The Clark Griswold Effect

National Lampoon Vacation is one of my favorite movies! In one scene, Clark Griswold is pulled over by a police officer because Dinky’s leash and collar was attached to the bumper but Dinky was no where to be found! Clark was so excited to get to Wally World that he forgot to make sure Dinky was in the car before leaving!

In the last few weeks, it dawned on me that I have been suffering from “The Clark Griswold Effect”. Let me see if I can make this analogy work; bear with me! I feel like I am Clark Griswold and my end-users are Dinky the dog. Too often, I am so excited about some new functionality or feature that Salesforce is offering that I forget to ensure that the end users can keep up! So, how do we get to Wally World without leaving Dinky behind?

Be Patient
As the administrator, we already know how to navigate Salesforce and what the business processes are. This is why you were hired! We need to understand that there needs to be a level of competency attained by your end users before taking the next step and moving forward with something new.

Change your Mindset
So often I associate myself with Salesforce so much that you could replace my Chatter profile photo with one of SaaSy and no one would know the difference! This caused me to be realize that I was defensive to changes or recommendations for improvement to others. Perhaps I wanted it to be my idea, or I didn’t want the hassle of the new functionality as the administrator even if it made someone’s life easier.

Stop Saying “No”
There have been multiple occasions where my word of choice has been “no” to new changes or ideas because it was inconvenient for me or because  the request was outside of the structure that has been placed around the tool. The problem is that Salesforce is not my tool. I don’t use Salesforce as the administrator the way the end-users utilize the tool. As an Admin Hero, we need to be listening to these requests and instead of saying “no,” we need to be identifying the best way to implement the changes within the current structure of the tool.

Salesforce is a significant investment and it is ultimately our job to ensure that we show a return on the investment. Otherwise, we could be out of a job! So let’s do everything we can to help our users by not leaving them behind. Let’s get Dinky in the car and get to Wally World together!

Let’s just be sure we know where we are going…