The response from my AH-HA! moment in the last post was amazing. I hope others benefited from it.
In the comments, ‘Wilson’ had some insights:
“…I don’t think this will help convince (nor should it, IMHO) a CxO or mid-level manager to embrace a social network platform. I still see the chasm of understanding re “enterprise 2.0″ tools very much represented in managerial statements such as “Of course we value and encourage collaboration and knowledge share, but that Facebook kind of stuff isn’t the way to do it.”
I agree with you 100%. It will take much more than this. And what will convince them to embrace it? DON’T TALK ABOUT THE PLATFORM – or the tools or the shiny new toys, or compare it to Facebook or Twitter or anything else. Talk to them about the pain they are seeing now and how it can be overcome. Tell them the story. Get them to buy in emotionally and intellectually. Buying in logistically will happen naturally as an effect.
EXAMPLE:
1) A CxO knows that the regular reports created every week are not read by most people, including those it targets. It is a waste of time and effort, yet tradition and the culture says that the reports must be created – and so they are. But clearly, some information in the report is worthy to some people. Show this CxO that by opening up the communication, we can let people target the information they need. And, if there is any question about the information, they can go directly to the person and ask for clarification. The ‘report’ becomes a gateway to more understanding through interaction with the people instead of the end product itself.
2) In a recent “Social Media / Networking 101″ class I did recently, I told them that I asked a question on Twitter and received back a quick response. Some didn’t understand why I used Twitter to ask a question instead of using Google. “It would have been faster”, they claimed. “For some things, I am sure,” I answered. “But the question I had was about something so new that the answer would never have been found online. It would only have been found in people’s heads.” For them, there was a big Ah-Ha! there. I could see in their eyes the lights turn on. In fact, I received an email the next day from someone who attended with his own Ah-Ha!:
When I do a regular internet search, I’m either added or doomed by my choice of words for the very rule-based machine search that ensues. In Twitter, I benefit from the interpretive skills of fellow human brains that read and interpret my need and thus are able to better design a relevant response.
Bingo. What sold him was NOT Twitter, but what can be accomplished with it and how it can help him now.
That should be our focus: the WHYs and the HOWs (as I have written before). The WHATs come later, naturally.
