Change can be overwhelming so one of April's principles is to break it down into small, manageable chunks. Senior consultant Kinvara Rogers explains:
A big plan often demands behaviour change from a lot of people in a lot of ways but humans have a natural aversion to change. An ambitious plan can be overwhelming and lead to disengagement from the very people you’re relying on to achieve certain goals.
To optimise the chance of delivering a big plan successfully, you need to break it down into small chunks and focus on shifting people’s behaviour by degrees.
So, rather than get everyone to buy into the end game at the start, April's approach is to create a campaign that builds and takes people along with it. At each stage, we identify the ‘brakes’ - the things that will get in the way or slow things down - as well as understanding and focusing on the accelerators.
This way, we’re more likely to achieve true and lasting behaviour change.
An automotive retailer we worked with faced the challenge of introducing digital customer-facing tools into their sales network. It couldn’t be just a case of giving them the tools and expecting them to get on with it – it demanded behaviour change and a real understanding of the benefits by those we were asking to change.
We needed to understand what was stopping people using digital tools and to identify those who were leading the way, who we could learn from and who could influence others. So, we developed a prototype and got people using it in in MVP form, encouraging them to ‘just use it’ – by doing so they were already practising new behaviours, and we were learning how to improve it.
We had a checklist so simple things could be addressed and ticked off and it felt achievable. Only at the point that we had co-developed tools and guidance, demonstrated benefits and generated great stories about what others had done, was the broader network engaged in interactive events using the tools.
This incremental approach ensured buy-in and generated momentum which delivered the desired change and impact.
More information on the five April principles can be found on our website how page.