Humans have habits, and changing those habits is hard.
By Evan Ramzipoor, Workflow contributor
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Age of Experience issue of Workflow Quarterly.
When Manisha Arora was working in IT service management at Microsoft, her team faced a choice. The team badly needed a new ticketing system, says Arora, who is now a senior director on ServiceNow’s innovation team. Some wanted to build a new system in-house, even though this approach would be slow, costly, and not aligned with industry best practices. Arora and others advocated for the quicker, more cost-effective option of working with an outside vendor
“There were a lot of people who were really, really entrenched in our existing processes,” she recalls. “We had to change hearts and minds.”
Arora’s manager had a solution: Bring in a team of experts to run process design workshops with the team. After the workshops, everyone on the team agreed they should source the new ticketing system from a vendor that aligned with industry best practices. Interestingly, the experts advanced the same arguments that Arora and her pro-vendor teammates had used to make their case. So why was the outcome different?
“When it comes to changing people’s minds, you have to find a carrot or a stick,” says Arora.
“At Microsoft, it was a carrot. The experts said that if we made this change, our industry peers would be more likely to hold us in high esteem.”
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