Anchoring Change: Making Your Digital Transformation Project Stick

Written By Traci Cuthbertson

After spending my career helping companies and their employees make sense of disruptive technologies, here’s a common truth that I’ve learned: 

You can spend millions on the perfect configuration, deliver flawless training, and execute a seamless go-live, only to watch your investment slowly erode as users find creative workarounds, maintain shadow spreadsheets, and drift back to familiar processes. 

The harsh reality is that technical success doesn't equal transformation success, and without the right anchoring strategy, even the most sophisticated technology implementation becomes just another expensive system that people tolerate rather than embrace.

“Anchoring Change transforms technology from a burden into an advantage by making the new way of working feel inevitable rather than imposed.“

The 5 Anchor Points for Lasting Change

Align on Expectations

Be crystal clear about what the new technology will do, why you're implementing it, and what's expected of everyone. Don't just communicate the technical capabilities—paint a vivid picture of how daily work will improve.

Optimize the Experience

Configure Workday to feel like it was built specifically for your people. Customize dashboards to surface the information they actually need. Streamline approval workflows to match how decisions really get made in your organization.

Prepare with Education

Build ongoing education that transforms users from anxious beginners to confident power users. This isn't about showing people where to click—it's about helping them understand how the new thinking differs from spreadsheet thinking.

Humanize with Empathy

Acknowledge what people are giving up and solve their real problems. Don't dismiss the old way as inferior—recognize what worked about it, then show how the new technology delivers those same benefits plus more.

Measure for Impact

Track meaningful outcomes, not just usage statistics. Are decision-making cycles faster? Is data quality improving? Are employees more engaged with performance processes? Are managers spending less time on administrative tasks and more time coaching their teams?

The Transformation Mindset Shift

Here's what you need to anchor in your own thinking: successful implementation isn't about forcing people to adapt to the system—it's about making the system so aligned with how people want to work that adoption becomes inevitable.

When the new technology becomes the easiest, smartest, and most effective way to accomplish real work, it stops being a "new system" people have to learn. It becomes simply how work gets done.

Ready to get started?

  • Download the FREE e-book: Anchoring Change: Essentials for Transformation Success

  • Watch the 6-minute video: 5 Anchor Points for Digital Transformation Success

  • Schedule a FREE 30-minute discovery session: Discovery Session Request

Traci Cuthbertson