TLH Ep.54 Why Technology Investments Fail Without Change Management
Hello, The Legal Helm listeners.
Today’s episode explores a critical part of technology transformation that can often determine whether a major investment truly delivers value: change management.
We’re pleased to welcome Emily Thomas, founder of Sync Consulting, a firm that helps law firms successfully implement and optimize financial and practice management systems, including platforms such as Elite 3E and Intapp.
With expertise spanning system selection, implementation, project management, business analysis, integrations, training, change management, and go-live, Emily and her team work alongside firms throughout the transformation journey while remaining independent of software vendors and focused on the firm’s interests.
In this episode, we’ll explore what happens beyond the technology itself—how firms can prepare their people for change, navigate complex implementations, and ensure new systems actually deliver the value they were intended to create. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation on the human side of legal technology transformation.
Your Host
Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.
Today’s Guest
Emily Thomas is the founder of Sync Consulting. We’re a legal technology consulting firm that helps law firms successfully implement and optimize their financial and practice management systems, particularly platforms like Elite 3E and Intapp.I work as the bridge between the law firm and the technology vendor, making sure the technology actually works for the people who have to use it. We support firms through everything from system selection and implementation to project management, business analysis, integrations, training, change management and go-live. What really differentiates Sync is that we understand both the technology and how law firms operate. We’re independent of the software vendors, so our focus is always on representing the firm and making sure they get the system, implementation and outcome they were promised.
Transcript
Bim Dave: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Legal Helm. Today, we’re talking about something that I think is often underestimated when firms make significant technology investments: change management. Joining me to discuss this is Emily Thomas, founder of Sync Consulting. Emily and her team help law firms successfully implement and optimize financial and practice management systems, particularly platforms such as Elite 3E and Intapp.
Sync Consulting supports firms across system selection, implementation, project management, business analysis, integrations, training, change management, and go live, while remaining independent of software vendors and representing the interests of the firm. Emily, welcome to The Legal Helm.
Emily Thomas: Thank you, Bim Dave. It’s nice to be here.
Bim Dave: Yeah. So, so I’d love to, um, just help our audience get to know you a little bit. So firstly, maybe you could just kind of walk us through the journey that led you to found Sync Consulting.
Emily Thomas: Okay. Um, well, I, um, I graduated with an undergraduate degree in criminology and thought I wanted to be a lawyer. So I, uh, started working at law firms while studying for my LSATs and quickly learned that the lawyer role wasn’t for me. And, uh, I actually particularly didn’t like reading boring context, and I, I found and I observed that lawyers read a lot, and I thought, “Oh, there’s gotta be a more interesting thing that I can do.”
So, I stayed working in law firms for 10 years and, um, worked my way into, uh, law firm management. And then I left legal for a little while and went into, uh, the corporate world, uh, where I discovered a passion for project management, and I found that that was really what I wanted to do. And so I made my way back into the legal, um, industry in a project management role.
And I did my first, uh, 3E implementation in 2020–
Emily Thomas: 2020–
Emily Thomas: Sorry, 2016, I think, um, and have worked on, uh, law firm ERPs and transformations, um, for 10 years.
Emily Thomas: 10 years.
Bim Dave: Amazing. So, um, so I wanna start with the big question, which is: Why does change management have such a significant impact on the return on investment of a technology investment for a firm?
Emily Thomas: In the most simplest terms, um, if your return on investment only happens if your users are using it or adopting it. So, um, if your, um, business case for implementing something or a big change, and usually those business cases come from a common theme of increased efficiency, better reporting, higher profitability, things like that.
If users don’t adopt the process to create those benefits, the economics of that business case change, and you’re not going to see your return on investment. Users will find a workaround or an option to opt out or, um, you know, you’re not going to– If, if what you were trying to do was make the process faster and users aren’t utilizing the process in a way that makes it faster, you’ve lost your, your whole purpose and your return on that investment.
Bim Dave: return on that investment. Yeah. It’s, it’s a really interesting point because it’s almost like you could have a technically really successful implementation, right? Um, but ultimately the end result is a, a business failure, right? Because of those, those scenarios.
Emily Thomas: That’s exactly right.
Bim Dave: Yeah. So your, your focus is on, um, helping law firms and helping them with some of the adoption side of things that you just kind of touched on.
What is it about a law firm that makes technology adoption particularly challenging compared to other types of organization, would you say?
Emily Thomas: Law firms have a very particular culture. Um, consistently, I’ve, I’ve worked with many law firms over the last 10 years and, and the theme is similar. They are highly resistant to risk. Uh, professionals are busy and their time is billable, and they don’t often want to spend time learning a new process or changing the way in which they’ve worked for an X number of years.
Um, and so that can be particularly challenging, uh, working with law firms.
