Connected

Behavior Migration is H-A-R-D, but Possible

I talked with a Jive Clearspace customer last week about adoption struggles (I get to do this for a living now, and frankly, I’m in my dream job). They have what I think is probably a very typical adoption obstacle. Actually, two very typical obstacles.

The first one was a theme at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston in June 2008. The CEO loves social software, worker bees are adopting it like crazy, but mid-level managers are having what-the-hell moments, because they weren’t properly introduced to the business benefits of social software. They’re putting a stop to all this “social nonsense” until they get a better handle on it.

My advice: Figure out what gives them ulcers at night. Maybe it’s, “how do I meet my management chain’s objectives?” Then, figure out how to explain how your social software solution will help them achieve those objectives better, faster, smarter. For example, one of our customers tied their Jive Clearspace ROI to making critical business processes more efficient (requires registration). Discussing this with mid-level managers who care about more efficient critical business processes would probably be quite effective.

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The second obstacle was that a few of the strategic pilot groups were approaching the new Clearspace experience from an old file-centric SharePoint paradigm. “Is this where we put our files now?” The result was a repeat of old file folder hierarchies, which, of course, doesn’t promote cross-enterprise conversations. Note that at this company, constantly increasing efficiency is critical.

So, we talked about the following good practices:

Show how they’re doing their work now, and point out any inefficiencies. These folks would send an Excel spreadsheet around via email. Each person would then upload their modified version into individual SharePoint folders, then someone would consolidate them all into a single file again. (I know! OMG!)

Show how your social software solution replaces that behavior, while making them more efficient in the process. Folks can co-edit a rich table within a Clearspace page, with complete versioning and rollback capabilities. They can create author comments and general user comments to capture the collaborative conversations about the data, and even create some team projects, tasks, or even a blog to capture status reports or the like. The idea is to do the, “and that’s not all!” pitch, once you’ve neutralized the Old Way Of Doing Things.

Address the Fear of Sharing Too Soon. This is the harder, and most critical part. In most organizations, people don’t “put their stuff out there” until it’s pretty much done. All the conversations and collaboration happens before they share, via emails, IMs, phone calls, and in-person meetings.

Here’s the problem: many folks don’t WANT to share their stuff until it’s pretty much done.

• “My colleagues and my manager will think I’m a doofus if I put something half-baked out there!”
• “I don’t want anyone stealing my half-baked idea, fleshing it out and taking credit for it.”

My advice? Implement a slow behavior migration. Give those people a private, secure space or group to share their half-baked stuff so that REAL collaboration can take place. The end result won’t be an individual contribution, of course, so help them understand the meaning of co-ownership. Once they’re comfy co-baking with the people they already trust, encourage them to open those private spaces up to more people, or perhaps make them public to the organization, if appropriate.