Lessons from the Escape Room for a Workday Student Deployment
Escape rooms have gained immense popularity as an interactive and thrilling form of entertainment. They test participants' problem-solving skills, teamwork, and ability to think under pressure. Institutions moving to Workday Student may find themselves in a similar situation: needing to break free from legacy systems to deliver a modern student experience, limited collaboration between campuses and departments, and challenge with change to adopt new ways of working.
Like an escape room that puts players together to find a way out, a successful Workday Student project is a real-life adventure. The best Workday team will combine adventure with strategy to ensure the deployment is a win.
The Avaap Workday Student team recently spent time inside an escape room to problem solve their way out. Here are five lessons you can learn from their escape room adventure.
You Need to Embrace Collaboration and Diverse Skillsets
In an escape room, the fastest way out is working together and leveraging the diverse skill sets of the team. In a Workday deployment, your internal team may be experts in your institution, but even those familiar with Workday will not be experts in every area of the application. Our Student team has touched more than half of all live Student projects in the Workday ecosystem and brings collective knowledge in areas such as change management, student records, advising, curriculum management, finance, financial aid, admissions, recruiting and more. How does it come into play during the Workday Student implementation? Diversity of knowledge and experience delivers a rich problem-solving environment for informed decisions around strategy, processes, configuration, and reporting.
Effective Communication is Paramount
Clear and concise communication plays a pivotal role in escape room scenarios, and knowing how to share information is key. In a Workday Student deployment, sharing the right information with the right people at the right time will lend to a smooth deployment. Change management is an important consideration early in the process to ensure stakeholders are aligned, employees are informed, and so everyone understands the why behind decisions.
Use There is Value in Lessons Learned from Prior Experience
Getting out of an Escape room requires the ability to think fast, solve puzzles and draw on past experiences to forge the way forward. Consultants with Workday Student experience bring skills and knowledge from previous projects and can strategically use these strengths to your advantage. It also brings perspective on “this is how other organizations like yours have configured the solution,” making for innovative approaches and faster time to value. By leveraging consultant expertise, your team will maximize its collective potential and tackle challenges more efficiently.
Embrace a Calm and Focused Mindset
Escape rooms are designed to induce pressure and test your ability to think clearly under stressful conditions. The Avaap team excelled in maintaining a calm and focused mindset in their quest to escape. They did not let the ticking clock or the intensity of the situation overwhelm them. instead, they approached each puzzle with a logical and composed attitude, minimizing errors, and maximizing their chances of success.
The team also exhibits the same control during Workday Student implementations. With the knowledge gleaned through previous projects and deep Workday and higher ed expertise, leading institutions through their deployment is a carefully choreographed experience towards sustainable results.
Things Don’t Always Go as Planned - Learn from Setbacks
In the escape room, not every attempt led to immediate success, and there were many strategies tried that didn’t produce the intended results However, it provided an opportunity to embrace failure as an opportunity for growth and learning, identify areas for improvement, and adjust our strategies accordingly. In a Workday Student deployment, there will be setbacks. How you learn from them in the quest to move your institution forward is what matters.
There’s no escaping the need to modernize for the future. Today’s students want consumer grade experiences and visibility in their education journey. Business leaders want to collaborate effectively and spend more time on strategic work that enhances the student experience. As institutions think about building a legacy for the future, Workday provides a transformative approach to the business of higher education, and with Workday Student, unites your whole organization to better serve students and leaders.