Have you sometimes felt that your consultant does not understand the difficulties you are facing? Ever felt that you are unintentionally making life difficult for your consultant?
In reality, you have most likely never worked with a consultant on a similar project before. It could be that you are not aware of the mindset and behaviours you will need to focus on to reach a successful outcome.
Here we take a look at the 5 most destructive behaviours that will curb your team’s success.
1. Not attending calls
Missing scheduled calls, leaving emails from your consultant unanswered and making last minute reschedules are strong indicators that you are on the road to unsuccessful onboarding.
It is vital that you focus on time management and prioritizing your onboarding process to ensure you stay on track. Remember, the consult has done this many times before and have tailored the onboarding timeline to best suit your goals. They know and understand at what pace to work for the best results.
If you are struggling with time management, discuss this with the consultant immediately, so that they can adapt the schedule accordingly. Not discussing this with your consultant can lead to you feeling overwhelmed, anxious and you won’t find the onboarding experience enjoyable or fruitful.
2. Not prioritising homework
It goes without saying that not getting around to completing your homework assignments will lead to you falling behind on your onboarding process. Apart from lagging behind, there’s a very good chance that your team’s anxiety and pressure will increase the longer you postpone doing the work.
It is crucial to communicate with your consultant when you feel you cannot commit to the allocated deadlines for the set tasks. In order for the implementation to be successful, your consultant needs to have a clear understanding of your other commitments – such as family, or other work commitments – so that they can create contingency plans, such as setting more time aside for your homework tasks.
Ideally, you would discuss this with your consultant before the onboarding process starts, but life is fluid and things change. Your implementation consultant understands this, so rather get it off your chest as soon as possible so that your team’s onboarding can run smoothly.
3. Being closed-minded
With new systems, come new ways of approaching and doing work and quite often, we tend to get stuck in old or outdated ways of getting work done. So while change can feel daunting, it can help teams to remember that these new ways of working are there to support your organisation.
It truly is a shift in thinking about the why of the work process, not the how. If you can focus on why the implementation is important and taking place, the how of making use of the tools will fall into place.
Trust your consultant to guide you through the practical know-how of the tools and raise any fears or concerns you might have. If you worried about how to do that report in a new way, speak up and focus on how the new way will improve your productivity.
4. Not identifying blockages
If you find yourself or/and your team struggling to stick to the scheduled time with your consultant, not being able to complete tasks or feeling that you cannot adequately communicate with your team or consultant, you most likely have blockages.
It’s critically important to take the time to review what these blockages might be. Is it lack of time management? Or not being able to prioritise task? Think of ways that can solve these blockages and then discuss them with your consultant. Your consultant has the skills to help unpack issues and can empower you to move forward. Be prepared to explore options and solve problems by taking action with the guidance of your consultant.
5. Not putting in the necessary effort
While onboarding is not easy, it’s also not fair to say that it is hard. Without a team’s dedication and effort, the consultant’s commitment to your team may be unproductive.
There will be times when you feel that you cannot complete homework tasks or you dread a call with your consultant. It takes time and effort to be successful in any endeavour you pursue and onboarding is no different. All successful onboarding programs feature a consistent drive from your consultant to discover and deliver on your needs while remaining honest and committed to your success.
While the other behaviours on this list are problematic, not putting in the required effort is possibly the one which will hurt you the most.
Not making an effort will deliver nothing to your team – you won’t learn anything, you won’t be able to adapt to working in a new system and you certainly won’t be able to empathize with others in your team who’ll struggle.
Ben Jones, WNDYR Deployment Consultant
Most people stop using a product not because it is not useful or does not have the capability to solve their problems, but rather because it takes a lot of effort for them to get used to it. Be prepared to make this effort now so that you can enjoy the ease after onboarding.
Fail to plan, plan to fail
Being aware of and adapting the behaviours will make your onboarding experience with your consultant easier.
While it may seem counterintuitive to consider and plan so much before you begin onboarding, doing so will allow you and your team to reap all the benefits of the process. Considering and planning for the above 5 cases will set you up to reach your goals!
Looking for onboarding solutions that WORK? For more information on how WNDYR can help you rethink the way your organisation does onboarding, contact Prasoon Ranjan, our head of Customer Success, to find out more.