Bim Dave: Professionals are busy and their time is billable, and they don’t often want to spend time learning a new process or changing the way in which they have worked for X number of years. Um, and so that can be particularly challenging, uh, working with law firms. And when, when you’re– So when you’re first engaging with a firm, is there something that, um, you use as kind of like a measuring stick to say, are they genuinely ready for change?
Or is it just more of a I need to bu- I’ve got budgets, I’m buying technology to see what the impact is? Like how, how do you determine that a firm is like ready for a change?
Emily Thomas: The very first thing I do is ask why. Why are we implementing this? And those reasons can differ. Sometimes, um, it’s a forced change. You have, uh, a product or a software that is being sunsetted or, uh, you know, the, there’s a need, you know, if it’s an on-prem system, there’s a server-related, you know, requirement to upgrade.
Things like that can, can drive change. That’s one aspect. There’s another aspect of, um, you have, you know, somebody at the firm who maybe attended a conference and saw a shiny new, um, object or, or a shiny new solution and was really excited about it and thought that this was something that the firm could utilize.
And so, I really try to sit down with them and ask, “What’s the business case? What’s the reason we’re making this change?” And that drives everything in terms of my, uh, assistance going forward.
Emily Thomas: going forward. Yeah.
Bim Dave: It, it’s really interesting you, you mentioned the, the kind of shiny new thing in conference. I, I was recently in Nashville for, for Ulticon, and just looking at the number of vendors that have popped up over the last year is just– it was phenomenal, right?
It was such, such a big event and, and just a, a ton of options in the market, um, in terms of new technology providers, new AI startups. They’re all offering, like, something to, to the market, but it just adds like a whole layer of complexity in terms of for a law firm then making, making a decision based on, you know, the wow factor of, of seeing a demonstration at a conference.
That, that must be quite challenging to, to kind of navi- h-help a firm navigate some of the, um, the stakeholder, uh, the stakeholders getting excited about some, some new technology that maybe doesn’t really solve a problem for them.
Emily Thomas: Exactly
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yeah. So when– So, so let’s, let’s kind of take a step back and think about that, that kind of process that a firm’s gonna go through to then justify the reason for, for investing in, in a piece of technology.
So, within that, that technology business case, uh, presumably there’s an assumption that the people will use the technology, as you alluded to earlier. How often does that, like, reality really match the assumption that, that there is gonna be usage in your experience?
Emily Thomas: It’s not as high as you might think, and it really, again, would depend on the business case. Um, and it also depends on the executive sponsorship, um, and the stakeholder engagement. So, you know, that’s why change management is so important to, to sort of start at the beginning because you have to have the foundation of stakeholder engagement, executive sponsorship laid out.
Because The culture in law firms is that people will typically watch what leadership does over what leadership will say. So, if you’re rolling something out and there are executives that have the option to opt out or, um, this change, you know, is for some people, but not everybody has to use it, people will find a reason to opt out of it.
Um, it’s more work to adopt change. It’s more work to learn something new. So if they have the option to not do that, um, they will take every opportunity or find workarounds, you know, whether that’s doing something outside of the system in a spreadsheet or finding a manual process or something like that, um, users will, will find that.
So, it’s really important that
Emily Thomas: that
Emily Thomas: you set the expectation early on, again, in the, in the why we’re doing this, who is going to be the most affected by this, and how are they going to be affected by this? And if you can really understand that in the beginning, then you’ll understand or have a better expectation as to how many users are going to adopt this.
Is this going to be a firm-wide rollout? Is this something that only affects a couple of users? Is this something we, we do want to, um, roll out as optional? And the return on investment isn’t, you know, isn’t expected to be 100% user adoption in the end.
Emily Thomas: in the end.
Bim Dave: Hmm. We– Y- you know, when you think about some of the technology programs that you’ve, you’ve overseen and, and, and I have as well, I, I seem to feel like we’re so focused, or traditionally we’ve been very focused on, like, how quickly we’re gonna deliver the solution.
Is it gonna be, is it gonna be on budget? Um, did we migrate all the data successfully? And, um, are we gonna go live on time, right? Like, they seem to be the common things that we’re, we’re really focused on, and that’s re- they’re all really good metrics from an implementation perspective, but doesn’t really tie to success.
So, I’m wondering, like, in your opinion, if you were advising a firm, what kind of defin- like, what would be your definition of success, and how do you turn that into something that’s measurable?
Emily Thomas: That’s a great question. Um, the measurability of the success, in my opinion, scales back to the business case, you know, at hand. If, if you’re rolling out a, you know, um, a billing workflow or a platform for a billing workflow, for example, and the business case or the driver for that change was that we need to improve the speed of the billing cycle.
And after, you know, the second or third month of a rollout, if you’re not seeing that those bills are getting out the door faster, you have failed the user adoption, or you have not achieved what you intended to achieve in rolling this out. So you have spent, you know, a lot of money, and it, and it may have been delivered on time and in budget and had all of the scope, you know, covered.
