An overview presentation to spark discussion with corporate comms on how to support the adoption of social software

1. Adoption
of Social Software
Chris Sparshott
IBM Social Software

2. Agenda
• What capabilities
do/will you have?
• Adoption strategy
why bother?
• Bottom-up
• Top-down
• Work for you?

3. Capabilities
of Social Software
@ Customer

4.  Self Service customizable team
sites
 Start quickly with the out-of-the-
box business templates
 Set of connectors to desktop
applications
 Rich collaborative reusable
components with an open
architecture for developers
 ECM interoperability to provide
comprehensive, scalable end-to-
end content mgmt.
 Built on the industry leading
WebSphere Portal platform
* These platforms will
require a separate
purchase when
interoperability with
Quickr is supported
Lotus DominoIBM JCR IBM FileNet * IBM CM * Other (*)
Native support
Lotus Quickr
collaboration and content management portal

5. 5
Lotus Sametime

6. Lotus Connections
Communities
Create, find, join, and work with communities of people who share a common interest,
responsibility, or area of expertise
Blogs
Use a weblog to present your idea and get feedback from others; learn from the
expertise and experience of others who blog
Dogear
Save, organize and share bookmarks; discover bookmarks that have been qualified by
others with similar interests & expertise
Activities
Organize your work, plan next steps, and easily tap your expanding professional
network to help execute your everyday deliverables, faster
Profiles
Quickly find the people you need by searching across your organization using
keywords that help identify expertise, current projects and responsibilities
Homepage
Provides you with a consolidated, drag & drop customizable view, via widgets, of
the other five Lotus Connections services

7. Adoption
Why bother?

8. Adoption – why bother?
• Value
• 6000 employees and only 200 employees
using the social software tools provides
less value to the business than 1000
employees using the tools.
(all things being equal)

9. The Ladder of Social Software Adoption
Creators
Collectors
Joiners
Inactives
Spectators
Critics
Publish a blog
Publish your own Web pages
Upload video you created
Upload audio/music you created
Write articles or stories and post them
Post ratings/reviews of products/services
Comment on someone else’s blog
Contribute to online forums
Contribute to/edit articles in a wiki
Use RSS feeds
Add “tags” to Web pages or photos
“Vote” for Web sites online
Maintain profile on a social networking site
Visit social networking sites
Read blogs
Watch video from other users
Listen to podcasts
Read online forums
Read customer ratings/reviews
None of the above
Base: US online adults
Source: Forrester Q2 2007
Social Technographics Survey
18%
12%
44%
25%
48%
25%
Groups include people
participating in at least
one of the activities monthly.

10. Benefits of
Capabilities
• Increased
Productivity
• Reduced Costs
• Cultural change
– Enhanced employee
engagement

11. Approach
Which one?

12. Do
Nothing?

13. Top-down
Bottom-up
Middlespace

14. Bottom
up

15. Lancaster, L.C. and Stillman, D. When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work. Wheaton, IL. Harper Business, 2003.
Collaborative &
networked
IndependentFacilitatedClassroomLearning style
Gen Y (Chloe)
1977 – 2000
Gen X (Chris)
1965 – 1976
Boomer
1946 - 1964
Traditionalist
1922 - 1945
Generation
Born
between…
Part of my daily routineNecessarySets me backUnwiseJob changing
Unfathomable if not
provided
Unable to work
without it
UnsureUncomfortableTechnology use
On demandWeekly / DailyOnce per year
No news is good
news
Feedback
PartnerCoachGet out of the way
Command &
control
Leadership style
Team decidedTeam includedTeam informedSeeks ApprovalDecision-making
CollaborativeIndependentHorizontalHierarchicalProblem-solving
CollaborativeHub & SpokeGuardedTop downCommunication style
Continuous &
expected
Required to keep me
Too much and I’ll
leave
The hard wayTraining
The difference in the Generations

16. Identify the human hubs
Known & Unknown
(advocates & detractors)

17. Train the
Advocates

18. Sell
to the users
& detractors
* Directly
* Indirectly

19. • We know what the key problems are
• We already have a solution
• We have identified advocates (bottom-up)
• Create a story line / hook that generates interest
– Story 1: Who wants to do less email?
– Story 2: Who wants access to accurate documents?
– Story 3: Who wants access to information immediately without
using email?
– Story 4: Who wants to have a video conference and not travel?
– Story 5: Who wants to share information in real-time with a
colleague working remotely?
• Explain how these tools will help
• Identify key Evangelist by business unit
• Create Volunteer Evangelist team
Direct Selling: Marketing 101

20. • Print – notice boards
• Freebie – pen and brochure
• Lunch-and-learn
• Departmental team meetings
• Voluntary team
• Be involved with employee communities
• Get feedback and publish
– “How it helped” – cash / kudos incentive
• Videos – YouTube, internally published
• Newsletters / email / notice boards
• Invite to Lotus Connections communities.
Other Promotions

21. • Convert key users into
advocates
• Convert advocates into
trainers
• Convert detractors into
happy users
• Encourage voluntary
participation
Conversion through training

22. • Seeing value
• Indirect
Encouragement
• Peer enthusiasm
• Word of mouth
(Conversation)
Indirect Selling

23. IBM’s Adoption Approach

24. • The social software adoption program
primarily focuses on enabling employees
to help one another
• Participants have a clear path to do so:
IBM’s Adoption Program

25. • Communication about social software adoption
efforts abound:
– Intranet news articles written by corporate
communications
– Wiki, managed by the dedicated team
– Blogs, shared bookmarks, shared files, and
forum entries, written or identified by
individual contributors – tagged with a
codeword for easy findability and ease of
subscribing
Frequent and Open Communication

26. • The Ambassadors community, launched November 2007 and
is comprised solely of IBM volunteers – includes a participant
awards program
• Ambassadors are self-defined social software experts who
help individual IBM employees, teams and communities with
using social software
• As an ambassador, you can volunteer to:
– organize and run clinics, lunch and learn sessions
– lead or work as a consultant in jumpstart engagements
– create and/or recommend material for Getting Started
– share success stories, evangelize at events
Employee Participation

27. Top
Down

28. Management
* The process is…
* All new projects will…
* Our success depends
upon you doing…
* I participate so should you…
* Encourage and foster
adoption
* Investment ($$) for
* Training
* Communications
* Recognition & Rewards

29. Summary
• Generational Resistance
• Bottom-up & Top-down for success
• Open communication
• Rewards and Encouragement

30. Will any of this work for you?
• Where has your organisation been
successful at deploying tools and getting
(near) universal employee uptake?
• What methods sit well with your business
culture?
• How do you measure your success?

31. Where
to next

32. IBM
Thank you
Chris Sparshott
IBM Social Software

33. Chris Sparshott
(Sparkbouy)
chris@chrissparshott.com
Portfolio
http://www.slideshare.net/sparkbouy/slideshows
Blog
http://chrissparshott.com
IBM
chris_sparshott@nz.ibm.com