg’s Behavior Wizard.  The wizard uses a series of simple questions to help the user identify what kind of behavior change he or she is looking for.  For example:

Based on the responses, the wizard assigns your behavior change into one of 15 types, divided along two axes:

1)      Duration of change (one-time, temporary, permanent)

2)      Amplitude of change (increase/decrease, start/stop)

This is a fascinating tool for those in the Learning and Performance Improvement industries, because it attempts to identify the objective and discreet attributes that …

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Persuasive Technology Could Be Key to Gaining User Adoption

Persuasive Technology Could Be Key to Gaining User Adoption

by on June 15, 2011 in eLearning, Innovation, Organizational Change Management, performance support, system implementation training, user adoption

We know that user adoption is critical for major software implementations to be successful.  There are dozens of case studies and reports that illustrate how it’s not enough to get the technology working.  If users aren’t trained properly, or don’t accept the value of the system – the project will likely fail.

Change management and learning professionals have known for a long time that the behavior barriers to user adoption can be grouped into two major categories:

1)      Can’t do behaviors

2)      Won’t do behaviors

In the past, the traditional approach was to have the trainers handle #1 and the change management types to handle #2.  Now, a new discipline – Persuasive Technology – has come along to help both the training people and the change people.

Loren Baxter has written an excellent post about persuasive technology, in which he outlines the evolution of web and software design.  The …

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Give User Adoption the Respect it Deserves

Give User Adoption the Respect it Deserves

by on May 17, 2011 in user adoption

User adoption is the single biggest challenge when implementing new technology – it is now and it has been for 15 years.  According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor for software success and ROI is effective user adoption (70% listed it as #1).  Organizational change came in at 16%, followed by process alignment at 13%, and software functionality at 1%.

It’s clear that getting a solid and rapid ROI on software projects has more to do with people and change than it does with technology.  Whether you’re implementing SAP, one of the many Oracle products, or the latest Business Intelligence tool, user resistance, misaligned business processes and lack of user skill and understanding are most commonly at the root of most failed technology initiatives.

The problem often comes back to a fundamental error in how a company introduces users to the …

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