But if you’ve missed the link of how are we gonna get users to adopt this,
Emily Thomas: then
Emily Thomas: Then you’ve lost, you know? In my opinion, you’ve lost that rollout
Emily Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s so, so true.
Bim Dave: So, so there’s– It, so it’s really interesting. So you’ve got almost got the, the implementation of the solution, which kind of gets us to a point where you’ve got something that’s live that’s supposed to solve a problem that was defined in the business case.
And then what you’re saying is like, actually, we need to measure that beyond, um, go live really, and ultimately– And that could be three months, six months, 12 months potentially after go live, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean that you see the value on day one of, of go live. Now, a-again, like going back to how a law firm would manage, um, a change and a, and a, and a rollout like that, how do you ma- how, how do you make sure that after an implementation is done, that somebody remains accountable for those outcomes after the project team has moved on potentially?
‘Cause it may be that the engagement from a technical delivery is over, but actually we wanna make sure that we realize, um, the investment. So who, who should be accountable, and what should firms be thinking about to make sure that that, that outcome is measured on an ongoing basis?
Emily Thomas: It, yeah, that’s really, uh, in my opinion, lies with the stakeholders, uh, or executive sponsorship. And really, um, I don’t view go-live as the end of the project. I view go-live as the beginning of the adoption. You know, it’s kind of a halfway point, and, and a lot of, um, implementations view go-live as like, we’ve done it.
We’ve done this great big thing, and it’s a success and, and we’re live, and that’s simply not true. That’s, that’s kind of the start of your next phase. And the next phase really is, um, making sure that users have been trained on whatever it is that you’re rolling out, um, that they were ready for you. You know, you’ve prepared them, and they’re, they’re ready to, to make that change, to change the way that they work.
Um, and then following that is reinforcement. So you really have to make sure that you’ve implemented a reinforcement piece. And sometimes, uh, what I find in rollouts is you may roll out, you know, the bare minimum functionality in the first couple of months to have users, you know, using it, not overwhelm them, maybe roll it out in phases or something like that.
Emily Thomas: like that.
Emily Thomas: And then the reinforcement piece that comes after is taking that to the next level. So are there more features available in this product or software that we’re not using that users are now ready for? Um, and how do we keep them engaged in this change and, and supported in this change? So training and readiness, making sure that they really feel supported during the rollout, that they know where to go when there’s questions, um, they can see and understand the reason why this change happened, and the reinforcement aspect is, uh, is continued and that users are continually, um, you know, supported and potentially, you know, um, expanded on, the usage is expanded on, um, after the rollout.
Bim Dave: Yeah, no, a- absolutely.
And so, so you, you mentioned, um, training, which I think is really, really interesting. It’s a really interesting part of the project because I see a lot of firms, again, kind of mixing both training and change management and thinking they’re the same thing. So they could say that actually, you know, 90% of our users have been trained, and for them that means that it’s gonna be, like, a, a massive adoption and everything’s gonna be great.
Um, interested to get your take on that and, like, how, how should firms be looking at the difference between, like, where training ends and change management begins?
Emily Thomas: Yeah, that’s a great question. In my opinion, um, training and change management are completely different things. Training and adoption are completely different concepts. Training someone to click buttons on the screen or navigate a user interface, that’s training. User adoption and change management is explaining why.
Why are they doing this, and where does their piece of it fit into the larger picture? That is really important for users to understand, ’cause if they can understand and accept the business case or the reason or, um, you know, how this change has affected the greater organization as a whole, they’re more likely to buy into it.
They’re more likely to use it than to just be trained on an aspect of it in a silo and really not understand the end piece of it. That is critical. Um, you know, they really need to understand that, and I think you’ll have more buy-in and more adoption when users have a greater sense of the picture. So change management should start at the very beginning.
I’m a, I’m a big proponent of training happens just before you launch because users retain very little of what they’ve been trained on, typically speaking. So if you can make the change management, the communication, the stakeholder engagement, the impact assessment all part of the implementation, and then the training aspect is just a small piece of it right before the launch, then you’ve, you’ve covered everything.
Emily Thomas: everything.
Bim Dave: It’s, it’s almost like that the business case should be all-encompassing and made me think about change management from that perspec-perspective early, uh, as early as that, right? Um, so that actually it’s, it’s funded as part of the project budget as well.
Emily Thomas: Absolutely. Yes. It’s, uh, it’s– And it’s often left out of the project budget and often an afterthought. And so one of the things that I like to do when I go in, um, is include change management as part of, um, the overall implementation. And, you know, explaining to a director of finance or, or, um, you know, a CFO that
Emily Thomas: that
Emily Thomas: they need to increase the budget potentially in the rollout for user adoption.
The reason behind that is, you know, I ask them how much are they spending on this implementation? And if they’ve left that piece out, um, it’s kind of like, you know, building a whole house but forgetting to put the doors in or, you know, um, buying everyone at your firm an expensive gym membership, but then not giving them the tools and, um, the reasons to change the ways in which, you know, their habits or something so that they’ll actually use it.
