Let's Get Brainwashed.

Last week I wrote some training materials for an accounting system. Today we had a training session, where people could watch a demo and follow along in the material I had written. We had people from several offices in Europe watching through the Internet. The accountants were invited to provide comments so that I could make the training materials and procedures better. A few interesting things popped up. First question: when should you finish this process? Every office has a different timeline. Some need five days, others 15, and here in the US, they don't know - as soon as possible was the answer. Okay, so why does it have to be different? we wondered. Well, in the US they have over 100 accounts, but in Europe it's only 5 to 8.

Then another thing came up. A new feature of the accounting system automates several steps. One woman in the room said she wasn't comfortable with using the automated part. She preferred to be thorough and manually compare every item in the system to her records. This meant it could take her days to do this. "But the system could be wrong!" she said. She refused to try the new procedure.

When the people left, we discussed this issue in our meeting. The other project members said to keep the procedure as written, which is about the automated process. I said we should try to get her to try the automated process and get her buy in, rather than force the automated way on her. "No time for that," they said. "Let her waste her time." But then, I pointed out, she will be doing her own thing, and the "official" way, as written down will be another, so what's the point of having something written down if they're not following it?

This is a common issue I deal with. Is it better to write down the way people actually do their job, even if it wastes time, or is wrong? Or is it better to write it down the correct way, even if they will still do their own thing? The biggest part that is missing is the project team not working with their users to get them comfortable with the new way. Instead, I feel like the accountants are now forced to deal with a change they don't like. But if they felt comfortable to try the new way, maybe they'd like it and see it really does save time.