I hear this comment all of the time, “This (Enterprise 2.0) is the same old same old repackaged.”

Yes and no. Saying it that way assumes that a) because it is basically the same, b) the outcomes are basically the same. Point A may be true, but because it is even ever so slightly different it totally changes the game and point B becomes null and void.

There was a post recently by someone who mentioned this fact and she had four great points:

1. Same old same old – There isn’t much new here – it is communication but on a supersonic level.
2. Responsibility – The greater the ability to communicate = the greater the responsibility to do so appropriately.
3. Fact Checking – Making sure information which is passed on could be considered ‘facts’.
4. Work Life Balance – There has been a boundry between social life and work life.

I agree with just about everything she said, yet we are missing a key element.

Point #1 – The Same old same old

When the phone was widely adopted, it wasn’t anything new: communication via voice between (usually) two people. This has happened since the dawn of time. But with a phone it is supersonic. All true. The real difference is that the outcome was drastically changed because the rules changed. Because they could suddenly talk to someone far away in an instant, my great-great grandmother didn’t need to write a letter to tell her son that his father had passed away. If a letter had been sent, by the time the son would have received it the funeral would have taken place. Via the phone the son received the news and was able to make the two day train trip to attend the funeral and to support his widowed mother.

Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.

Point #2 – Responsibility

The author of these points stated that we need to be careful in how we express ourselves, talking about clarity of purpose and intent.  We often see verbal vomit because they have the ability to do so.

Very true. And that hasn’t changed either. How many times have we seen someone verbally vomit in a letter or in a meeting? Or tell someone “facts” in a person-to-person discussion or in an email which were wrong? Again, it has happened since the beginning.

She is especially correct when she wrote that “extra care needs to be taken…” Why? Because suddenly the audience is different. Hugely different. If I wrote an embarrassing letter it might be copied and sent around to a few others. If I write a blog or tweet, and incorrectly slandered or mischaracterized someone, anyone can copy and paste that and spread it to the world. Or if I show my ignorance on a phone call, that conversation can be recorded & posted to the Internet for the world to hear. Yet those are the more nefarious uses.

Because we can post anything to the world, we know instantly that there was a shooting at UAH and that we should call a daughter to make sure she is OK. In fact, this was done during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. The New York Times reported,

Even The Roanoke Times, which is published near Blacksburg, Va., where the university is located, noted on Thursday that Wikipedia “has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event.”

It is interesting to note that the previously assumed ‘authoritative’ source (the newspaper with official reporters) was not the best source for information. How is that? Minutes after the shooting occurred a Wikipedia page was created. As soon as anyone had updates they could post it there. Within one week 2,074 different people had contributed to the page to share information with more than 750,000 page views within two days.

Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.

Point #3 – Fact Checking

We must always take care in any situation using any communication medium to do our best to pass on the facts. I fully agree. Yet we must recognize that sometimes facts are secondary and that the information we are trying to gather or communicate out is not fact based. Because we have new modes of communication which are cheap (if not free) and prolific, we need not stick to the facts. Obviously we trust others not to tell lies, but communication goes beyond the facts.

In a way, people’s perceptions become their own truth (constructivism). And sometimes that is what is more important and what we need to deal with. Read the first few page of the book Diffusion of Innovation (Rogers, 1962) (see also these posts) and we will see that facts have less of an impact on our behavior than we would imagine – it is perception that drives behavior.

Amazon.com is a perfect example. They give the “facts” on their products. But often more valuable are the opinions it asks for from the customers. Opinions are contextual and highly personal. When I look at a product on Amazon.com, they give me the fact sheet. This is very helpful, but the context in which it is often as helpful in making my decision. This comes in the form of ratings and reviews from the users sharing the opinion and not fact. I recently researched a gizmo that takes the output audio from my iPhone and relays it over FM radio in my car. The “facts” stated it worked. Yet from reading the reviews I found that it worked sometimes, but not at other times – in some circumstances, but not in others. In fact, the gizmo was given a very poor rating even though the facts stated that it worked. I did not buy it even though the facts were in their favor.

Often we are not looking for the authoritative source but we are looking for those who are self-proclaimed “experts.” In this case, those experts are the actual people who bought and used the gizmo.

Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.

