Category: collaboration

Adoption by Chance, Hierarchy or Community

Sticking with the ‘power of 3’ theme from a previous post (The Power of 3) here are the least / most effective approaches to adoption (habitual usage) and sustained business value from collaborative technologies.

1 – Throw it over the fence and let the business get on with it (Adoption by Chance).
– Provide access to the tools
– Provide access to training areas
– Develop communication / launch plan
– Create messages and deliver through formal channels
– Email alerts
– Portal / Intranet
– Traditional Change Agents
– Leave it to the business to ‘go figure’
Adoption success around 10-15%

2 – Common Formal Approach (Adoption through hierarchies)
Favoured by many of the consultancies involving engagement through leadership, implementing a formal approach around defining and delivering the programme which is refined, together with collateral that is recycled and enhanced as the programme develops. The formal approach includes elements such as:
• Developing the pitch
• Defining ‘What’s in it for me’? for business areas
• Technology Planning
• Engagement planning
• Adoption services
• Build and sustain
Adoption success around 45 – 60%

3 – Social Approach (Adoption through informal networks, tribes and communities)
This generally involves engagement through informal structure of companies with adoption built around explicit use cases (not abstract but rapid, high volume explicit use cases) and supported by:
• Deploy waves of rapid use cases
• ‘Word of mouth’ through networks
• Nudge channels
• Informal advocates
• Social learning
Adoption success around 55 – 70%

The power of 3

Over the last few years it’s been pleasing to see how some of the collaboration software vendors have been changing their tune over how to successfully adopt their technologies.

If you compare the early adoption collateral for Jive, Yammer (O365), Chatter (insert numerous names here) and look at the adoption approaches they now recommend – built around behavioural change, habit formal and other techniques from neuroscience and related disciplines – those of us from the ‘people’ side of technology feel more comfortable than ever in championing the mantra that good adoption of collaborative technologies is more about psychology than technology.

Using the ‘power of 3’ psychological approach here is my take on the ‘do’s and don’ts of adoption broken down into 3

DON’T

  • Don’t focus on technology / product names and keep use of traditional corporate channels to a minimum
  • Hierarchy won’t be effective – no ‘trickle-down’ effect in most organisations. Leadership support is important but it must be active (role modelling not just telling)
  • Don’t tell people the whole story, show then everything at once, or provide just one approach / route for success

DO

  • Focus on behaviours and scenarios with short bite size coaching and messaging (power of 3)
  • Create a bottom up / ‘word of mouth’ approach, developing social learning, role models (doing rather than telling) and nudge rather than command
  • Work on volume (light lots of little fires – develop use cases, nurture advocates, present at meetings) and then focus energy on those that catch fire and show potential to grow)

Becoming a social leader

Becoming a social leader

Trying to get leaders to understand the potential and value of creating an open and collaborative business can sometimes be a hard sell. One of the key milestones is to get them embracing and supporting the deployment of tools and associated behavioural change required to utilise the investment.

Key elements when approaching leaders should include:

  • Explain the key elements of open / social working
    • Outline the need to appeal to individual’s ‘intrinsic motivators’
    • Provide practical examples of individuals becoming more effective and engaged
    • Guide them on how to develop and spread the habit via doing
    • Explain how they would “contribute to people in their organisations to deepen the relationship”?And also why should they?
    • Don’t replicate a process. It has to replace it or be something new.

Using the ‘seeing is believing’ mantra here are some tips to get your leader involved. O365 is used in this examples but this would apply to most collaboration and open business technologies.

1- Explain to them the overall benefits, ideally linking to the overall strategy. Normally the benefits would include:

o Enables ‘new ways of working’ by providing:
 Access everywhere, anytime
 Transparent and open working
o Builds a connected organisation enhancing business agility
o Increases employee engagement
o Improves team collaboration
o Enables external collaborative working

2- Set out the benefits for the leader (try to understand what would be key motivations prior to the session). These could be:

• Build a personal brand across the organisation
• Network across silos
• Increase engagements and receive feedback
• Access and share documents easier
• Network / collaborate externally
• Manage meetings and reporting more effectively
• Build a connected organisation by increasing participation in Townhall events

3 – Getting the leaders started

• Update their Profile with skills and experiences and explain the benefits.
• Profiles and reputations develop fast in the online world. Yammer offers Leaders new ways to promote their views and skills
• Leaders will emerge that may otherwise have been hidden in dark corners
• Yammer gives everyone the chance to share their views in an open forum
• Contributions are a lot more transparent and the Personal Brands Leaders create allow leadership potential to be spotted
• Smart Leaders and Talent teams embrace this opportunity.

4 – Spend 5 minutes building or expanding their network on Yammer

• Guide them on how to ‘follow’ people and join ‘groups’.
• Ask them to pick a few key words around topics which reflect their role and aspirations within the company (don’t just follow the people you already know) and use the ‘search’ option to explore what people and groups have similar interests.
• Begin following and see the value it may begin to bring.
• Don’t suggest they select hundreds or they will be ‘drowned in the noise’.

5 – Explain the power of ‘liking posts’

• Leaders should be taught the power of liking posts.
• A ‘like’ from a Leader has a big impact and is a good way to drive colleague engagement and motivate action all in one second.
• Encourage Leaders to use the ‘like’ option but also to be aware of the impact that ‘like’ can have if it’s not actually genuine.
• Before they know it a whole new process could be accidentally developed.

6 – Get them to join conversations and ask them to assess what benefit this has brought them over a period of a few weeks.

