Technology isn’t a panacea or a substitute for planning, but there are tools that can help your team work through change more productively and in a more collaborative environment. The right technology can help empower your team, enabling them to access information more quickly, be more productive, communicate more effectively, or break down barriers that could impede progress.

The key to optimizing technology as a tool for change includes:

• Understanding the way it’s used. To select the right technology for your organization, assess how your people are already trying to do things, and then look at how to streamline those existing processes.
• Using “participatory design.” As you’re building and deploying these systems, get feedback and do iterations with people who are actually going to be using them.
• Ensuring that tools are used properly. Failure to provide your team with adequate technology training can sabotage their ability to use the tools, make them more resistant to future technology implementations, and therefore imperil your current and upcoming change initiatives.
• Putting the right technology to work. Look for software, apps, platforms, and social media that support your message delivery, aid team-building and collaboration, and help you to track and make the most of employee insights as your change initiative progresses. That covers everything from document-sharing platforms and enterprise social networking, to online project management and e-learning platforms.

Read the second in our series of Connections to Growth Leadership guides, Harnessing—and Leveraging—the Power of Change, to learn how you can use technology to help work through change.