Sr. Records Analyst Nital Patel joins Access Answers to share how to craft change management campaigns that create engaging end-user experiences and maximize adoption.

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Episode 19: Creative Change Management with Nital Patel

Julia:

Welcome to another episode of Access Answers. As always, I’m your host, Julia Vergara, along with Angela O’pry. And we’re so excited to introduce y’all to another one of our Louisiana based team members.

Angela:

Welcome, Nital, to our 19th episode of Access Answers. We’re so excited to have another Louisiana team member. We had a great time over in Louisiana in December. And your official title is senior records analyst, however, I think I’m going to say the change management expert, one of the most creative people that I’ve ever met, and a distinguished author. So welcome, we can’t wait to hear from you today, and to hear more about your recent experience with the FileNet implementation.

Nital:

Hi, everybody. Thank you for having me on this podcast. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Angela:

You are a key team member with the Louisiana Department of Transportation, and very critical in the implementation recently with FileNet and the change management efforts throughout the process, as well as the big go live party there at the end. So we really want to hear your perspective on what this project was like, what lessons you may have learned, what the key milestones were. Tell us all about it.

Nital:

Yeah. The FileNet migration project was a wonderful, huge project that I began in 2020, 2020. It was about two years ago. But it was a project that basically focused on migrating existing records from an IBM product that had basically met its life expectancy. It was going to be decommissioned, but it was an IBM product that we were migrating to, which was great. So I helped with the initial part in moving all the records from one, the older system, to the newer system. That involved taxonomy, and with several different steps to it, where after taxonomy included migration, testing, training, and then finally implementation and the change management part.

However, through each of those phases, I kept in mind the change management part. I’ve been in my previous work experience involved with a lot of changes and process changes in different environments. So I knew that getting ready and preparing for the change management was crucial from the very beginning from step one, so it was really good to see this whole project through from step one all the way into the change management. The migration part was wonderful because it allowed us to see what was present in the existing system that they were using, how the documents were being used. And also, it was great opportunity to ask our clients what they wanted, what they expected. So moving to a new system, it was great because we already had their expectations noted down, and then knowing that, hey, whatever the client said, whatever the user experience was, we’re taking into consideration. And we’re definitely going to apply all of their feedback into the new system.

So, the new systems hadn’t been completely established. We were able to gather all that information and then move to the migration part, and then eventually, when we did move all the records into the new system, which was FileNet, we were able to know what our users were concerned about, what they were anxious about, all of their apprehensions, things that they were nervous about, the things that they wanted and their wish lists. We were able to address all of those. Even if we couldn’t implement them at the same time as we went live with a new product, we knew that they wanted these things and that we were considering all of that. So the great part of the project I know was having all this flexibility and these new capabilities available to our users, but also letting them know that they are a huge part of what we’re going to do, of the changes that we are making, the feedback that they’re giving. And that was so crucial, I think.

I think change management is the biggest thing of any project, whether you’re implementing it, you’re migrating it, you’re getting the taxonomy ready, that change part, that change and process part is huge. So I was really fortunate to be part of each process from the initial gathering the business analysis stuff, to testing, to training the new project, and then finally, the change management part, where it all came together, the training, everything came together. And I wanted to make a theme where everybody was very engaged in it. And we’re DOTD, Department of Transportation and Development, and I love puns, I love making things fun. I love catchphrases because they’re engaging. They can be very cliché, but they’re very engaging in knowing that, look, what we’re doing is for the Department of Transportation, so everything that we framed was around transportation, about the journey, about the highway to information, and getting all this available to them in a straight path instead of a traffic jam, so I like to use a lot of those illustrations when we went through all of that.

Incorporating everything was a huge part of the change management, getting their feedback, their concerns, all of that. So that’s it in a nutshell. There are a lot of details, of course, but in a nutshell, that was it.

Angela:

Yeah. Speaking of details, I think we should go a little deeper on the change management tactics that you had and how they kind of fit into the theme that you had picked out.

Julia:

So, we have a blog coming out about Nital’s change management efforts and how creative she was with it, so I will definitely link that below. But we definitely want to hear it from you.

Nital:

Yeah. It actually goes back to when I was a medical librarian with Ochsner Health System. And I was very fortunate to be a part of a team just like Access Sciences, where they really encourage creativity and encourage the bottom line, not the dollars, but the bottom line as far as getting the end user, the client, to what really they needed. And in the healthcare system, of course, it’s patient care. That’s the goal. So I was fortunate there when I had an opportunity to work with patient education materials, that I sat back and thought all right, we’re making huge changes across the health system in making sure that all of our users know that they have the medical library where they can do the research. They have medical editing, where they can write the patient education materials, and then also have the resources to edit the information. And then medical illustrations that would help them illustrate it.

