Change Management- You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

In my Salesforce.com and CRM career, I have spent most of my time scoping, designing and creating systems that encourage a collaborative and process oriented way of working for evolving businesses, the 360 degree view that Salesforce.com claims is not just a clever marketing message, it's an target that you can achieve with the right planning and vision, but building and deploying the system is only half the battle.

How many of you reading this get critical information that you need to run your business from a spreadsheet that "someone threw together a while ago" as a temporary workaround? How many of you know where the data comes from that goes into that spreadsheet?
 
Imagine the scenario: you've just paid out for Salesforce.com licenses, your implementation partner has come in and configured, customized and set up your org so that it’s now doing what you need it to do and three weeks after the launch you still receive the spreadsheet on Monday Morning with the sales
figures for the previous week. What went wrong?

Change Management is a vital piece of the puzzle when implementing new technology, an old axiom springs to mind when I write this "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink". While this is true I'm hoping my audience doesn't consist of horse trainers or my next statement won't make much sense. You are not working with horses! You are working with intelligent people who want to do their job well. Change Management is not a “stick” you use to beat people into compliance, it's collaborative, it's informative, it's a way of educating people to see the benefits of doing things the "new way". It's a vital component of any project where people are being asked to modify the way they work. You need to
create some “carrots” for them to use the system and realize that their job will be easier and more effective if they embrace the change.