Technology hype versus adoption – looking behind the marketing spiel

A barrage of press releases on how firms are using technology can often convince law firms that they are getting left behind, but Mark Andrews outlines why it is important not to be swept up in the hype and to instead focus on technology adoption.

As an experiment, count the number of apps you have on your smartphone and then do another count of the apps you have used in the past week.

I suspect you will have a fairly low percentage of actively used apps. While this is not an article about decluttering, the smartphone example is an interesting parallel for technology adoption in your law firm. Taking the smartphone comparison a little further, you can typically group apps as follows:

• core – you use them every day and, commonly, many times a day
• frequent – you use them at least once per week
• occasional – you use them a few times per month
• just in case – you had to install them once for a particular purpose and have since kept them
• never – they came with the phone, but you have never used them.

Looking at the percentage and number of apps in each category might also give you some insight into your technology-adoption habits because, while our smartphone habits in everyday life are not a direct indicator of our likely technology adoption in the work environment, they do provide a fair indication. From a behavioural standpoint, if you modify your smartphone habits to use a wider range of apps more frequently, you will be more likely to try new solutions in the work context.

Marketing hype

The smartphone comparison serves us well when it comes to marketing hype and, in particular, AI hype. You could be forgiven for thinking that some firms have been completely transformed by their use of AI, but if you dig a little deeper you may well find that their situation is akin to having a smartphone with more apps than others, but not really using them. Of course, some firms are doing good things with technology, but before you get swept away in marketing hype remember that people are generally slow to change habits and what you read may not match the level of tech adoption.

Driving technology adoption

Now that we have some context, let us consider a path towards successful technology adoption. If you keep these focal areas in mind, I think you can significantly improve your chance of technology adoption:

1. Understand and appreciate
2. Go where the pain is
3. Invest
4. Define success
5. Inspire and influence
6. Train less
7. Optimise user experience.

The seven areas need to be areas of shared responsibility for technology teams and those using the technology. Technology adoption can fail because the technology deployed is not fit for purpose, but fit-for-purpose technology will never guarantee adoption.

1.Understand and appreciate

In previous articles I have discussed the level of change resistance that is often seen in the legal environment. As a technologist, it is important to not let this become a bias and instead understand why people work the way they do and consider the pressures that can make it difficult to adopt technology. A billable target is one obvious pressure point as it creates a mental barrier to other activity – i.e. it requires more mental effort to undertake non-billable activity because there is an element of thinking that you should not be doing the non-billable activity (conscious thinking or unconscious). I think this is akin to running a small business in that the challenge is to carve out personal time and overcome the temptation to just do that one more thing for the business. Training in critical thinking, risk identification and mitigation also creates change resistance. The keys are understanding and appreciating the barriers to technology adoption and using appreciative enquiry – i.e. focusing on strengths and what is working; thinking what might be; and, rather than seeing a problem to be solved, seeing a challenge to be embraced.

From a non-technologist standpoint, understanding and appreciating is about creating space for technology teams to learn and assist. It is about being prepared to discuss business challenges that you think may not have a relationship with technology. It is about having broad conversations related to strategy, clients and teams, rather than adopting a mindset that you should only talk about technology with technologists.

2.Go where the pain is

This point of focus might seem like a negative (the opposite of appreciative enquiry) but in fact it is complementary to appreciative enquiry because it encourages greater understanding about what aspects of technology are causing the most friction or disruption, and then addressing that pain directly.

Experiencing friction with technology is a significant inhibitor to adoption. To be able to ‘go where the pain is’ requires understanding and a proactive approach because people often accept friction as part of using technology and do not always raise it as an issue. As a technologist, it is often challenging to find the time to be proactive about pain points. Depending on the size of your technology team, setting aside some time, or having particular roles focused on business relationships, are key enablers of going where the pain is. From a business perspective, having a ‘what if’ mindset to friction in technology is helpful – e.g. what if there was a simpler way, what if there was a solution that could…, what if I made a small change in how I use…?

Understanding, appreciating and going where the pain is – this is where I recommend starting on the path towards successful technology adoption.

3.Invest

The cost of technology is more than just the financial outlay for the technology; it includes all of the time and effort required to implement and adopt the technology. Investing is about fully appreciating this commitment and making an informed decision about whether to go ahead with the technology solution – i.e. not just signing off on a financial outlay, but signing off on what is required to adopt the technology. There is often an over-reliance on technology teams to drive technology adoption. However, investment needs to be made on the business side to get stakeholders aligned and agreed; to identify champions for the technology; and to stay the course well beyond the technical implementation to ensure adoption.

