Introducing any new technology or software across an organization is no easy task. Introducing collaborative technology is worse. It contradicts with the hierarchical traditions and cultural norms of most organizations. Especially within firms founded on twentieth century thinking where power and control are at the helm and openness is an after-thought. It denies the implicit or explicit territorial and self-interested behaviors that are a regular feature of company politics. It’s hard to implement from the top. Lessons learned so far show bottom up and/or team focused introductions tend to give the best results.
The collected wisdom of the wikinomics community have this advice for organizations adopting collaborative systems.
The Adoption Matrix
According to Joost Bekel, adoption of a new technology can be mapped in a two dimensional matrix which shows both how the technology is absorbed by individuals and by the company as an organic whole.
Individual Adoption
Three dimensions of individual adoption are as follows:
1.Awareness: Knowledge of the solution as a concept, and what problems it will solve
2.Ability: Being able to work with the tools, understanding technical aspects of the package.
3.Integration: Realizing the benefit - it becomes "one of my tools"
If you polled your user community about their personal adoption of a collaboration package, there are only four possible responses. I could have picked any tool but for demonstration, I’ll choose Microsoft’s Sharepoint as the example:
A. “I have never heard of Sharepoint.What is it?"
This person hasn't achieved Awareness. You need to form an internal unit that can get the word out with internal marketing, branding, and other promotional programs. Generally speaking, you stop having an Awareness issue when 80% of the user community knows who you are.
B. “I have heard of Sharepoint but I'm not sure how to use it."
Issue 2 is the Ability issue. You need to develop a training program for the user community. The program should include marketing of the benefits and end-goals of adoption, training, well documented recipes for how to do stuff, and an overview of the business processes before and after adoption. It is a good idea to build a sandbox version for people to play in, and establish a game or competition to get people emotionally involved. The need for training may run smack up against workers individual capacity - is time set aside to learn the new system or is it just added to the already long list of duties? Unless there is scheduled downtime for learning, expect some aggressive pushback since the users will not believe it is actually a priority.
C. “I have heard of Sharepoint and I know what it can be used for, but I don't use it”
Integration tends to be the most difficult step. It involves social, cultural, and political issues. Starting with social issues: older generations are less willing to invest in changing their habits, and the collaboration ethic tends to not be their dominant operating mode. Undertaking a change initiative can be challenging. Cultural issues require asking, is the organization designed for collaboration? Are compensation practices, managerial targets and incentives or leadership styles undermining the implementation? Fear is the biggest cultural issue; fear of losing control is much bigger than any of us can imagine. Moreover, political issues abound. NIH - "Not invented here". "That’s an IT thing not a business tool". You get the idea, politics matter. So, how do you get beyond this? The answer is one customer at a time. If the solution delivers the results promised, enough enlightened users will be demanding it and peer pressure will eventually work on the rest of us.
D. "I use it all the time"
Once you have half the users saying they use it all the time the implementation team can pack up and go home.
Barriers to Adoption
Another way to look at 2.0 adoption is to review the reasons people are not using the 2.0 services. Understanding these barriers can help you plan for your roll out of 2.0 services. Common barriers to adoption and participation include:
- Time available to contribute
- Learning new tools
- Knowing what to contribute
- Other tools already in use
Most organizations like to survey their current customers to understand why they are using 2.0 services. However, this seems to be self defeating but also depends on the level of maturity. It may be more helpful to find out where customers collaborate now and what their perceived needs are. Also, if adoption is floundering, you should quickly find out what the barriers are so that the services do not get a bad reputation.
Removing barriers and facilitating adoption
Strategies for removing barriers and facilitating adoption include:
1. Identify key user groups
2. Identify and understand key users
3. Convert key users into evangelists
4. Turn evangelists into trainers
5. Support bottom-up adoption and emergent behaviours
The collaboration ethic
“There is no longer any room for leaders to be heroes."
- Margaret Wheatley
Collaborative systems need a framework as a guideline for success. The way team members interact and work can benefit from a few basic governance principles. A “collaboration ethic” estblishes a framework for projects involving the coordination and cooperation of a large number of people. Could these principles or others like them can provide the guidelines for success in this new market economy driven by collaborative ecosystems?
1. Practice “deep respect.”
Really this is just a variation of the golden rule applied to opinions. What we assume of ourselves is that:
a) our opinion matters
b) we speak with the best intentions
c) that there is truth in what we say
Another way of practicing deep respect: if you can, try walking around every day assuming that everything you think and believe is roughly 50% wrong. Respect follows naturally. The best we can do is learn from everyone else.
2. Participation rules:
This rule requires the opt-in principle. If you do not choose to “opt-in” and then participate in the process, you do not have the right to complain about the result. We must respect the collaborative process and respect people who have shown up for the process. Latecomers should not expect to have their opinions fully considered. At the end of the process we must collectively stand by the results. Those who chose not to participate must respect the results. The opt-in requires trust in the group and transparency of process.
3. Nobody “owns” an idea.
Iin response to being called a ‘towering genius’, Isaac Newton responded, “It is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants”. There is no such thing as an original idea: the best we can do is absorb and reassemble old ideas in some new way. Some individuals do have a special ability for refactoring old ideas, but the ideas themselves are mostly like the trees of a forest - they grow and thrive largely of their own accord.
7 Habits of Highly Successful People (Stephen Covey) |
Measuring Adoption
Another aspect of adoption is the ability to measure the impact of the Enterprise 2.0 tool or environment. Based on the information above, the use of a survey would be one of the best tools to measure the Awareness and Education levels of the organization. Simple question like have you heard of the corporate wiki, how would you use the enterprise blog, or does your organization utilize the team collaborative application.
Another method would be to utilize the web trending tools that can collect valuable information on the actual environment.Here are some of the metrics that might be of use.
1. Number of Community Members
2. Number of Weblogs, Wiki Pages, or Team Workspaces
3. Number of Posts or Updates
4. Number of Attachments
5. Number of Page Views
6. Number of Visits
7. Active vs. Inactive
All of this information is critical to trend overtime to ensure your implementation is growing.
I would say that there is one more possible response not listed:
"E. I know about SharePoint and what it does. I know how to use it, but I choose not to."
I have no knowledge about this software in particular, but I do know that its design, features, user interface, and integration with other packages are all the result of business decisions, and may or may not not meet the requirements of a particular user. Just because a software package exists, doesn't mean that it is the solution.
contributed by Didier on Oct 13 8:51am
