Change!?!?! Why Do I Need It?

Change is one of the hardest things for humans, in general, to accept or deal with in general.  This is also one of the biggest problems that geeks have dealing with people who are not geeks because geeks understand the importance of changes and upgrades, but non-geeks like things the way they are and do not understand the need for change.  This can cause big problems when it is time for an upgrade either to the system or the software.  IT people will often hear after this, “That’s not the way it was before!”, or, “Can you make it look like it did before? I don’t like the way it looks now.”  This can be a major problem for IT people because most times you can not make it look like it did before because the upgrade changed how programs work and where they are located.  The biggest thing that IT can do to help promote positive changes is to offer either group training or individual training on the new programs and show people how to use the new software, the changes that occurred and why these changes are good, and allows for people to ask questions and have their questions answered.  The biggest thing that anyone can do is to help convince people they need change.  If you are able to convince someone that they need change they will be much more receptive to the change that you are proposing.  This can be done on a one-on-one basis if you only need to change a few people’s technology, but if you have to change a whole office or department’s technology it would be more helpful to convince the people that everyone talks to or looks up to and they will do the work for you because people will want to do what they are doing.

My experiences have allowed me to see different methods of instituting change, and how to do it in a group setting or on a one-on-one basis.  The first example was in my troop and the adult leaders were wanting to get everyone to either wear their uniforms or, at least, a Scouting related shirt, and to help solve this problem they offered an incentive for those who wore their uniforms, but this did not solve the problem completely.  The adults then gather some of the older Scouts in the troop, myself included, and requested that we make sure to wear our uniforms and Scouting related T-shirts.  This helped get the troop to the point that the troop was almost always in uniform or in Scouting related clothing.  The other experience was a one-on-one experience where my father was trying to get a co-worker to upgrade his operating system, and he just wouldn’t agree to upgrade his OS.  My dad realized that the way to get his co-worker to upgrade his OS was to show him cool things that the new OS could do that the old OS was not able to do.  So one day my dad called his co-worker into his office and showed him cool things that the new OS could do and the next day my dad’s co-worker was in his office asking when he would be able to get the new OS.

The most important thing about introducing new technology, or change, is to show people why they need the new technology and offer to show them how to use the technology for what they were doing before and why it is better than what they have now.  The biggest thing you can do is be there for the client while they learn the new technology.

https://youtu.be/BzMLA8YIgG0