“Fear of Retribution” is probably the most feared reason why employees DON’T use Enterprise 2.0 tools.  This has been hit home recently as I and a number of other friends have had our hands slapped for “working out loud.”

“Ha,” you may say!  ”What on earth did you all say?  It must have been bad!”

You decide.  We said things like,  ”The project’s official process is slowing us down.”  ”They have had an old-world mentality in the past.”  ”The culture will need to change if this is to work.”  ”If we try to control too much, we will lose control.”

This is how I have seen the game unfold all too often:

1. An employee makes a true statement which is obvious to everyone but no one would say it because of fear of retribution. The statement is not made maliciously, nor is it toxic.  Rather it is just a casual statement or the person is trying to make things better.
2. Management doesn’t like it and a) enacts a punishment and b) tries to control the message.
3. The employee goes quiet as does all those around him/her.
4. Employees take on a passive-aggressive stance which hurt the business.

All it takes is for someone to not like a statement.  It doesn’t even need to be someone in management , nor does the statement need to be offensive.  This can happen as one does not agree, takes an issue against it and informs management.  In the spirit of being PC, the employee is informed of the issue and we jump to step #3 above.

My advice to management

Charlene Li, in her book Open Leadership, noted that, “Business leaders are terrified about the power of social technologies, by they are also intrigued and excited about the opportunities.”  My advice?  Pick a side and stop waffling.  Stop telling your employees that these technologies can be a real asset but at the same time don’t allow the culture to change.  It is one or the other.  Either is fine, just pick one.

My advice to employees

Just say it.  If you get your hand slapped, so be it.  If they exert more control, OK.  In my experience, most people, in time, come out of the fog and realize that you were right and in the end you are a visionary and hero (and this is what is happening with those who made the quotes above!).  It is a difficult time to go through.

But here is the lesson:To get to the good stuff you will have to go through the difficult. There isn’t any way around it.  Plow through with confidence and this caveat: Do not make any statements which are mean, negatively critical, caustic, or toxic and don’t be arrogant.

As one of these friends correctly pointed out, “Change is a dangerous business!!”

There aren’t any steps. I’ve never really liked “STEPS” lists, because they are too generic (unless you are putting together the Space Shuttle, or something like that).  It is as if they will take you to the holy grail.

Steps imply that they must be done in order – in sequence.  Yet each community is in its own phase.  They have their own unique strengths & weaknesses & culture.  There isn’t a One-Size-Fits-All method.  It is impossible to come up with a list of steps that will cover them all.

Instead, here are 10 things you must do (or not do) when creating a community.

1. DO gather (virtually or in person) the community together (or a portion of it) and look at it from a performance improvement perspective.  You can’t go in thinking that an online community will solve all of its problems.  How much better to be able to go in, recognize an area that can be improved, and then be able to provide a solution, whatever that may be!  If not provide it, then recognize what a potential solution could be and who to contact.  It could be training, process re-engineering, dealing with cultural issues…
2. Don’t just target the GenY or Millenials.  Those who are older get this just as much as they do.
3. Don’t ask them to blog, or tweet, or use a wiki.  They won’t know what to do with it.  Well then, how do we help them use these new tools?
4. Work the tools into their workflow.  If it is an extra chore, they won’t use it (this seems pretty intuitive, but is forgotten in practice).  Make it a part of how they work.  But don’t focus on the tools either…
5. Focus on the people, the culture.  Usage of the tools will follow.  Help the people “work out loud.”
6. Don’t create communities hoping they will join.  Make sure you have a plan! (Again, that seems obvious, but…)  Throwing something out there will rarely work.  Be strategic, yet flexible enough to allow the employees to set the agenda.
7. Do set the example yourself.  Use it.  Show others how it can be used in the real world.  At NASA we are in the middle of development of our enterprise social solution.  How do we communicate?  Using the tool and principles of transparency.  I can’t tell you how effective that has been in showing others the value and how to use it practically.  Oh, and I have avoided a ton of meetings and emails as well.
8. Do dare to be different.  Don’t go with the flow which will only lead you back to the same results the organization has always achieved.  You MUST go against the grain – not to be combative, however.  But when people challenge you, stand up with them (not ‘to’ them) and help educate them, allthewhile having a smile on your face.  Some will laugh at you and that is okay.  Just smile, knowing that they will come back later and use the very thing they mocked.
9. DO focus on TRUST.  I can’t stress this enough.  Talk about it in your meetings, online, on the phone, all the time.
10. Help others understand the difference between personal and professional uses – internal and external uses.  They are very different (although they can bleed into each other, but keep it simple with them for right now).  Beat that drum loud and hard.

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.

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).

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?

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……