4.Define success

All too often there is a lack of clear definition around what success looks like. Even when it is defined, there is often a lack of shared accountability for achieving success. Success may include return on investment, ongoing benefits realisation, reduced friction, or new capabilities, to name just a few, but success must include adoption. Technology adoption must be a shared responsibility, with the technology team being the enabler and the business teams ensuring effective use of the technology and making changes to processes based on what was agreed upfront. A lack of willingness to change processes and work differently should not be seen as a failure of the technology itself.

5.Inspire and influence

Technology solutions can bring significant business benefits, make work more efficient, and reduce repetitive and predictable tasks. The best advocates for technology adoption are almost always people outside the technology organisation. As a technologist, your role is to identify potential champions and to give them the resources they need to be able to inspire and influence others. As a non-technologist, if you are a leader in your firm, be public in your recognition of the early adoption of technology; consider being an early adopter yourself; and communicate more about the benefits being realised from technology solutions, rather than the release of new solutions. To illustrate this last statement, the day on which a technology team rolls out a new solution is something for which you, as a business leader, should thank the technology team, but it is not the time to claim success. Instead, wait to see the benefits being realised and then trumpet the successful adoption.

6.Train less

This might seem counter-intuitive (i.e. how do you increase adoption by training less?) Consider your own experience. How much did participating in a one-hour IT training session, where someone showed you how to use an application, drive your adoption of that application. I suspect there was some benefit, but that it was limited. When I say ‘train less’ it is about shifting how we train people in the use of technology. As technologists, we need to have a coaching focus where we set up an environment that encourages technology adoption and makes it easier for people to see how they can apply technology, rather than just showing the features and standard ways to use the technology. As a non-technologist, be honest about IT training – all too often technology teams receive feedback that there is not enough training and yet, when training is offered, attendance levels are very low. This is in large part due to standard training being less valuable, but we need to move away from seeing the lack of standard training as the main reason for limited technology adoption.

7.Optimise user experience

In referring to user experience, I am considering all aspects of how a user works with and feels about technology and not just limiting this to the look and feel of a solution. Look and feel is important, but it is only one aspect to consider. User experience is absolutely about understanding users; designing with users in mind; keeping navigation as simple as possible; testing the experience; seeking feedback; and making systems accessible from an inclusion and diversity perspective. It is also about the broader technology ecosystem and understanding upstream and downstream impacts on the user experience of making a change. It is a particularly challenging area given the complexity of environments and the varying degrees of control we have on the rate of change of cloud-based software and technology more generally. Optimising the experience recognises that some level of compromise may be necessary, but that every decision needs to start with users in mind. Where user experience is not optimised, it will make adoption more challenging.

From a business perspective it is important to accept that nostalgia is not a realistic way to evaluate user experience (i.e. if only it was like it was 10 years ago). A freeze-unfreeze-refreeze approach to change is also not the most helpful way to assess user experience. Instead, having a more fluid approach in accepting that the experience of today will change is more helpful. This is not, however, an excuse for poor technology design and a lack of focus on user experience.

There is another aspect of user experience that is often overlooked – the value of rationalisation of solutions and focusing on using what you have, rather than adding more. For technologists, it is essential to continuously rationalise solutions and not have too many ‘occasional’, ‘just in case’ and ‘never’ systems running. For non-technologists, the focus should be more on using available technology, rather than asking for the purchase of new solutions. User experience is well served by limiting solutions and applications sprawl.

There is no silver bullet to technology adoption, but if your path to adoption considers the seven areas I have discussed, you will certainly increase your chances of success.

Bringing it together

In this article, I have explored seven areas of focus that can improve success in technology adoption. These are by no means exhaustive, but they are important and challenging. It is uncommon for all seven of these areas to be mature. It may seem daunting when contemplating all the areas. It is also encouraging in that when it comes to adoption there is more commonality than press releases would have you believe.

Equally, there is no room for complacency. Firms are spending significant sums of money on technology, and it is incumbent upon us all, technologist or not, to drive the adoption that will realise the benefits of this investment.

Mark Andrews is Director – Global IT Service Delivery at Baker McKenzie. He has a varied background, including time in the public and private sectors, along with considerable professional services experience. He has held roles ranging from HR to management consulting and has previously been a guest lecturer in the business faculty of the University of Technology, Sydney - teaching at both Bachelor and Masters (MBA) level.