So, without that piece of it and, and the budget and the time spent on that, you will have an expensive system that may just sit underutilized.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Very true. So, so, um, so your firm, Sync Consulting, covers like the– a broad life cycle ran- ranging from everything from like the, the initial system selection through to some of the business analysis that you’re doing, implementation, training, go live, change management, the whole shebang, right?
Um, I wondered, uh, what your opinion is on how valuable it is to think about adoption during system selection rather than after you’ve selected the, the technology that you’re, you’re interested in investing in.
Emily Thomas: It should be the reason that you’re selecting something. So, you know, back to our point of attending a conference and, and seeing this new product that, that looks amazing and sounds amazing and, you know, perhaps he sales pitch was, you know, FOMO based or, you know, if you don’t, if you don’t adopt this new piece of AI, you guys are gonna be left behind and left in the dust.
But if you’re not understanding why users need to change or, you know, their processes or the ways in which they work, how they’re going to be affected and how they’re going to use it, you’re potentially selecting the wrong solution.
Bim Dave: Why users need to change or, you know, their processes, uh, or the ways in which they work, how they’re going to be affected and how they’re going to use it, you’re potentially selecting the wrong solution Mm. And, uh, are there things that you can get from, um, from the vendors that you’re actually working with at that point to be able to say, “Actually, based on your experience, like, what, what have other, uh, customers actually achieved using your software?”
Emily Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And often they are, um, happy to give, um, that information. Um, sometimes it’s, you know, it’s a new im- implementation and, and your vendor may be very honest and upfront and say, “Actually, you’re gonna be our first customer in rollout, and we wanna partner with you on that element. We wanna, we wanna work with you on adoption so that we can use you, um, as kind of a, a base point or a reference point.”
And, and really good vendors will work with, um, an organization on that if they are the first or they don’t have that foundation laid.
Emily Thomas: data.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Okay. So, so I wanna talk a little bit about resistance to change, um, and which again, we see ha- happening, you know, in, in, in many firms adopting new change and new technology. Um, I think there’s a, there’s a tendency to think about and, and label people that say that… Or, or really like, you know, the naysayers, the p- the people that are pushing back all the way saying that this doesn’t make sense to us.
Um, do you think that those people being labeled as being resistance to change, resistant to change are actually people that could be telling us something that we need to know, right? Something important because they are embedded in the way that they’re doing things today in terms of their role?
Emily Thomas: Absolutely. Um, I think it’s really important. That’s part of kind of our stakeholder engagement, um, analysis. So we, you know, I sit down with a firm, uh, early on, and we, we ch- select our stakeholders, um, based on a combination of things. First of all, I like to have people that have, um, credibility and influence in a firm.
So, if, if you can identify someone who has credibility and an influence, I wanna bring them on to the stakeholder engagement team. And I particularly wanna bring on those naysayers, the ones that are gonna be the most resistant to change, ’cause we really need to understand the reasons why they’re resistant.
And those reasons can vary, but if we can get ahead of those, um, you know, the, the naysayers and the reasons why, um, people may not want to adopt it, then we can.
Emily Thomas: can
Emily Thomas: Change the narrative, um, in the very beginning. And usually, you know, it’s an element of sometimes I’ve been doing this for a really long time. Um, you know, I’ve been doing this process for 15 years.
It’s not broken. It works great for me. Why are we changing it? And maybe they don’t understand that there’s a broader business case that affects other departments or other teams, and as a result of that change, they’re going to have to change their element or aspect of it. It may not be something that they specifically, um, you know, their process isn’t directly affected, but it’s indirectly affected by the overall change.
So, bringing those people in early, um, and really getting an understanding of their perspective, how they work, how things are going to change for them, can make a, a really big impact and determination on flipping that narrative, um, in the end.
Emily Thomas: the end.
Bim Dave: Hmm. And there’s– Is there another side to that where, um, there’s certain, certain firms where they will respond to that resistance in a different way in that what they’re doing is they’re basically almost beaten down into submission saying that, “Okay, we’re gonna have an exception,” or, “There’s gonna be a workaround,” or, “There’s a customization that’s gonna be introduced just to address that, that voice.”
Uh, do you see things like that happening?
Emily Thomas: I see it happen a lot. I see it happen, not necessarily from leadership or from the sponsorship, but more so from the users, right? So, um, I often will be working with, um, end users. Maybe it’s a training element, maybe it’s a, uh, a user acceptance te- user acceptance testing element, and I can pinpoint right away where change management has maybe failed or, or not been, uh, paid attention to.
And, you know, you will hear comments of, “Well, I’m just gonna find a workaround for this anyway,” or, “I’ll just do it in Excel.” Or, uh, or, you know, um, sometimes after rollout you will have people say something along the lines of, “Well, I know we’re supposed to do this in the system, but I found my, you know, my own way of doing this on the side.”
