Jun 10
There’s a great conversation going on at the Enterprise 2.0 forum community site around barriers to Enterprise 2.0 adoption. It’s probably one of the most common questions we come across so I thought I’d share our principles for successful wiki/Enterprise 2.0 adoption.
- Targeted – there has to be a clear objective or problem that the platform solves. Preferably a small one so that you can run a small pilot at insignificant cost to see if it works or not. If it does, you can start to extrapolate an ROI – if it doesn’t, try again
- Sponsorship – you need support from senior management if you want wide adoption.
- Marketing/Communications – you need to market you community if it is external, and equally include it in formal communications if it is internal. It needs to be incorporated into a wider marketing/communications strategy and not left out on a limb as an ‘experiment’
- Champions – they exist. Find them and support them
- Support – you also need to support those who need it most, the second wave of adopters who may be scared/uneasy about using new technology
- Accessible – if people run their lives on a Blackberry or work from home, make sure they have access!
- Enforcement – if the answer’s on the wiki, point people to the wiki. Don’t give them the answer over email or over the phone
- Get rid of the old – at some point, you’re going to have to take away the old way of doing things. If half the users think it’s too soon, and the other half think it’s too late, you’re probably right.
- Measure. You won’t get it right first time. Get some metrics agreed (preferably around outcome not activity) and find a way to track them
These aren’t particularly ground breaking, and only repeat what people like Stewart Mader have been talking about for ages, but these are principles that have helped us adopt Enterprise 2.0 software, and for our customers.
