Engaged Learning

Requirement to Social Learning Adoption #2 – Compatibility

Feb 24, 2009 Adoption

I know what you are thinking… “The tools must be compatible with the tools we have now.”

Nope.  Not that you would be totally wrong if you thought that, but you would be missing a major piece of this.

“Compatibility is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters.” (Diffusion of Innovations, p. 15)

In other words, it must blend in with what you BELIEVE now and have EXPERIENCED in the past.

Let’s look at some examples where, in company’s culture…

• the company makes decisions by committee.  Everyone in a particular group has an equal say and the power to derail any discussion.  Personally, for the most part I see this as anarchy, but we all have been a part of these before.  For this to happen they must have meetings.  Introduce a wiki where they can discuss and make plans and refine, and it might work.  However, if the reason they are going to the meeting is for ego purposes or to waste time, they will not likely want to use a wiki because it is not compatible with their goals and objectives.  Sure, not many people think, “I want to go to this meeting to waste time and to position myself in a better spot,” but we all know it happens.

• the training department ‘knows’ what is best for the employees to learn.  So they create curricula.  In a meeting you bring up adding discussions to help with the meeting.  They may welcome the idea and see it as an extension of their needs analysis and feedback which will help them hone the content to best serve them.  Or, on the other hand, they may feel threatened that, with the economy already down, before you know it, everything in their class is discussed in the forums and there may not be a need for the class.  Or they may think that so much interaction will just get in the way.

• the company has a strict, unwritten, policy that none of the employees should be ‘playing’ with social media while at work because “it is a waste of time and a productivity killer.” The idea comes up for creating a type of social networking, allowing people to connect with others around the globe with similar skills, responsibilities or projects and gain insights from each other.  How do you think they will accept it?  But if the culture encourages conversation already but has lacked the ability to really let them connect because of the distance, you can see how it might be adopted much easier.

• everyone creates content and most of it takes more than one person before it is finished.  Because so much content is created, it is watched over very carefully and is ‘owned’ by particular departments or individuals.  Archived data is also ‘owned.’  Introduce the openness of a wiki for collaboration which allows everyone to make changes and it might not be accepted very well.  Make some tweaks to the wiki – like having communities around it, version history, etc., and they may think twice and find that it fits in with their values and practices of how to run their company.

Compatibility is SO much more than technical.  In fact it is mostly individual and cultural.  When creating a strategy you will need to think about these issues and come up with plans on how to introduce, implement and use any of these tools.  The possibilities for Social Learning are HUGE and very exciting.  But, remember to keep your focus on what they DO for the company, not what they ARE.

Tags: compatibility, culture, diffusion of innovations

If the Culture Doesn’t Support it, it WILL be a Fad.

Aug 28, 2008 Social Learning SIG

Image via Wikipedia

Donald Clark puts up a post about the ‘fadness’ of Learning 2.0.  He feels that if it was all it was cracked up to be, we would see it mainstream.

“If informal learning was really all that dominant, then the adaptation and satisfaction rates of web 2.0 would be much higher as the learners would have been absolutely primed for this type of technology, no matter what flaws were in the implementation.”

As someone who has worked on implementing these technologies into an organization and a customer base, adoption of the technology does not depend upon previous use of technology nearly as much as the culture that surrounds it.  I have seen plenty of people not use it – even thought they use it frequently in their personal lives – because their culture does not support it.  To semi-quote many different people: when technology and culture clash, culture always wins.

This explains the quote he uses from McKinsey Global Survey Results,

“Companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0’s benefits. Only 21 percent of the respondents say they are satisfied overall with Web 2.0 tools, while 22 percent voice clear dissatisfaction. Further, some disappointed companies have stopped using certain technologies altogether”

“A higher level of usage is found at companies that encourage it by using tactics such as integrating the tools into existing workflows, launching Web 2.0 in conjunction with other strategic initiatives, and getting senior managers to act as role models for adoption.”

Look at paragraph #1 and think “Their culture doesn’t support it.”  Now read #2 and you get the opposite.  The higher levels of usage are because the culture DOES support it.

Through my research (although limited) the #1 correlation between using web2.0 tools and not – independent of previous knowledge or even willingness – was if they replaced current processes and tools with the new.  One culture won’t change, the other will.  One won’t integrate, the other will.

