Neither Carrots nor Sticks are Effective Change Management

Imagine you have an innovative revenue intelligence tool that will provide your sellers real-time insights they need to build and convert their pipeline. This tool is making waves in the industry, and you expect a tremendous boost in revenue… … … if your sellers would only try using it. You have done all you can in terms of persuasive messaging and are now looking for more authoritarian ways to drive new behavior, i.e. “carrots” and “sticks”.

If this is you, then neither “carrots” nor “sticks” will work, because both those things have a specific purpose in the context of human behavior, much different than the archaic donkey-training practice.

Don’t think of carrots as a reward for doing something right. That approach is expensive and short-lived. Instead, think of carrots as lowering inhibitions for trying something new. Something like free samples of plant-based burgers to entice the vege-curious. Free samples are good for creating awareness, but if you end up winning freebie-seekers rather than customers, you are in trouble. Use adoption incentives for technology sparingly and only for a short time.

Similarly, don’t think about sticks as punishments for not adopting new tools. In a professional setting, it is disrespectful, demoralizing and tone-deaf. The drag caused by “sticks” will easily outweigh any productivity gains. Restrict the stick approach to matters where an individual’s self-interest conflicts with public interest. Think about vaccine mandates or penalties for violating safety standards. I doubt any productivity tool adoption matters will rise to that level of severity.

If you are seeing low adoption for technology, ask yourselves these questions.

• Does your tool intuitively provide users what they need? Not just what you think they need? Ask your most recalcitrant users for their candid feedback and use it to improve the user experience.
• Is your tool properly integrated with the rest of the tool stack that your users interact with? If sloppy implementation or clunky integrations are letting your users down, fix them.
• Is your tool really a productivity tool? You might have rolled out a tool that benefits leaders due to improved data visibility or saves costs due to tool consolidations but does not benefit the user in the short term. If you have unwillingly oversold the change as a productivity booster, just be honest with users and engage them in your efforts to continuously improve user value.

Talk to your users, fix the above 3 things. Deliver a product to users that can organically motivate users to adopt. It is the tougher path to tread, but ultimately the right one. Save your carrot sticks for a nutritious stir-fry.