But even with all those resources, just like with Access Sciences for DOTD, what would really engage the end user? So the end user in that case at Ochsner were the nurses, the nurses that had that one to one contact with their patients. They were the ones that actually gave out patient educations. They were the translators from the physicians terms, you know those difficult medical terminology, to day to day terms that you and I would understand. So what do those nurses need to communicate to those patients? And so we designed a dating game for that, of course, which it was during the month of February where we had the conference, so Valentines was the theme. I always like to incorporate something that’s current, depending on the theme.

So, with DOTD, of course it was the highway, the transportation, the getting there, the journey. And I wanted to make sure that our clients felt that they were in this journey, this highway, this path with us together. So all of our newsletters and communication leading up to the final change management was themed on that. So we would have getting started would be, all right, let’s go ahead. We have a traffic jam of documents, all these knots and twists and ties in the highway system. How do we untangle that? So that started with the taxonomy. And then we moved onto testing and we incorporated the test drive. Let’s do the test drive. We can take it on the road. You’ve created this platform. Really, it’s basically your client information that we took into consideration to create these search engines. So let’s go ahead and test this for a test drive.

And then next, the training came. And that was really, really… Testing and training I would say would be the most important parts of gaining user feedback for what their expectations were and what our deliverables were, as far as the project goes. So during testing and training, it was really crucial to capture their input. How did they like that test drive? How did they like the training? What do they wish we could expand on? And getting feedback from that was really instrumental in planning the change management. We were able to use all that feedback. We were able assuage all of their concerns when we did go to that final change management part. We were able to address that during that event, so when they came there, if they were nervous about uploading documents to the new system, we addressed it then and there during that change management event with this big kickoff event.

We planned it all around a fuel up for FileNet, a pit crew, knowing that a pit crew supports all of their needs. We’re all here, and wanted to include everybody that was part of that project. That meant Access Sciences, of course. We had some lovely gifts and giveaways from Access Sciences with notes on FileNet going live on the packages. But we wanted to include records management because that’s where the handoff will be from the FileNet migration team to records management at DOTD. It was just a great event because we did have that feedback from all of our clients beforehand, so we knew they were nervous about A, B, and C. The event addressed A, B, and C, and let them know, look, we’re going to be there for all of your concerns. And there’s always an opportunity for growth. The journey doesn’t completely end at implementation. We will go on to build on what we’ve already released.

Angela:

So Nital, you talked a little bit about the go live party that you were prepping for. How did the event actually go? I know it was a big one.

Nital:

Oh, the event went really wonderfully. We of course, getting that feedback from the clients was wonderful in planning for the event. But also wanted to engage all of the teams that were involved. DOTD of course, everyone at the Department of Transportation, different sections were involved because in starting the project, trying to get myself immersed in the little groups that were in clubs and committees that were available to me at DOTD, meaning Toastmasters, was a group where they specialize in helping people with public speaking. And it was a great way to network with other people from lots of different sections within DOTD. So they knew I was planning for this event, and I encouraged them to help me with this as far as getting decorations there, getting cones, traffic cones, getting signs, all of that. And having that engagement at that level was great.

But also, getting our own teams involved, the records management team at DOTD and the Access Sciences team at DOTD for records management, the FileNet team that Access Sciences had with the migration project, getting our employees engaged in it as well was just so crucial in making this event successful, making sure that everybody had a role, from whether you’re a client going through all those pit stops. And again, those pit stops were designed to let people know that, hey, we’re preparing for this huge change. We’re here to help you fuel up for FileNet, in that sense that we’re going to give you all the supporting documents that you need. And instead of having lots of different documents, we just wanted to have one user guide, a user manual, basically, to separate into different sections, different pit stops, one, two, and three.

First, we wanted them to know that all of these resources were available to them through records management, through the Access Sciences team. Number two, getting the information into the new system was crucial, so that was the second pit stop, how to go ahead and do that. And number three, how do you get to that new system? How do you access it? That was the third pit stop. So the pit stops were of course, you get that driver, the person in the seat, driving seat, ready to go on that new path to new document management ready. So it was all designed that way. And I want to make sure that everybody had a part in it, every single person, whether you were on the Access Sciences team, whether you were on the FileNet team, whether you were at the Department of Transportation. It was a team effort. And it’s always a team thing, so we all had pit crew name badges that had our teams.

