Avoiding Transformation Failure: Post Implementation Surveys

Between the explosion of Generative AI, and the maturity of SaaS products on the market, almost every company is undergoing some variation of technology and organizational transformation. Unfortunately, it’s estimated that around 70% of these projects are destined to fail to deliver the expected results. While there is no silver bullet to ensure your transformation’s success, there are best practices to help you get there.

An often overlooked tool is the post-implementation survey. Especially when you’re operating in an Agile Environment, or implementing multi-stage transformations, understanding what’s working and what isn’t is the key to future success.

With tools like Survey Monkey, it’s easy to set up and implement anonymous feedback surveys. However, to do this correctly, there are some basic guidelines you should follow:

1) Look for the negative

This is not a tool to pat yourself on the back for a job well done, or a way to show executives how great your project went.

I’ve seen multiple instances where the survey is designed to elicit the most positive responses that they can get. They get to tell executives that they did a great job, nothing could be improved, but they still aren’t meeting expectations or results. 

Instead, try to frame most of your questions as a negative. You want actionable feedback that you can implement. While it’s useful to understand what you’re doing right, it has to be in context against what you’re doing wrong.

2) People determine if projects succeed to fail, not the technology

Don't focus on the technology you’re implementing. Focus on the organizational change.

You want the end users to feel heard, and actually understand their point of view. Many times, the question “Do you feel like we've made your job easier?” goes a long way to explaining why adoption is high or low. For effective Organizational Change, you want to understand how the message was received, and if it’s hitting home.

Questions like the following help you understand how impacted users are feeling about the project’s delivery.

• Did the communications about this project help you understand what was being implemented?

• Did you understand what the project was, and what problem it was solving?

• Did you understand how you would be impacted 

3) Are we using the correct communication channels

Every organization has preconceived notions about how their employees prefer to be communicated with. The odds are pretty good that you’re not focused on what’s actually working best, but on what You think works best.

There are a lot of tools that can be used to communicate Transformation initiatives, and they work better for some roles then others.

So make sure you ask: What communication channel helped you best understand the project?

• Short videos

• Emails

• Chat Groups / Teams Channels

• Sharepoint Website

• Townhalls

• Trainers

Executives and sales might prefer Videos, direct users might prefer Townhalls, but you won’t know until you ask.

4) Ask specifically where the "New" fails

When you do ask about the tool, process or platform: Ask what it doesn't do as well as the previous iteration.

Did you miss a requirement during Discovery that impacts adoption? Better to find out now then after it causes a financial or customer impacting loss. Look for things that you can fix as soon as possible.

Note: You can also add a follow-up question asking what the New does better. However, this is more about providing social proof that the tool is worth using. 

5) Were you confused and alone

Did you know who or where to ask questions about this project?

You need to understand whether you made it clear where to go to get answers. Or were employees left feeling lost and worried about what was coming down the line.  

6) How do we improve

The last question you want to ask is: What would improve your experience during the next implementation?

You’ve already given them a chance to think through what they liked and didn’t like about the process, this is their open-ended chance to tell you how to fix it next time.

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If it’s your first time creating surveys, here are a couple of basic guidelines to get the best results.

• Keep it short: If you have too many questions, ask different groups the different questions. People abandon quickly if they get overwhelmed.

• Make it anonymous: You don’t care who’s providing the feedback, just what you can fix.

• Use scoring or pre-fixed answers as much as possible: Open ended answers provide you great feedback, but are hard to tabulate and track overall. Examples:

  • Use checkbox for types of communications they prefer.

  • Score 1-5 on how effective they thought the project communications was.

• Use different surveys for different roles, or a segmentation question.

  • Segmenting leadership feedback from user feedback will help you differentiate how to approach the different audiences. We often include a segmentation question with check-boxes that allows us to organize results.

  • What is your Role: Leadership (Director & Above), Team Leader, Call Center Rep…