There’s no time to waste. To remain ahead of the game, field service leaders have to move at the speed of digital. The overall aim is to accelerate digital transformation to support the meaningful growth of the organization. Agents of change, are you ready to get in on the action?
There’s no better catalyst to encourage digital transformation within a company than an agent of change. At EMPOWER’21, TrueContext’s annual user conference, Director of Marketing, Jordan Hamilton, and Account-Based Marketing Manager, Danika Weiss delivered a session on how to accelerate digital transformation and spread change across an organization. Here are a few of the highlights from this valuable talk.
What is a change agent?
Danika and Jordan kicked off this session by laying the groundwork on precisely what a change agent is. Rather than acting like a secret agent or spy that lurks around, agents of change are loud and proud about what they do. Danika defined them as “a person or group that facilitates the change process in an organization.”
She added that they motivate, inspire, catalyze, and potentially lead the change process. As vital parts of digital transformation, they provide both the technical know-how and social support managers and front-line teams need as they adopt and learn new processes. Beyond this, change agents also fix problems. They use their knowledge and connections to detect and diffuse political roadblocks that might derail transformation efforts.
Jordan believes that while change agents can roll up to any division of an organization, they all share a common personality type. They’re patient yet persistent, build strong relationships, are focused on results, and possess a clear vision. Agents of change are the kind of people who see something that can be done better, and regardless of how daunting the task may seem, they dig in and strive to improve it.
So why should you become an agent of change?
Jordan and Danika believe this is a position of great power as it empowers you to help formulate how change will happen. As an agent of change, you’ll become an avid promoter of transformation throughout your organization, getting people on board with innovative new ways to do things. You’ll work to guide and support others through change. In essence, you’re working in the realm of change management.
The positive results that follow from taking on this role are two-fold. First, it benefits your career growth, and second, it delivers major returns for your organization at large.
The days of advancing in one’s role based on tenure alone are over. In today’s competitive job market, the new normal for building a career and accelerating advancement is for employees to actively improve processes in their organizations. Knowing how to accelerate and manage change is an incredibly valuable skill. Those who can make the results sustainable, profitable, and scalable take this to another level entirely.
Agents of change transform organizations
There are many positive returns to be gained within your company when an agent of change unleashes innovation. Many organizations find it hard to enact change. They are facing a serious shortfall in the transfer of valuable knowledge among staff. A savvy change agent can not only enact change but knows how to communicate what has been modified to ensure complete buy-in for the transformation.
Becoming an agent of change is validation that you know how to manage change within a field service organization, and scale it with agility.
How to become an agent of change
Danika and Jordan outlined a three-step methodology for those who wish to become a change agent. This recommended path has worked time and time again for our customers.
- Formulate. It’s important to formulate a plan before setting out on your agent of change journey. Spend some time thinking about how the transformation would ideally happen in your organization. At this stage, you’re going to want to pull out your crystal ball and ask questions like,
- What other teams would benefit from this change?
- What KPIs will be affected? Examples include first-time fix rates, technician time on site, etc.
- What impact would these increases have on our technicians? Our customers?
- How will you promote the value of change in your own corporate culture?
It’s critically important to document the before state at this stage of the path. Examine what your company and/or team was like before using TrueContext. This is the benchmark you can use to compare your post-TruContext deployment state.
- Find resources. Investigate the tools and expertise available to you to disseminate the information across your organization. You have TrueContext’s marketing team at your disposal to help you formulate your message. We’ve worked collaboratively on internal and external communications with several organizations. We’re experts in crafting messages and getting audiences engaged. We can create anything from internal communications, webinars, blog posts, interviews, and PDF leave-behinds for senior executives. We’re here to help.
There’s also the TrueContext Community. This is the space for you to learn from others who are accomplishing great success walking the same path as you are.
- Get buy-in. In a journey of a thousand miles, it all starts with making the first step. Critical to this final stage involves securing buy-in from your organization. Here are two tips to secure buy-in:
- Document early wins. This action will help you gain momentum for your project. It is particularly effective if you’ve been following along and have a well-documented before state. Wins can be documented in many ways, whether constructed by yourself or our marketing team. These high-level ROI statements make all the difference when trying to secure buy-in from time-strapped executives.
- Leverage as many channels and mediums as you can. It’s time to think like a marketer! You may be surprised at how many different channels of communication exist within your organization. Examples include email groups, internal SharePoint sites, social channels, and chat-based channels. What’s critical to gain reach is to leverage as many channels as possible. The more reach you have, the better your chances of enacting meaningful change.
Profile of a field service innovator
This session hosted during EMPOWER’21 featured an example of a company doing exceptional work to advance the power of a change agent. Johnson Controls has used TrueContext for years and employs our solution as a springboard to enact change across their organization—from the field to the boardroom. They are true leaders in digital transformation.
Cecily Stelly, Field Operations Analyst at Johnson Controls is an example of an effective agent of change. She’s built and leveraged critical apps at a blazingly rapid pace. Working with our marketing team, she has been able to amplify her accomplishments by communicating value to other teams within the organization. Cecily is now viewed as the central person for other teams at Johnson Controls to contact when implementing or expanding TrueContext.
Jordan notes Cecily’s ability to communicate value is enormous and has impacted her career as well as broadly upon Johnson Controls at large. She demonstrates how the most successful change agents possess the ability to think more broadly than just their line of business or direct team.
Conclusion
According to Jordan, “most successful digital transformations are led by forward-thinking individuals who are on a mission to empower all of their organization’s technicians.” Using a small, successful deployment as a gold-standard example can catalyze a field service organization, increasing rates of adoption and utilization. It’s good to remember, that the end-result or north-star of a digitally transformed workforce is a team of technicians and engineers who are empowered to complete work faster, the first time around, more effectively, and safer. Empowered technicians equal happy customers. And happy customers equal a more profitable field service organization.
We invite you to watch the complete ‘Agents of Change’ session from EMPOWER’21. If you’re looking to rub shoulders with other digital transformation trailblazers, be sure to join the TrueContext Community.