We also, whenever any of the DOTD sections were involved, whether they were donating signage, whether they were donating their time and sending, encouraging people to attend this event, or the traffic cones, we made them know that this was all of us involved, and that was a huge part of it. So going from taxonomy and getting just the keywords, that hashtagging of all those different documents, to just implementing it out, the best thing about it that everybody knew that they had a role in it, whether if you’re just going to be a user, uploading to that, or you were a support system from Access Sciences. That was the best part of it, is just letting everybody know that everybody had a role in it, no matter … I mean, nothing was minor, whether you were uploading something, whether you were revising something. It was all crucial.

Angela:

So from what you’re saying, I can tell there is definitely a big sense of community around the project, around the change management efforts. You really got everyone involved it seems like.

Nital:

Absolutely. I think approachability is huge factor in it as well. If you would like people to be involved in your project, you have to be very approachable. And there was no question that was silly, there was no suggestion that was too far off. If you have a suggestion, if you have a question, it’s very important to be able to build on that. And I never like to say no, or I don’t know. I think one of the great things with my librarian background, and I don’t know if Albert Einstein said it, or who said it, I may not know the answer, but I know I can find it for you. I can research it for you. So that approachability really helped. That attitude really helps. I think even if you have the best product in the world, that approachability was a key factor in it to let people know that, hey, I understand your frustration, even if it’s a negative comment about the project that you’re releasing. And there will be because it’s a huge shift in the processes that they’re doing day to day in their workflows.

Even if it’s negative, I don’t see it as negative. I would say, “Just let us know, no matter what you feel about this, because we can discuss it at least and then go from there.” If we can apply a different solution to it, that’s good. I just hate that … I don’t like brick walls. I just like that continuous journey to let’s see an evolving thing. It sounds kind of mushy and cliché, but I do like that whole metaphor of the roadway, the roadmap that’s been applied.

Angela:

So, when you’re leading a change management effort, how do you make sure your team is approachable and open to suggestions?

Nital:

Well, it all starts with me, I think, and my attitude towards the approach. One of the best things that I learned in my previous experiences is not to go out and say, “Hey, this is the policy. These are what we’re going to do. This is the mission.” It’s definitely important to have policies and the mission in place, but not to have them in stone. A rookie mistake of mine graduating from library sciences was that. I went and became a manager of a branch library and said, “This is this and that.” I was so ready to take on the world with what I had learned. But after the actual experience, it’s that everything is always a work in process. It’s always a contribution, it’s always a collaboration. And I think when people see that within you and sense that within the person who is part of the leadership team in getting something, a project implemented, when the whole team knows that it’s an open format, it’s not just all written in stone, or this is how it’s going to be, one, two, three, that’s how we get people on board.

Or that’s my experience at least, I’ve never had a very commandeering personality, where it’s my way or the highway. Never had that. It’s always just been, look, this is what we’re bringing to the table, but it’s definitely not complete. It’s not complete with the team members’ feedback. Definitely if we don’t have a team that’s completely on board, you can’t relay that to the client, of course. I know that’s a first step in getting that team to say, “Hey, this is what we’ve been tasked to do. How do we do it? What are your thoughts? What are your ideas?” It’s that feedback, the collaboration part.

And my piece, I’m only bringing what I’m bringing to the table with my experiences. But that’s a lovely thing about Access Sciences. We all come from different backgrounds, different skillsets. And we’re all bringing that to the table. And if I’m just bringing my own set and relying only on that, that’s really a big, huge discredit to the project. So to me, it’s always been very easy to go to the project team, the table with that, and saying, “This is what it is. Let’s see what we can all bring to it based on all of your unique experiences.”

Angela:

Okay. I want to go back to something that you mentioned in the beginning, Nital, about being involved as a change management expert from the beginning of the project. Have you ever been involved in a project where that was not the case?

Nital:

Yes, actually, I’ve been involved where change management process wasn’t as smooth as it has been with this current project. It was actually outside of this, where I think the biggest challenge was not having everybody on the team that was on board with that same mission. When I was in a different situation and it was my very first job out of library science school in an academic library, where there were certain missions that were needed. However, to get to those goals, you needed to have an out of the box mentality to get to it.

For example, they wanted to create a library that was fully functional, but it was only needed for accreditation, and just basically checking off a box. But to get that accreditation, to get that library use that you really needed to have a lot of participation from everybody at that agency. It was difficult to get that when not everybody is engaged at all levels, whether it was the students, the academic staff, I thought that was very, very crucial. It was a huge challenge for me. But I was able to again, kind of thinking on the needs. All right. We needed people to start using the library, even if it was for accreditation, we still needed the library to be used. We needed it to be there.

