Reflections from Onboarding Experience
09/07/2015 - Excerpt of message to Matthew Scanio at Intuit QuickBase
I'm learning that Onboarding is key, and tooling up to provide the kind and level of service necessary for that to be successful is quite the adventure.
There has to be a Training Wheel phase that varies from one user to the next; and once they're rolling, there's removal of the wheels, then just like a small child, they fall down and get hurt now and then, and you have to go kiss their boo-boos & help them get back up.
As in parenting, all of this is quite unpredictable, and it's very much an emotional job requiring emotional intelligence. You're dealing with people's insecurities and fears . . . but just like a kid on a bike, once they're rolling, they don't look back. They're pleased with their new power and freedom on their new toy.
And, like the bike, there are fine adjustments to be made: seat height, handle bar angle, cable tension, tire pressure, chain lubrication . . . there are a lot of parallels like that.
In fact, I'll probably develop a web page just about that with some kind of training wheel imagery to get the point across.
So that's where I am right now. Yesterday I adjusted task predecessors for a client using the General Contractor app; his training wheel is Smartsheet exported to an Excel spreadsheet which he sent me, & I adjusted predecessor tasks to match.
He sees that he needs the system to support his growth, but learning it is a challenge that he took a while to embrace. For a while there he wanted to use a three-ring binder as a model; but within a couple of weeks he saw how self-defeating and wasteful that would be, so he actually apologized to me for being an unappreciative Luddite and said, "Let's do it."
I'm learning that Onboarding is key, and tooling up to provide the kind and level of service necessary for that to be successful is quite the adventure.
There has to be a Training Wheel phase that varies from one user to the next; and once they're rolling, there's removal of the wheels, then just like a small child, they fall down and get hurt now and then, and you have to go kiss their boo-boos & help them get back up.
As in parenting, all of this is quite unpredictable, and it's very much an emotional job requiring emotional intelligence. You're dealing with people's insecurities and fears . . . but just like a kid on a bike, once they're rolling, they don't look back. They're pleased with their new power and freedom on their new toy.
And, like the bike, there are fine adjustments to be made: seat height, handle bar angle, cable tension, tire pressure, chain lubrication . . . there are a lot of parallels like that.
In fact, I'll probably develop a web page just about that with some kind of training wheel imagery to get the point across.
So that's where I am right now. Yesterday I adjusted task predecessors for a client using the General Contractor app; his training wheel is Smartsheet exported to an Excel spreadsheet which he sent me, & I adjusted predecessor tasks to match.
He sees that he needs the system to support his growth, but learning it is a challenge that he took a while to embrace. For a while there he wanted to use a three-ring binder as a model; but within a couple of weeks he saw how self-defeating and wasteful that would be, so he actually apologized to me for being an unappreciative Luddite and said, "Let's do it."
