Start your google guides program | best practices – Google Apps for Work User Manual
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Change Management Guide
45
Phase 1: Core IT
Start your Google Guides program | Best practices
Don’t be shy about asking for Google Guides. When asked why
they didn’t run a Google Guides program, most IT organizations cited
reservations about asking for help from the company. Google Guides can
really make a difference to everyone’s productivity and reduce possible
user frustration during the Go-Live period.
•
Ask your managers or supervisors to help by either calling for
volunteers or nominating participants. Customize and send out the
, which explains benefits of
the program to the company.
•
Work with your executive sponsor and talk to a few managers.
See how they respond to the benefits of having a trained expert
in their department.
Who makes a good Google Guide?
•
Mobile users.
•
Users at offices in other countries who speak the local language.
•
Administrative assistants. They know the calender and email
demands of their group. Similarly, you may select guides to represent
some of the special user groups you identified in your community
profiles, such as Finance.
•
People who aren’t “power users” of your current mail and calendar
tools. That way, you can more accurately gauge the level of support
required for the entire organization.
“You want to have people who are
going to be advocates for the tools.
People who are influencers in the
organization. Someone people go to
for technical questions.
You don’t want to get all of the geeks
and tech heads. You want people who
are personable and approachable
who can communicate around the
technical aspects of the tool and the
value proposition.”
—Mark Rout, Director of Change
Management and Training,
Cloud Sherpas
Cloud Sherpas is a Google Apps Enterprise
Partner based in the United States.
Define the Google Guide commitment clearly
Learning from Solarmora, a fictionalized company
The Change Management team sent the Google
Guides recruitment email to everyone in the
company. Andy knew many employees used Gmail
at home, so he thought recruiting Google Guides
would be easy.
Oops! Andy didn’t explain the role of a Google
Guide. Andy was shocked when only nine people
volunteered. One of Andy’s friends in Finance told
him that he wanted to volunteer, but his manager
was concerned about how much time would be
required. With previous volunteer projects, the time
commitment sometimes unexpectedly ballooned.
Andy needed support from the managers, in
addition to interest from volunteers. The Change
Management team helped Andy create a role
description for a Google Guide and a time
commitment estimate.
Armed with this info, Andy secured support from
the CIO to increase his recruitment efforts. The
CIO even sent an email to all managers about the
importance of the Google Guides program.
The Change Management team followed with an
updated email, and posted a promotion about the
Google Guides program on the company’s intranet
site. In less than a week, nearly 200 more people
volunteered to become Google Guides.