Oct 07, 2020

Posted by Saket Dixit

When is a good time to DAP?

One of the most common question I get asked a lot is, when is a good time to introduce DAP (Digital Adoption Platform) to my organization? My spontaneous answer to the question is, yesterday!

I’ll explain why…

It reminds me of 2 life lessons – learning to drive a car and learning to speak as a toddler or babble as a baby. I remember the former, far better than the latter, but the message is the same.

1. If I had the benefit of time travel, I could go back in time, and learn driving a car from a professional. Like many young adults of my era, I learnt by watching an older brother, sister, friend (in my case) or a parent. One lucky day, I was trusted the controls and after a lot of yelling, fear, handholding, I eventually learnt. But did I learn the right way? Many years later, I took a refresher course as I was attempting a driving test in another country, after many years of ‘driving’, I realized some fundamental errors that I was making and habits I had picked up, which had to be unlearnt
2. Toddlers learn by watching their parents, siblings and people around them. We don’t come with any pre-programmed language but learn by Language Acquisition. It’s nothing but replicating others which is reinforced by reward, recognition and correction.

Along the same lines, as a new system, platform, process or ways of engagement are introduced, a user needs to be trained about it. It’s a learning exercise and is often overlooked by many organizations. My guidance is to enable this learning and training as early on as possible.

A few reasons on why you should do this early on (upfront) rather than as an after-thought:

• if there’s no training aid, users will find a way, which is not optimal, not desired and in fact, contrary to what is suggested as a best practice
• once users learn, the right or wrong way, it’s embedded and becomes an acquired learning. We are creatures of habit after all
• unlearning is one of the hardest things to do. Try holding a pen in a different way or try using a different finger as you type on a keyboard
• once we build a muscle memory, changing it is at least twice as hard as learning it the right way, in the first place
• the associated productivity loss, low adoption, poor engagement, data quality issues, risks and ultimately poor Customer & Employee Experience
• course correction is always harder, late and more expensive than setting on the right course in the first place

It’s not always easy to avoid these mistakes. We do not have a crystal ball to gaze into. However, what we can do, is lean on industry experts and practitioners, who have a much broader experience and perspective on these things.

Everyone needs a mentor and a teacher. Every organization can benefit from a Digital Adoption Platform, like MyGuide by EdCast. Let it show you the path in enabling a change transformation or help you find a way to address issues, pain points and low adoption in an existing platform.

 

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