And
Emily Thomas: And so
Emily Thomas: to answer your question, yes, you’re going to have, um, elements and aspects of, of those people who you can– If you, if you’re lucky, you can identify that during the implementation and, and during the, you know, the before the rollout, and you can make those corrections or you can, you know, ask the right questions and maybe pivot a little bit in terms of an, an element of it.
Um, but you do often see it come out at some point in time.
Bim Dave: point in time. Mm. And presumably, like the leadership team and stakeholders have a role to play here as well, right?
Because if they’re– th-there’s, there’s probably a limit to how much they should tolerate some of those workarounds that are being suggested or, or acted on and say, actually, like reinforcing the message saying, “No, this is how we’re gonna now gonna work,” right? Like as in it’s a different way of working and, and getting that message across.
Are there things that the, the firms can do to, to kind of prepare for the messaging around that? Because part of this is, is, I guess a people management piece as well, right? What, what can we do to kind of support leaders to make sure that they’re making good decisions and not being baffled with, um, the complexities of a solution, right?
‘Cause that’s another thing that I see a lot of is, is that something is made overly complex, um, to say, “Actually, there’s no other way of doing this,” right? And then a leadersh– the, the– maybe the leadership is not as, as hands-on, um, with a, with a complex product like three, for example, and they’re almost just kind of baffled with the science saying that, “Okay, I’m just gonna agree to this ’cause it’s easier for me to do that than actually spend the time to understand why we’re doing it.”
What… How, how do we help, um, people kind of navigate that, that, that layer of complexity?
Emily Thomas: What I try to do is keep leadership outside of the project details, right? So there’s a difference between, um, communicating project-related activities or, uh, deliverables versus change management pieces. And I try to keep executives more in the change management budget. So keeping them out of the complicated, the, um, you know, the often very technical aspects of it, and keeping it more into the business case use or ex– or, you know, a-answering the how are users going to be affected by this.
Emily Thomas: That’s much easier for them to understand, and that’s much easier for them to be, um, to be on board with. Not just on board with, but also to, um, model those changes. So I think I had said earlier, you know, organizations will often watch what leadership does more than they will listen to what leadership says.
So, if you have those executives,
Emily Thomas: you
Emily Thomas: you have their buy-in, you have their belief, and they are really the ones actually using the software, um, or, you know, the AI or whatever it is that it is that is being rolled out, then you’re more likely to have buy-in from all of the users, um, you know, behind them.
Bim Dave: to have buy-in
Emily Thomas: from all of the users,
Bim Dave: um, you know, behind. Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so whe-when it comes to change champions within a law firm, how important are they in terms of the overall success of, of a project delivery? And I think you kind of touched on this before, but I’d love, I’d love to kind of go into a bit more detail around like who– how do you determine what makes a better champion?
Um, because you, uh, again, I’ve, I’ve seen two, two scenarios, and I’d be really interested to get your take on this, where you can have a firm which has like a really enthusiastic champion that’s, uh, you know, used to having technology change, really excited about the technology, so will do anything to support the project, right?
And then you can have another, uh, firm where you’ve got somebody who’s respected within the firm, has been, you know, maybe running the billing team for many years, um, but is actually a skeptic and is challenging whether the technology can actually do what it needs to do to be able to improve their efficiency.
How do you, like, so how do you weigh those two up in terms of project success and f-thinking about some of the other factors in terms of you still need to move the project forward at a pace. There’s probably still pressure to hit a deadline, um, of go live. Um, and then, you know, you’ve got two very different approaches in terms of who could be a, a, a better change champion.
Is, is, is there, is there an ideal change champion and what are, what are the kind of the, the benefits and, and, uh, uh, may-maybe not so, uh, beneficial of, of both approaches?
Emily Thomas: In my opinion, there is an ideal change champion. So, someone that has, um, credibility and influence in the firm is important. Another extremely important piece that I think is often missed is, does this person have the time to dedicate to, know, this project or this rollout or this implementation?
So, finding someone who maybe has influence and credibility but is extremely busy in their job and doesn’t have, you know, an extra 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week at rollout, it’s, it’s almost a full-time job.
So, they need to be able to step away from their current role and fulfill that role for a temporary time. And that piece is often missed, is that we underestimate how busy or involved these users may be in their everyday job, and if they don’t have the time to dedicate to, um, you know, to learn it, to have input and influence throughout decision-making processes, and then as part of the rollout, they really need to be on the floor or available, um, to answer questions of users and really reinforce the reasons why we’re doing this, um, and, you know, and, and spin the positive on these things.
Emily Thomas: things.
