People

Welcome everyone! This post is part of my wider series on how to implement low-code not just from a technology and process perspective, but also for a people enablement and adoption perspective to truly maximise value from the platform - This post gives an overview of the structured approach I’ve defined and how I’m breaking down my blog posts
Holistic Low-Code Enablement - Blog structure and navigation — EmPOWER Your World

Last post we spoke about Leaders and the different types of leaders that we want to find and inspire - primarily the people leaders and influencing leaders. We also spoke about the concept of ‘Backstage Leadership’ and that we don’t have to be the stars of the show, and instead should be enabling our ‘People’ to shine…. But who are those People?? Well next in the Maker Movement cycle we are going to talk about the People that we’re now trying to inspire to start their journey.

Who are the people? Where in our organisation might we find them? Well that’s easy…. And as a result, difficult… The people could be anyone. They could be an SVP of Finance who is leading the upskilling of their organisation to digitally transform Finance. They could be a production operator who can see opportunities to better use data in their processes. They could be part of the EHS organisation who wants to use data to improve safety. They could be part of the team who develop new products identifying better ways to do it faster. They could be the service company who manage your facilities who have an idea to track where they’re spending the most time when cleaning offices.

Our target audience is anyone across an organisation - any level, any function, any role!

Because our people could be anyone it could be a bit uncertain where we start and who we target. You could decide on a particular area of the business to engage and run a pilot. You might already have a sponsor from that area pulling for this capability. If that’s the case - EXCELLENT! Do it!

But don’t neglect the rest of the organisation. Let’s start engaging with the people in the rest of the organisation who are already interested, already exploring, already making their lives easier. The more people we can find, and the more diverse their stories, backgrounds, roles, gender, org level, interests in the technology, use cases to be solved, the more rich and valuable our community will be, and the higher chance we will be able to tell a story that resonates with a person like them to show that new person that they CAN ‘do the thing’ and have a trail of breadcrumbs they can follow by connecting with that person!

What’s in it for me? Some things provided to me, Some that I get from applying that knowledge, and some things that come from the conditions that need to be put in place to make the magic happen!

OK, so we have an idea who our potential ‘People’ are (ANYONE!) and where in the organisation we might find them (ANYWHERE!) so how do we motivate them to find out more, to experiment, to start their journey?

Highlighting the stories of those ‘People like me’ is the hook that gets them interested but we also need to help them understand WHY it could be something interesting for them to investigate… What’s in it for them? What will they get? We need to think about individuals here, NOT organisations.

We all love to do a good job for our organisations, impact a KPI here and there, and bring in some extra £$€ into the coffers, and hopefully get a pat on the back for doing a good job but is that the only reason why we go to work? No! People are motivated by more! In the above picture I’ve tried to show some of how I think about it!

Some of that motivation can come from things we can provide… Inspirational stories, providing information and learning paths, showing connections between what they’re doing and the impact (business and personal) that it can bring

Some of it can come from how the person applies those things. The excitement of innovation and problem solving, applying new skills and developing knowledge and wisdom, opportunities to do different things, work with different people.

But these are related to us (and thinking back to some of those ‘Leaders’ from the previous post) providing the conditions for them to happen… Actively promoting that this is for ANYONE ANYWHERE to get involved in, encouraging people to start and try, and supporting them to be successful. Feeding ideas for where these new capabilities could be applied to stretch them further, and truly think about the ‘Employee Experience’ we’re building for people coming to work to help them be the best version of themselves and do their best work - which translate’s to the ‘Customer Experience’! (I think digging into this will come in a future blog post! 🤔)

Some of the ‘what’s in it for me?’ Could be the next step on their career, or a different direction to their career!

What’s also in it for me… Career options! Making current job more interesting, opening up routes into other existing roles or creating new roles that don’t exist today, and opportunities outside of your current organisation and career plans

If Power Platform or Copilot is in its infancy in your organisation there might not be clear career paths to follow. One measure of maturity is to monitor when these tools start to be promoted in Job Descriptions (internally or externally)

As the capability and adoption grows through the organisation we need to make sure we’re making the opportunities available for people to follow their passion and solve bigger and bigger problems using these tools. One way of doing this is to identify where targeted groups of developers could be deployed to deliver value - This might be to build SME capability internally where groups are using partners and third parties to do this today.

We should also remember that where we don’t make these outlets and avenues to use and develop their skills further one of these possible career paths could be outside of your organisation!

So in summary - when we’re talking about the ‘People’ step of the Maker Movement…

Who? Anyone - Anywhere!

We need to motivate people to start and continue their journey by feeding them the right inspiration and information, giving them the opportunities to exploit and stretch themselves, and create the conditions for them to be successful!

In my next post we’ll look at how we might educate the people who we’ve inspired to start their journey!

As always I’d love to hear any comments or any questions you have!