Business intelligence (BI) leaders often mistakenly think that if they design the ideal application with the optimal architecture and the best tools, they will deliver the perfect solution. Unfortunately, technical acumen doesn’t guarantee success. The real litmus test is whether business users embrace a new solution.

There are many hurdles to achieving user adoption. (See “The Holy Grail of BI Adoption”) The biggest is human inertia—people don’t like to change. It takes considerable mental and physical energy for people to change the way they do things. Even when people know their habits are counterproductive or even self-destructive, they find it difficult to change.

This inertia is magnified when groups of people work together in an organization. The group quickly establishes unwritten rules for how things get done. Changing those rules—essentially, the corporate culture—takes an extraordinary amount of conscious effort.

BI leaders need to understand the principles of change management if they want to help their organizations turn data into insights and action and improve the way people make decisions with reporting and analysis tools.

Three Keys to Change Management

There are three keys to getting individuals and groups to adopt new ways of thinking, doing, and acting: 1) educate 2) incent and 3) orchestrate. Or as Chip and Dan Heath write in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, you have to appeal to the “head, heart, and herd.”

1. Educate

The first step in change management is to educate people about what is going to change, how it will impact them, and what they need to do and when. In other words, change leaders need to appeal to people’s rational and logical side—their “head” if you will—and give them all the information they need to prepare for the change at a conscious level. And where appropriate, change leaders need formal training to give people the skills and experience required to succeed in the new environment.

To properly educate people, BI leaders need to develop a communications plan tailored to every individual or group who will be affected by the change. The plan defines key messages and activities for each group as well as the channels and timeline for delivering the messages. With top executives, this might entail one-on-one meetings to explain the rational for introducing a new tool or report, the benefits it will bring, and most importantly, how to navigate the new environment.

Experts say it takes 21 days to change a habit. Education carries users through the first week of this metamorphosis, but after that, willpower wanes, especially when users confront unexpected challenges or snafus.

2. Incent

To establish a new habit, users need more than just education to cross the finish line; they need an incentive that appeals to their “hearts”. Incentives are the proverbial carrots that motivate people to take on challenges and overcome obstacles beyond logic or reason. Incentives range from cash to recognition to hope. They appeal to people's “heart” and grander vision of themselves.

BI leaders who need to change the work habits of their teams should work with human resource managers to tweak incentives. One BI leader I know aligned incentives of business analysts and statisticians to foster cooperation and data sharing. But cash is not the only effective incentive. Another BI leader promised his team recognition by the CFO if they successfully delivered a project on time and under budget.

Motivating business users to embrace new BI tools or reports is more challenging than transforming the work habits of a team. One technique is to publicly recognize early adopters in newsletters and Web posts and give them speaking slots in Webcasts and annual summits. Another approach is to establish grants or awards programs that recognize people for successful applications or deployments. 

3. Orchestrate

Finally, change leaders recognize the power of culture to change habits and perceptions. Humans are herding animals. We subconsciously adopt the mental and physical habits of those around us to an extraordinary degree. We dress, talk, and eat like those around us as well as adopt their values, beliefs, and prejudices.

Changing people requires changing the culture—or the herd. One way to do this is to hire people who exhibit the values, characteristics, and work ethic you want. But if you can’t hire new people, you can amplify the desired behavior when it appears. Thus, when a business user adopts a BI tool or delivers an insight that saves the company thousands of dollars, a BI leader can promote that behavior or achievement to the larger audience. With repeated promotion, the desired behavior can become the norm.

Within a BI team, a strong BI leader with clout can change the way his or her team develops solutions, for example, migrating from waterfall to agile methods. Of course, this change also requires education and incentives to succeed, but after several cycles, the new methods become habit and gain their own momentum and positive inertia.

Conclusion

This article merely scratches the surface of change management in a BI environment. For a more thorough treatment, you can download my slides from a recent presentation on this topic that I delivered at the TDWI Executive Summit in Las Vegas in January. Or send me a message and I’d be happy to provide you with more thoughts on habit formation, use cases, and additional reading.