4 Ways Supervisors Support a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementation
Who do you think has the most impact on a Microsoft Dynamics 365 project’s success?
- Executive Sponsor
- Program Manager
- Project Manager
- CEO
These are good options, but why just one when you could enlist the help of many? The title with the most potential impact is supervisor. Every end-user has one, and they look to these leaders for information about significant changes and how those changes will affect their jobs.
Supervisors have a tremendous amount of influence. Too often they don’t know it. A common assumption is that it's the project team’s job to keep everyone informed. So, when a supervisor is asked to jump in and help support software adoption within their teams, they aren’t sure how to do it.
How Can a Supervisor Help?
Suggest that they take on four specific roles to help them understand what you need them to do. These come from Prosci, an international leader in change research:
- Communicator
- Advocate
- Coach
- Resistance Manager
Let’s examine these and identify how you can help supervisors do them well.
Communicator
This is the most important role supervisors play. They convey and gather information to ensure everyone has timely and useful updates.
What they should do:
- Pay attention to available information and ask for more if necessary
- Share why, what, and how information as they learn it
- Personalize the messages and delivery methods
- Ask team members for their thoughts, ideas, and questions
- Repeat messages
- Keep the language simple and understandable
How you can support them:
- Ensure they have up-to-date information
- Observe their communication practices and provide feedback
- Ask them about their progress in building awareness and support
- Help them refine messages, especially those less likely to be well-received
Advocate
Projects benefit from some cheerleading. Frontline leaders are uniquely positioned to do this well because they have credibility with their team members.
What they should do:
- Translate company benefits into team-specific benefits
- Share what’s in it for each person
- Correct assumptions that aren’t true
- Be honest and positive
- Ask people to be open-minded and give the new software a fair evaluation
How you can support them:
- Encourage them to champion the project with their team members
- Help them develop a compelling list of individual benefits
- Advocate alongside them so more people are saying the same thing
Coach
Supervisors already manage performance. Helping people move through a change is another form of performance management.
What they should do:
- Define the goals for individuals so they know what’s expected of them
- Teach how to do what you’re asking
- Empower people to seek out answers to their questions and solve their problems
- Monitor progress at the individual level
- Provide feedback and additional support to individuals
How you can support them:
- Help them understand what it means to coach
- Work with them to develop effective coaching strategies
- Collaborate on how to handle more challenging cases
Resistance Manager
Sometimes supervisors need to go into problem-solving mode and help people work through their concerns.
What they should do:
- Anticipate likely problems and build plans to prevent them
- Check-in with team members and ask how they are doing with the change
- Notice stress reactions that the change might be causing
- Share observations with employees about their behavior
- Work together to create solutions
- Remind people of the benefits
- Use progressive discipline as a last resort
How you can support them:
- Limit the number of changes the team must absorb at once
- Provide meaningful ways for supervisors to reward supportive behaviors
- Back them up if they need to use progressive discipline
Stoneridge Can Help You Support Your Supervisors
Stoneridge provides supervisors with project-related training. We deliver this training through custom workshops and one-on-one coaching, which helps your supervisors build skills for leading their teams through transition.
Learn more about our change management services.
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