Emily Thomas: It’s often difficult to find someone who has both the skills required, the influence, um, and the availability. So, it’s important that you support those users. If you can identify someone and you realize maybe they don’t have the time to do this, then backfill their position for, for a short period of time or, or find a solution that you, you can free up, um, their workload and, and that they can actually be engaged and dedicate time to time to this.
Bim Dave: Hmm. That’s a really good point actually. Like, just availability is such, such a big challenge that we see, you know, many firms having to compete with because they’re still trying to do their day jobs and then juggle the, the kind of complexity of, of, of a project which is never going, never going to be easy or fulfilled, um, fully.
So that, that’s, yeah, that, that’s definitely something that I’ve seen too. Um, so when you, so when you think about, um, the kind of layers of a project, and if we go up, up a level in, in a law firm and we think about executive sponsorship, what does good executive sponsorship looks like, lo- look like to you?
Emily Thomas: Oh, involvement. Um, real involvement, real engagement. So what I often see is the executives are the ones signing the contract, you know? And, and their, their perspective and their experience on these implementations is much different from end users. So, you know, they’ve maybe been part of the software selection process, maybe they’ve sat in on the demos and they’ve read the contract and, and they’ve signed it.
They’ve done the thing, you know? And there’s a lot of narrative around there about, you know, congratulations, you, you know, you’re, you’re so innovative and, and you guys are, you know, really, you know, leading the change, and then their engagement stops there, you know? And maybe they come back at the end or something like that, but they’re not really part of the entire, um, implementation.
They’re not part of the design and the decision-making and, um, you know, and maybe the, the pivots and the changes that have to happen throughout.
Emily Thomas: So
Emily Thomas: I wish we could have often more executives, um, really involved. So, you know, you always have y- those steerco,
Um, meetings usually once a month or once a quarter, depending on how long this implementation is.
Um, and they’ll, you know, they’ll get the highlight reel. But having them really be part of it throughout and seeing the impact and the change that their organization is going to go through, how every department is going to be impacted and changed by this, really getting an understanding of that is important.
And not every department or, um, group within an organization is going to be impacted the same way, so they have to understand that as well. Some will be impacted much more than others, and I think sometimes that piece is misunderstood. So if you’re rolling out, let’s just say it’s a billing platform, um, and, you know, your front office, your lawyers are going to be using that, um, software.
People often assume the biggest piece of the change is, is on your lawyers, and that may not actually be the case. It might be the biggest change actually is your billing team is impacted the most, or your support staff are impacted the most, and it’s only changed, you know, five minutes of a lawyer’s day, but it’s changed an entire, you know, way of working for your support staff.
Emily Thomas: staff.
Bim Dave: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So, so we’ve talked a lot about, um, why change management is important and how that can really make or break a project. But I wanna challenge you on, uh, one part of that, which is, are there scenarios where change management ultimately becomes an excuse for poor technology?
Because you– if you need– if, for example, you need like a, a massive change management program to persuade people to use a system, could it be that we’ve just selected the wrong system in the first place?
Emily Thomas: Um, it could be, absolutely, right? So, um, I think that both of those things are interconnected and, and that’s why change management is so important at the beginning of the project, is the understanding what, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve here? And if you can get that right, um, which is part of change management, at the beginning, then you are less likely to pick the wrong software.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yeah, very true. I, I guess it reinforces what you were saying earlier, the, the earlier you’re thinking about this, the better, right? And system selection seems like the, the appropriate time to be doing that. So you know you have a very clear definition of what success looks like and, and the problem that you’re solving.
Emily Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Bim Dave: Okay. So is there, um, is there a way to think about where you draw the line between users needing to ultimately change the way that they do things, so from a process perspective, changing the way that they, they operate, versus the technology needing to evolve to then adapt to the user? Like, how, how do you make that distinction?
‘Cause, again, we often see conversations with vendors where they’ll come back and say, “Oh, no, this is just how the software is designed,” right? “So you need to change to adapt to the software.” Um, but we can have, uh, those client champions actually say, “No, this is how we operate as a law firm, and we need you to adjust your technology.”
How, how do you help customers kind of navigate that, uh, element of, of kind of technology adoption?
Emily Thomas: That’s actually a really important piece and an important part, and sometimes it, the, it’s not always clear. Um, you know, especially to the vendors, um, who will be resistant to any sort of configuration changes or, you know, customizations. The big, the big bad word, um, that I often see is when you, you know, come to a, a fork in the road in, in the implementation, in the testing phase, uh, maybe it’s even in the design phase, is you do have to really take a step back and understand, is this a technology problem?
Do we need to fix the data or change the mapping or create a customization here? Um, or is it a process change? And those two things need to be, um, analyzed separate- like analyzed together, but really understood. And, and sometimes it is a technology problem, right? It’s, it’s
Emily Thomas: it’s
Emily Thomas: either a data change or, uh, a configuration that needs to be done in order to make it make sense for the end user.
