Suddenly Hybrid

Chapter 12Skill Up for Hybrid Collaboration Success

Applause … rolling, rousing applause. Not something most IT people are used to hearing from their fellow employees, but that's indeed what kept happening to Eric Taylor.

As an IT specialist at a leading business analytics company, he was in charge of teaching people how to move from an old Avaya phone system to Skype, which required them to use their computers to make their calls. The initial announcement generated some passionate responses, Eric recalls: “There was literally one gentleman on Yammer who said, ‘You can have my phone when you pry it from my cold dead hands.’”

That might have made some IT people do an immediate about‐face, but Eric and his team pressed on with a strategy that ended up not only driving user adoption but also creating fans. They did a series of town hall training sessions for departments across the enterprise. Eric explains, “The way we drove adoption was literally me getting up on stage or in front of a conference room with 40 or 50 people at a time and showing them on the screen: ‘Look, first you click here. Then you do this and then you click here.’” That step‐by‐step live tutorial was just what his fellow workers needed to build their confidence. They could master that new way of communicating because Eric showed them how.

He also took the opportunity to explain the reasoning behind the move, something that he recommends to any IT department rolling out new tools. “I am the biggest proponent ...