Very much a part of the culture is the willingness to change and do things differently.  Those who are better at adapting will be much more successful at adopting.

I can’t say this enough – the technology is the easy part.  The culture can be your best friend or your worst enemy (and often both).

Tags: culture, Informal learning, Learning 2.0, Web 2.0

Objection #13: How Do You Measure ROI?

Jun 18, 2008 Social Learning SIG

Flash back to yesterday’s objection, “How will you measure that it is working” should have been labeled, ‘How do you measure if it is being used and adopted.” This is what I had in mind knowing that ROI would be a separate topic today.

Christine Martell pointed this out in her comment from yesterday when she said,

“Not so sure about this being a new way. Seems like your list is looking at the activity rather than the result. Aren’t we looking for behavior change at the level of contribution to the business? Things like are they doing their jobs more effectively?”

She is so right. We do want to want this to change behavior. But now even the behavior question is in question. What behavior? With traditional learning we expect certain behaviors to result and we try to measure that. With social learning we are looking for different behaviors, but the same end results. Let’s look at both of these.

The first is more cultural. It is adopting and changing more than just what they learn, but also how they learn. They are the ones in charge of their learning and teaching each other. Instead of being forced to go to training (something we can have control over the format and measurement), they are being allowed and encouraged to learn on their own. For many, this is a new concept. Not necessarily a new practice, but in a way it is a new permission that we let them learn from each other. This involves trust. It involves the expectation that they are accountable to their own learning. Here are some more ideas to measure.

The second is more of the traditional ROI. How do you know that it is producing bottom line results? So many people say, “You can’t measure this. There is no traditional ROI model that will work for this.” I agree but disagree. There should be an adaptation, but we can still see bottom-line results. And, honestly, the numbers are not always the best ROI. Because the ROI is then used to make decisions. The results that come out of these environments may not have a hard and fast ROI at first, or may be very difficult to calculate.  The subjective results, however, can be very powerful for those who make the decisions.  From them they may be more than on board – they back it 100%.  All this, but they may never have looked at a formal ROI on it.

This isn’t always the case. But my point is that we can’t overlook the stories, the experiences that are so powerful – and then sharing them – in our quest for an ROI.

Rachel Happe suggested some measurements of ROI. A lot of them are for environments that face the customer, but some are for internal. Among those were:

# Number of new product ideas

# Idea to development initiation cycle time

# Retention/Employee turn over

# Time to hire

# Prospect identification cost

# Prospect to hire conversion rate

# Hiring cost

# Training cost

# Time to acclimation for new employees

Remember, we are looking at the final outcome, not necessarily “did they learn”. Because, honestly, we don’t care if they learn if they don’t use it for the benefit of the company. So the benefit is what we measure.  Other’s measurements might be:

# How large one’s network is

# Number of meetings taking place (or, more intuitively, are NOT taking place)

# Number of travel arrangements made (or, again, NOT made).

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. What others are you thinking of?

Tags: culture, measure, measurement, roi

Objection #9: They Aren’t Technical

Jun 12, 2008 Social Learning SIG

Objection #9 I have heard too many times: “No one will use it.  They don’t know how.  This is totally foreign to them.  They aren’t techies.”

Answer: The great thing about Web 2.0 tools it that you don’t have to really ‘get it’ technically.  They are made to be SIMPLE.  That is a key.  It is not the technical piece that holds people back from using it.  It is the cultural.  That is the much more important piece.

I could spend hours talking about how the cultural aspect will get in the way and how to avoid it (in fact, I have as a presenter at a number of conferences and as I have consulted with other companies).  At our company I (we) am (are) creating a public facing Web 2.0 solution that triples as a  Social Learning environment, communication tool and a Customer Support tool.  Within our company the mantra is, “Our customers are not technical.  They don’t know computers.”

That never settled right with me.  Something was wrong every time I heard them say that.  So I decided to do a little digging.  I did some research by interviewing our customers – the ones that would call into our Support.  What I found is that they were correct, they didn’t know computers.  But they did know the internet – overwhelmingly.  They used it often at home and at work.  Most of them had high-speed access at home.  They all searched for information on Google.  Many knew of (and even used) Web 2.0 tools already.

So, objectors are correct.  They may not be technical, but they don’t need to be.  They need to know the internet, not their computer.  And besides that, the technical piece is easy to overcome.  The cultural is not quite the same……

Tags: culture, technical