Um, you know, at the end of the day, it has to work for them and, and they have to,
Emily Thomas: to,
Emily Thomas: um
Emily Thomas: um
Emily Thomas: Understand that, that, that this change makes sense for them and that their process, you know, they, it, they can see how, um, how the end result works. And if there is a technology element of it, um, that needs to be adjusted, then that’s really important to analyze.
Bim Dave: Understand that, that, that this change makes sense for them and that their process, you know, they can, they can see how, um, how the end result works. And if there is a technology element of it, um, that needs to be adjusted, then that’s really important to analyze. Mm. Yeah, absolutely. So if you, if you kind of, um, draw on your experience of all of the, the firms you’ve kind of helped on their journey, is there, without necessarily sharing, sharing names, um, is there an example of a firm where you looked at them and you thought they’re handling change, the change management piece really well?
And if so, like what, what did they do differently? Was there a moment where you thought they’ve, they’ve got this right, like this is heading in the right direction?
Emily Thomas: Uh, yes, absolutely. I, you know, we’ve had, um, I’ve got wonderful examples, and I’ve got examples, you know, that have taught me some lessons and things to do differently the next time. Um, and you know, really it’s around that executive sponsorship and stakeholder engagement piece. If they can get that right, um, then it typically falls into place.
Um, and I’ll give a, a prime example. It was a billing, um, platform rollout, and, um, I’ve been doing a lot of billing platform rollouts over the years. And, uh,
I worked with one firm that
Emily Thomas: that
Emily Thomas: enforced it, so it was not optional for users. It was a massive change. Um, and in order to approve their bills, they had to be in the system.
They couldn’t have anyone else go in for them. Um, it was, you know, going to be truly a paperless, um, system. They had to be able to log in and, you know, approve their pro formas or invoices to clients using that system. There was no workaround. And it made it much easier to implement and much easier to adopt when you had the backing of executive sponsorships saying, “This is the way it is going to be going forward.”
And they were able to back that up with the business cases for it, um, with the, you know, the reasons why. And so it wasn’t just, you know, I think we said before, you know, en-enforced or sh- or, you know, shoved down their throat or, or you know, um, br- um, you know, it wasn’t something that was, like, negatively forced upon them.
It was, “We are, as an organization, choosing to make this change. These are the reasons why we’re making this change, and everyone is going to be on the same page and use it together.”
Emily Thomas: the same page
Emily Thomas: And I have had firms do the complete opposite, where it was optional, um, and it’s extremely difficult to get user buy-in if they don’t have to do it.
Emily Thomas: don’t have to do
Bim Dave: that. Mm-hmm. Yep. No, I can, I can imagine. So, so, so I guess o- o- one of the areas which I see organizations struggle with is defining the ownership of, of adoption, right?
And, and who actually owns it within the firm. Uh, there’s, there’s often, um… I often talk to my team about this to say that, “Look, if everybody owns something, then the reality is, is nobody owns it,” right? There has to be some- somebody that owns this and is driving, um, other people in there. What, uh, what do you see there in terms of how do you advise firms in terms of ownership and, and how we actually make people accountable for, for some of this, um, adoption and change management within the firm?
Emily Thomas: Yeah, that’s a really good point because often it’s lumped in with the project team, right? So you have the same people, um, working on change management as you have on design and testing and rollout and training. Um, and I think there does need to be, um, a distinct, um, lead on those things that, um, depending on the capacity and depending on the effort of, of the change, it can potentially be, you know, the same person, but oftentimes it needs to be, um, someone who has more, um, visibility and, and touch with the entire organization.
So oftentimes I, I would choose the change management lead carefully. It doesn’t necessarily work well if it’s someone in, um, you know, in IT or in finance who is a little bit out of touch with the f- you know, how the front office works, how the lawyers and legal assistants work, or vice versa, right? You have someone who’s, um, in a maybe a C-suite position or an executive who really doesn’t understand how the technology piece of it works or how the f- you know, the finance piece of it works.
So, you really kind of need an outsider that understands more than anything people.
Emily Thomas: people
Emily Thomas: and how,
Emily Thomas: you
Emily Thomas: you know, people are impacted by these changes and, and can really, uh, understand and, and pull apart, um, maybe the reasons, uh, behind the issues that pop up, right? And being able to determine, is this just a resistance problem?
Is this just a technology problem? Could it be both? So someone who can really analyze those aspects of it, um, in, in my opinion, is, is the person who should be in charge of the change of change management. Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. So, so let, let’s talk about AI, ’cause we can’t have a conversation without talking about it.
Bim Dave: How does AI change the conversation around change management in, in your view, and what, what are you seeing there?
Emily Thomas: What I’m seeing, um, in change management, and, you know, maybe this is not gonna be a popular opinion, um, is that it is the shiny new thing, and it is often, um, implemented based on, uh, fear-based methodology or FOMO. Um, and firms sometimes get the narrative of, “If you don’t adopt this piece of AI, you’re going to be left behind.”