Point #4 – Work Life Balance

There used to be a boundary between one’s social life and one’s work life. I would make the argument that the same line still exists today, but because it looks different we mask it as a new line.

Internal social networks are not created to further anyone’s social life, but to simply “make visible the practices and outputs of… knowledge workers.” (Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration, MIT Sloan Management Review)

How many times have we been in a meeting where we ask each other about the weekend, our kids, or the vacation we took? We freely share this information without hesitation. Sometimes we find we have similar interests. Those interests lead to social activities. And there are a million different ways in which this takes place. From the coworker who talks too much in a meeting about their adventures, to sharing the details of a brother’s wedding, to the passing around the link of the highlights from the state championship game in which your daughter played. It is the same today. We share personal information all the time. For the most part, the only real personal information we usually share in an E2.0 environment is in the profile fields, and even that is almost all professionally focused.

This boundary doesn’t change unless we individually let it. Unfortunately, those who abuse it are held up as the example of the new ‘rules’ instead of them being portrayed as what they are, the exception.

Yet when we do share, the information has a much larger audience. And how lucky we are for that! Imagine if everyone filled out their profiles in their E2.0 environment(s). When change comes and the business needs to shuffle personnel, wouldn’t it be great to be able to see the details – quickly and easily – of thousands of people who might fill a particular role instead of relying on a posted job requirement which may not reach the right people to submit a resume?

Apply a million similar situations and we find that although the communication isn’t new, what it enables is drastically new.

“Trialability is the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis.” (Diffusion of Innovations, p. 16)

Isn’t this down economy great?  Don’t get me wrong, just like the next guy I wish it wasn’t happening.  We are all feeling the effects of it, some more than others.  But it is making us step out of our comfort zone and try some new things.  The easier it is to try these new things out, the better adoption we will have.

With each Twitter follower, I look at their profile and latest tweets.  There was one person today, in particular, that followed me.  Phil was just laid off of his work.  He created a twitter account last April, updated it three times in the first two hours and then didn’t touch it.  Until now.

Now he has a reason. Phil might be saying, “Hey, it can’t hurt.  I might as well try it out – give it a shot.”  Not only is the relative advantage higher than it was before, but he can try it out as an experiment.  Pretty soon he sees that making a connection gets his name and situation on a blog read my millions of people (OK – WAY overstated), but now he has some loose connections that might help with the job search.

The first time you at sushi did you stuff the whole thing in your mouth?  Not likely.  You probably nibbled at it, like I did, and got a general taste of what this raw fish was going to bring to you.  Then, if you liked it, you tried more and more until – possibly – you scarfed down the whole plate.

Why do you think razors are cheap but the blades cost a fortune?  If the razors themselves are cheap enough, people can give it a trial run without losing much.  Then the razor company hopes you love it and buy the blades once you are hooked.

Or the numerous “30 days free!” offers.

To gain adoption, try making social learning useful on a trial basis. Let people get their feet wet.  Give them a reason to try and then make it easy, painless and costless.  When they try it out they will understand – there is less uncertainty.

This is one of my main tasks for any critics and those who don’t know where to start: Try it out.  Nibble a little.  Learn about what you are afraid and uncertain of by doing it.  Then it isn’t a mystery and you can decide if it works for you.

(BTW, Phil looks like he has some great experience.  If you are looking for someone with good HR, learning and leadership experience, check out his LinkedIn profile.)

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.

What follows is a short series of at least 5 posts.  Each will focus on one aspect of what it takes to adopt social learning / media within an organization as well as with customers and prospects.

The information is taken from the book Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers and then applied to social learning.  This is one of THE books, in my estimation, which will help the most when trying to help others adopt anything – technology, a new culture, processes, even hybrid corn in Iowa.  A fabulous read.  If you don’t have it, get it.

The five principles of adoption are:

1. 1) Relative Advantage
2. 2) Compatibility
3. 3) Complexity
4. 4) Trialability
5. 5) Observability

These posts talk about AFTER the sale and implementation.  (Although these things should be taken into consideration BEFORE all of that.) These posts answer the question,

“Now that we have it there, how do we get them to use it?”

Because – trust me – just because it is there DOES NOT mean that it will be used.

Again, this question should be part of a strategy long before implementation and should be constantly re-examined during and after.