• Leaders’ reactions to posts shape how people perceive them as leaders
• What’s key is to teach Leaders how to handle conversation well and to do so publicly
• Over zealous comments or poor ends up sending a much louder message than simply responding in a well thought through manner

7- More things to remember

• At the outset it’s too easy for leaders to say it’s not for me. You want colleagues to make an informed choice knowing what is on offer before they decide not to use it, not to decide against it because it’s a big unknown quantity.
• If they are resistance or believe they need ‘training’ before they use it then offer them this through beginners coaching sessions
• It’s a self-updating skill set once they are on the bandwagon but at the start you don’t want to leave good talent behind. Everyone should be given equal opportunity to shine.

8 – Next steps

Once they are confident and comfortable with this way of open working then get them to expand. The next steps will be:

• Running a crowdsourcing session ‘ Yamjam to increase participation and innovation
• Hold ‘Town Hall’ events to increase engagement
• Sharing a vision for a better future and they ask their people to co-create this together in open innovation forums.
• Get them to ask colleagues to combine our strengths and spend more time collaborating around that which we wished to accomplish, rather than that which we wished to avoid, what’s possible?
• They co-design what is next.

Nudge the network

Nudge the network

If you do have a spare 30 minutes I would recommend reading the Behavioural Insights Team Update report.

Click to access BIT_Update-Report-Final-2013-2015.pdf

As more enterprise tools such as O365 / Yammer and Jive the old traditional methods of IT adoption fail (if they ever succeeded) and that’s where the digital transformation agenda takes over. IMO any deployment of collaboration tools need to look at behvaioural insights, nudging the network and behavioural economics to ensure success adoption.

Stick to the recipe for Enterprise Social Software success

Stick to the recipe for Enterprise Social Software success

When I look at reasons given by organisations for the failure of their Enterprise Social Software project to deliver any success or value (whether this is adoption or return on investment or engagement) I still hear the same issues around poor adoption, cultural issues specific to the organisation, change management, alignment to business needs etc. You could date stamp this as ‘2010’ and the issues haven’t changed.

It still amazes me that in 2015 organisations are struggling to get value from social software despite a reliable ‘recipe’ now being known.

All consultancies both large and small have a framework which is pitched to potential clients that will deliver various degrees of success – but success nevertheless.

Every software vendor has similar material that it will tell clients prior to any adoption programme how to get success (actually an interesting exercise would be to look at how the vendors have changed their ‘tune’ from 2008 onwards by looking at how their client adoption material has changed from ‘just plug it in’ to more strategic thinking).

I would also suggest that the vast majority of organisations that deploy Enterprise Social Software have an understanding or at least an awareness of what needs to be done – and I speak from a perspective or having sat on both sides of the table (industry and consultancy) and I would estimate that 90% plus of people I have dealt understand this.

But despite all this material a large majority of organisations appear to ignore the recipe.

I’m trying to find a simple analogy to compare this with so let’s try cooking.

If I were a chef (the ‘sponsor’ of the deployment) and I wanted to make a paella (deploying the tool) and I have a known recipe on how to make paella (the vendors material, consultants material, freely available material online etc.); then why do I think my paella will turn out fine if I refuse to use some key ingredients like the correct rice, saffron, paprika, wine etc. (change management, governance, use cases etc.)?

Some may be down to cost; some may be lack of knowledge – but wouldn’t you look at the recipe before you start!; some may be down to stubbornness (you deployed other tools before and your way has always worked) but I believe in many cases it’s down to the simple fact that most sponsors are purely concerned with plugging it and making sure it works from a technical perspective – and not appraised on the engagement or value it brings. No different to a chef not being appraised on how good the paella is but the fact they have served up a plate of rice that is dressed up as paella but has none of the taste.

Unless the success criteria is driven by engagement and value – which often happens a number of months into the adoption phase then organisations will continue to cite the same issues with their Enterprise Social Software.

The vendors realised their business model needs to change – not so much about selling licences every 5 years but seeing their software being adopted, adapted to working ways and providing value.

Few areas of an organisation focus on how engaged their workforce is with the ‘service’ provided but this will change. It will eventually filter down to project teams that are built to deploy social software.

In my ideal future world deployments will focus on behavioural change rather than just technology change in order for social software to be a success.

A project team for future deployments will have a very different line-up. The focus won’t be around IT Project Managers or business analysts but instead recruit business psychologists, community developers and social network analysts to ensure social software success.

It’s more than just the coaching

At my current client we are running a series of ‘beginners guide’ coaching sessions for those that are new to business networking platforms.

We run through the basic concept of using a networking site, the importance of your profiles, how to use the network to get value by following people and groups, etc.

Most platform vendors will claim that little training or coaching is needed as their respective tools are intuitive. But not everyone is on a social network in their personal life and I find some coaching is needed to ensure ‘no one gets left behind’. It’s a common approach, particular from IT departments that run these projects.

But the challenge does not end there. Just because someone now knows how to do something doesn’t automatically mean they will begin using it.

We mustn’t confuse ways of imparting knowledge with ways of changing behaviour. To encourage a behaviour we need to generate the best conditions for it to arise and then reinforce it. Merely knowing what you should do is often insufficient to reliably bring the behaviour about and merely knowing doesn’t offer much in the way of reinforcement.

So to support the behavioural change we are also coaching how colleagues can
develop highly engaged communities through some hints and tips around building habit formation as a step to changing behaviour online – some steps you can take to ensure your colleagues begin to regularly participate on the business networking platform.

Coaching participants on how something works is fine but the value comes from coaching on how to develop habits to utilise the capabilities of the network on a regular basis.