My Role

Project Director and Design Lead - partnered with client and internal team to define research approach. Managed client’s expectations regarding project deliverables. Managed team of 3 researchers and insights generation as well as conducted in-depth reviews, presented outcomes to client steering committee. Lead work on Customer Journey Mapping component.

The Challenge

ATB was in the late stages of starting their journey to "Work Re-imagined", an ambitious "hot" change from Microsoft suite to Google's GSuite. As they neared the initial kickoff, they realized they needed a breakout method to communicate the overall change management component to their 5,500 ATBers in a way that was inclusive and supportive. Oh, and we had three weeks start to finish!

The Approach

After an initial call, we recommended developing personas for their entire internal workforce. With a three-week timeline, we were hoping to get most of it done before their hard deadline. We decided on immediate in-person interviews to breakdown their internal twelve role grid. After over 40 interviews in a couple days, we presented our initial findings.

We also had to find a way for them to immediately operationalize these personas. As the timeline was critical, we needed to create a framework to enable empathic decisions throughout their challenging process.

The Solution

We presented our initial six-person persona line-up to their steering committe and hand-picked 50 internal Google Ambassadors to high acclaim. We tested out the grid on additional groups with almost perfect validation of our results. These six personas was the foundation of their entire change management, support and communications plan throughout the months-long transition.

To provide something tangible for the personas, we decided to use a journey mapping framework, but adapt it to their forward-looking challenge. By having teams of ATBers interpret the thinking, feeling, doing sentiments of each persona based on the milestone, we were able to build a map to guide truly empathic touchpoints throughout the process.

The Outcome

ATB was able to create a positive environment around this sea change in how people interacted with technology at work. Most productivity suite changes for enterprise are challenging and troublesome. This one, coming from a place of empathy and empowerment, had their team looking forward to the change instead of fearing it. Our framework helped them understand how to make that happen.

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