Change management is vital for any organisation, but it's not always straightforward. Successfully guiding individuals and teams through change requires a deep understanding of the people who will be impacted. Persona analysis provides this understanding by uncovering the motivations, pain points, and goals of the different user groups. In this article, we'll explore the benefits of persona analysis in change management and provide real-world examples of its successful implementation. Get ready to take your change management strategies to the next level.
What is Persona Analysis and how it helps in Change Management?
Persona analysis is a key part of adoption that is used to understand the user groups that will be utilising the technology. It helps in identifying the motivations, pain points, and goals of the people who will be impacted by the change. By understanding these elements, change management teams can develop strategies that are more effective in engaging and motivating the people affected.
Steps involved in conducting Persona Analysis:
Define the goal of the analysis: It's essential to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve from the analysis. This will help you in setting the scope of the research and making sure that the data collected is relevant to your objectives.
Identify the target audience: Determine the group of people who will be impacted by the change. This could be a specific department, the entire organisation, or frontline workers.
Conduct research: To collect the data for our strategy we conduct interviews and focus groups with the different personas to ensure it's tailored to your organisations needs.
Analyse the data: Once we have collected the data, we analyse it to uncover patterns and trends. This helps us to identifying the motivations, pain points, and goals of the target audience.
Develop personas: Based on the data collected and analysed, we work with you to develop personas, which are fictional characters that represent the user groups. These personas will help you in understanding the user groups and their behaviour patterns.
Benefits of Persona Analysis in Change Management:
Better understanding of the target audience: By conducting persona analysis, change management teams can gain a deep understanding of the people who will be impacted by the change. This helps in developing strategies that are more effective in engaging and motivating the people affected by the change.
Improved communication: Understanding the personas motivations, pain points, and goals will help us in communicating the change in a way that resonates with them. This can help in reducing resistance to change and increase support for the change initiatives.
Increased engagement: By developing personas, we can tailor their strategies to the specific needs of the target audience. This can help in increasing engagement and buy-in for the change initiatives.
Better alignment with your organisational goals: By understanding their challenges and motivations we can help in aligning the change initiatives with the organisation's goals and objectives.
In the Real World
With Renfrewshire Council, we embarked on a comprehensive Persona Analysis journey. Divided into two stages of interviews, we first spoke with top executives and key decision-makers, then delved deeper with employees at various levels from each department. Their goal of becoming a fully digital organisation prompted the analysis, and we were determined to help make the right decisions for their software and hardware needs. By defining each persona and presenting our findings in a recommendations report, we were able to shed light on the necessary licenses, permissions, and hardware required. And, to our delight, our investigation uncovered some surprising pain points that were specific to each persona - allowing the council to make sweeping improvements to their processes.
We completed Persona Analysis with Research Data Scotland, to unlock the full potential of Microsoft licenses. They found themselves in a perplexing situation where they had the licenses, but were unable to fully utilise them - not knowing exactly what they were paying for. With their organisation in the midst of a growth spurt and new hires joining every day, it was crucial to implement the best practices and processes. Our team of experts dove into the heart of the organisation, conducting in-depth interviews with key individuals from a diverse range of personas, from HR to IT. Our objective was to understand their roles and provide actionable recommendations on how to better leverage their investment, tailored specifically to each persona.
Why Ingentive?
Achieving a successful technical rollout means focussing on driving adoption and ensuring everyone understands the benefits of working in a new way. As your trusted advisor, we will work with you to create an adoption plan which will assist in the adoption process and help you take a best-practice approach.
Our change management practice, adoption & training is designed with the end user in mind. We understand each individual is different, and so is the way we learn – that’s why it is so important to ensure that we provide a way of learning that suits each and every person. From in-depth, tailored user guides, to interactive sessions and bitesize videos, we create training unique to each organisation that will help them transition through these changes.
Ingentive underpin our Change Management using Prosci® to ensure success and have included additional activities that Microsoft use both internally and with their customers as well as covering Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.
If your interested in a bespoke Change Management plan, click the button below!