And they’re potentially not looking at the root of the business case, right? What problem are we trying to solve here? Do we even have a problem in this area? Um, and if we don’t, why are we adopting this new piece of it? Potentially, we could be creating new problems by adopting the AI. Um, if it’s something, for example, that, um, is looking at, um, you know, your database, and number one, you may not necessarily have a, a pr- a problem in this process.
But if you have a, a database that has
Emily Thomas: has
Emily Thomas: a lot of cleanup needed, let’s just say, you’re not going to get, you know, the end result, um, of this AI product that you had intended for because you didn’t understand the, um, underlying, you know, pieces of, of where these agents are pulling their data from, is one example.
Um, so, you know, I, I find AI now is often, um, or selection of AI is not necessarily answering a real business need, um, or it’s not solving a real business problem. It’s potentially creating more work for users. And I, and I think that that is becoming, um, a– People are becoming aware of that in the industry, is that sometimes AI,
Emily Thomas: AI,
Emily Thomas: rather than reducing work, creates more work for end users.
Emily Thomas: users.
Bim Dave: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, and I think, I think like you said, because there’s so many new, um, new solutions hitting the market, it makes that problem exacerbated in some ways, right?
Um, so I think focus is, is very important at this point. Yeah. So, um, if we think about the, the managing partner, the COO, CFO that’s listening to this episode today, and they’re about to make a major investment in, in technology, um, and they’re, they’re looking at l- looking at a, a business case right now.
What is the one question that you would want them to ask before approving that investment?
Emily Thomas: The One Question It’s three questions for me. It’s, you know, why are you making this change? Who is going to be the most impacted by this change? And how are they impacted?
Bim Dave: I love that. Yeah, I think that’s, that nails it. That really does nail it. Um, so I wanna just end with some wrap-up questions ’cause we’ve learned a lot about change management and, um, how firms can kind of approach that differently. Let’s have a couple of fun questions. Uh, first of which being, if I gave you a time machine and you could go back to yourself at 18 years old, what advice would you give yourself?
Emily Thomas: Take more risks Take more risks. It will work out
Bim Dave: Excellent. Excellent. Now, obviously you spent a lot of time in your career, um, dealing with change and helping people deal with change. In your own life, is there a, a scenario where you’ve been initially completely resistant to change, um, but now glad that it happened?
Emily Thomas: Oh, that’s a great question. Um, I guess, uh, you know, one el- one aspect and element is, is starting my own company. So I founded Sync Consulting in, in 2023, three years ago. Um, and, you know, taking that leap to become independent and go on your own can be, uh, can be scary, can be f- you know, um, can be, you know, a, a, large risk that,
Emily Thomas: that, uh,
Emily Thomas: f- you know, can, can change the, you, you know, the element and the aspect of, um, you know, or the trajectory of, of what you do.
Um, and so
Emily Thomas: so
Emily Thomas: you can be resistant to taking that risk, um, or you can just, you know, go for it. So I would say that’s one. Um, on a more, you know, personal family-based level, um, you know, I was really resistant to,
Emily Thomas: to, uh,
Emily Thomas: starting a new activity. So two years ago, um, I took up horseback riding with my daughter. Um, and I was not a rider.
I had not really experienced that before, um, and was kind of resistant to it. Didn’t think that I had the time for it, didn’t think that I had, you know, the capability for it. And, um, it turns out it’s one of the best things I could have ever done for myself.
Emily Thomas: for myself.
Bim Dave: Amazing, and probably great bonding time with your Excellent bonding time with my daughter and, and, you know, one thing that, um, that I g- I get out of it is that it really is a way to escape the noise, um, and, and, you know, get away from work-related problems, right? Um, you know, owning a business, there’s a lot that you have to deal with and, and trying to ensure that your clients are well taken care of.
Emily Thomas: Um, you know, it’s, it’s sometimes a 24/7 effort. Uh, and then, you know, you can get to the barn and get on that horse, and you are forced to not think about anything else except, you know,
Emily Thomas: you know,
Bim Dave: uh,
Emily Thomas: the,
Emily Thomas: the being that is, you know, under you and, and having to have that connection with that horse.
Bim Dave: to have that connection with that horse.
Mm. I love that. Thank you for sharing a, a personal story. That’s, that’s really lovely. Emily, it’s been fantastic talking to you. It’s always a pleasure to, to speak to you. Um, but it’s really great to have you on the podcast and, and have all of your wisdom being shared around change management. So thank you very much.
Um, if somebody wants to get in touch with you to learn more about what you guys offer at THINC Consulting, what’s the best way for them to find you?
Emily Thomas: They can find us on LinkedIn. Um, also syncconsulting.ca. Um, you can get ahold of us there.
Bim Dave: Awesome. Emily, thank you very much. Until the next time.
Emily Thomas: Thanks, Bim. It’s been a pleasure.