So, we designed, all right, let’s have report cards being picked up from the library. So we had at least people come into the library, see what the library was there. And at the same time, I was able to give my spiel about, look, these are all these services available to you. So the challenge is where when you have not as much engagement from all the teams that are involved, and also, sometimes the location of where you are plays a huge part too. In that case, it was years before. This was in the ’90s, the latter part of the ’90s when I got my library degree. We didn’t have Zoom or online virtual presence, so physical location was huge. And were located way in the back in the hallways in a building that was really far from the entrance of that community college.

So, I said, “Well, let’s have them come all the way back to pick up their report cards.” So that was a way to get them to step inside the library, get to use it, get to see what was there. So there are challenges like that when you don’t have complete on board-ness with all of the teams involved. But there are ways to think outside of that. All right, you need them to pick up their report cards. Let’s have them pick them up in the library.

Angela:

Yeah. I like the creativity of your themes. I personally believe everyone gets more excited when there’s a theme. We do the same with conferences and trade shows. And it just helps people remember and associate, oh, yes, this was the time that we did the pit stop with the race cars, or bumble bees, or it’s just a little more memorable, I think.

Nital:

Exactly. Yeah. And when you have it really well defined like that, all right, pit stop one had to do with the services. But pit stop three had to do with how to actually access that new FileNet system. And then we had the correct, the appropriate team members that oversaw all of those areas. For example, the second pit stop had to do with document upload. We had our scan team available at that desk, so they were able to know a face attached with that service, also who to know, where to go to with that service as well.

Angela:

Okay. So one thing we’ve not talked about is the book that you wrote. So, we definitely need to give you the published author title after your name.

Nital:

Oh, right. It does not have anything to do with records management. Of course, I’ve always wanted to be a writer since I was… As long as I can remember, 10 years old or whatever, always written in fiction. So it’s really surprising that I’m writing all this nonfiction newsletters because fiction is my strength, and I can make a mean story about records management. Stay tuned.

Yes, I’ve always been fascinated with identity, where we come from, the myth of origin, and being an immigrant to this country. It’s always been an interesting place to be, where you leave a country and enter a new country. You’re part of that country that you left and you’re part of this new country that you left, you’re part of it, and you’re not a part of it. And then you’re trying to feel yourself, way through it to create this third identity, incorporating both of the new identities. So that’s always been a theme of all of my fictional work, is self-discovery, how to navigate your current situation into the identity that you are because I really believe geography, environment, completely comes into play with your identity, where you’re born, where you’re led to, where you go, your everything, all of that just contributes greatly. And it’s been an awesome discovery phase, and that’s what writing is to me.

It’s therapy. It’s discovering who I am. And all of that completely comes into play with my work as well, where we are, what we’re going to do in this huge tapestry of life. I think it’s incredible that we’ve come from creatures that have just scribbled on cave walls, to doing what we do now. I mean, having each document have… It’s just fascinating, whether it has to do with a bridge that’s coming up for DOTD, a different data governance system, just how far we’ve removed. And it all depends on our background, our surroundings, and everything, and how they contribute. But yeah, that’s what my writing focuses on. It’s just a journey of self-discovery.

Angela:

Do you have any books coming out soon?

Nital:

I am writing two different types of books. I love suspense literature, mysteries, and all of that, so I have a fun one coming out that is actually going to be beyond Fatal Attraction, just a little bit spookier than that. And then also, a little bit more literary one, where it has to do a little surreal story about a little girl discovering how even if the palm of your hand has a certain fate that’s depicted, there is some things that you can take into your own hands, the future that you can do. But those two are coming out later this year.

Angela:

The other book that you mentioned, the second one that you’re writing, reminds me of a book that’s one of my top five favorites called The Immortalists. Have you read that?

Nital:

No, but it is in my queue to read. I would love that. Mine would be titled The Flying Man, and it’s based on when I lived in India, there was this… The Ferris wheels were manually rotated. And the man, it would be a very small Ferris wheel, but he would actually have this little handle that he would hang onto and just actually fly, leap up to turn the Ferris wheel. And I always just called him the flying man. And as a kid, I always wanted to go up there because it allowed you to rise above what Calcutta was at that time. There’s so much richness, but there was also a lot of poverty. And that Ferris wheel allowed these people who were able to get on it to escape for a little while, to go over it. But yeah, I just love those surreal stories.

Angela:

That sounds incredible.

Nital:

Yeah. Thanks for asking about that.

Julia:

Well, I mean, I guess I know where your creativity comes from. You’re just a creative person in general, and it translates into everything.

