Change Management Happy Hour

True story.

I am in a Supply Chain conference. Happy hour time and I am talking to a friend, beers in hands.

Someone, a tech professional in a large corporation, places their small plate on our high table and casually joins the conversation. That's what you do in a conference happy hour.

We do the regular small talk, nothing special - Where are you from? sports, kids, education, work. The guy sees my badge - AI and Digital Transformation Leader - and says he has a question for me. "Shoot", I say.

His family owns a multi-location nail salons over seas. Very successful but the competition is rising. The business operates mostly with legacy tech and they recently started to adopt new tech. However, adoption is low to non-existent. One of the reasons for that is the organization's culture and old-fashioned leadership.

As a tech professional, he personally believes in it and think that’s the future to save and grow his family's business, but his family, less so. He asks me for my advise.

That all the information I had and I am on the spot. Eyes on me and the future of this company (as well as this conversation) is on my next few sentences and free advise I was about to give.

Here is what I told him from the top of my head, not in a bulleted and organized fashion like I bring to you here, and more in a conversational way. Thinking about it the next day, it is a good generic answer that fits most cases:

1. Change Agents - You have to identify, train, and empower a few people who will be your champions and will help you spread the gospel. You can't transform a large organizations in a flat manner.

2. Management buy in - On the flip side, this cannot succeed without a top-down effort. Management has to be wholeheartedly bought in. They can't just not appose to it but they have to really believe in it, want it to succeed, and act on it.

3. Message Sharpening - You have to clarify yourself why are you doing this transformation. Honestly look in the mirror, dig deep, and clarify yourself the real reasons. This will help you sharpen the message you should deliver to the organization.

4. Run a campaign - You should invest in an internal marketing campaign. A big effort like this that takes time and resources from everyone should be accompanied with a big campaign to reign in everyone. The messages for the transformation as a big effort should be broadcasted, but also broken down to 'what's in it for me' pieces for each one of the critical stakeholders.

5. Training - You can't just keep talking high-level and you have to run training time and again. Users have to know what they do to see success. Use data for that like user engagement stats, system clicks, error messages and everything that the system can provide to you.

Thank you, it all makes sense" he said.

We shook hands and said goodbye.

I guess I'll never know what became of that nail salons network's digital transformation.