Nital:

Yeah. This has just such been a wonderful opportunity of working for companies like this, that encourage all that creativity because really, it could be anything, whether it’s document delivery, or just taxonomy. You can apply creativity to anything.

Julia:

So speaking of creativity, I know that’s a big theme in this podcast. Your blog that’s coming out soon is all about using creativity to enhance and engage end users and create an experience for them. I know you’ve done this with your most recent project and in past projects. But why is that so important to you? Why is that something you’re so passionate about?

Nital:

Well, the end user experience is basically what it’s all about. What are the expectations, no matter if it’s something that you’re implementing as far as a corporation goes, a huge systems change with records management, or it’s just something simple as a quick process change? That creativity plays a huge part in gauging how different users respond to certain changes, certain training, certain ways of testing. And I always feel rather than having one method of doing things, no matter what phase of the project it is, is to always give the end user options, and to understand that not all end users are coming from the same page, from the same angle. You have users that have been at DOTD for years and years and years. They’ve been here before electronic management, when they had to use microfiche, microfilm, just very manual, manual entry of information. And they’ve also progressed through all these years to electronic, virtual resources.

Then you have users that are students that are just student interns coming in and using this new system. So you really have to understand these different groups and how you can have them reach the same goal with that project that you’re working on, but with different ways. And that’s where creativity comes into part. All right, so we have one user who’s really very good at a presentation style. That’s how they work well with getting their information. So you want to develop different ways in processing, disseminating all the information about the project that’s coming up to them. So when we did training and when we did testing, we didn’t want to make just one way of testing, one way of training. We definitely tried to cater to the user’s need.

And creativity takes a good part in that. So we have one user who’s good with presentation, great, we can do a PowerPoint presentation. But then another user who’s good with hands on, let’s get a computer room, show them how to use it. But then, all right, another user who, you can stay step one, step two, step three, this is what you do, but that’s not what it’s about to them at all. It’s the end product that’s what’s important to them. So this information will be in FileNet. But how is it going to affect the reports that I do for the leadership group? How is it going to help me with the studies that are being done? So it’s not just, okay, let’s get this record uploaded and let’s see how we can find it, but also about approaching it when it’s up there and you have all this information. How can you use all that information to benefit your workflow, the end note, the bottom line of your corporation? So you really have to be very flexible.

And whether it’s with writing, whether it’s with managing change, I mean, something even like cooking. How do you teach cooking to different people? How are different people going to learn? Do we give them a list of ingredients? Do we say, “Hey, these are the tools that we recommend you use for cooking these things”? That’s where the creativity or just thinking outside of the box is such an overused term, but it’s very applicable all the time, where you just have to understand the users’ needs and how they process things within themselves. And also, to say, “All right. This applies to records management.” But say, “Put that user in a cooking environment.” How are they going to learn how to cook something? How would you approach it to that?

All right, so with need to tell them the ingredients, but we need to tell them why this ingredient’s important, or why you would choose this ingredient above the other. I hope all that makes sense because when you’re able to say, “This is what we need to teach them as far as document delivery is concerned, how would they teach it if it was in a different environment?” And trying to cater to it that way. I hope that makes sense. It’s just putting yourself in different scenarios that allows you to address a lot of different educational needs and training needs for different groups.

Angela:

I think Julia and I are both smiling because a year ago, we did a cooking class together and it was a little difficult. You know that whole reinforcement part of change management, we probably need a couple more before I’d say we’re ready to be.

Nital:

I wrote a cookbook too. It was called Last Stop for Curry.

Julia:

Yeah. It’s going to take many tries to get to a point where I’d say I’m confident cooking.

Angela:

But I definitely think that’s great advice for anyone who’s looking, or who’s thinking. Where do I even start with change management? How do I get creative with it? It’s what you said, thinking of: How would I communicate this in a different situation?

Nital:

Yeah. Exactly. It doesn’t exactly have to be word for word what you’re doing now, but putting it in a different context definitely helps.

Angela:

Well, thank you, Nital, for being our guest today. And we have lots of reading to do ahead of us. Check out your books and practice our cooking skills again with your cookbooks.

Nital:

Absolutely. And you have the discount, Access Sciences discount. Just let me know. I’ll send it to you, whatever you want, absolutely. This was great. Thank you. Thank you for letting me blabber on.

Angela:

And congratulations on the big release of FileNet. That was a huge project, a lot of work. And the reviews were just rave reviews, stunning, so perfect job.

Nital:

Oh, yeah. Everything was just awesome. Everybody was so great.

Julia:

So if you’re interested in checking out Nital’s content, I will definitely link her blog on creative change management down below, and also her book links.