One of the enduring memories from
Enterprise 2.0 was an '
unconference' discussion about barriers to community adoption. It was a lively debate with exceptional input from people with a wide variety of backgrounds.
My curmudgeonly two penn'orth: "When I see oil's hitting $140 a barrel and my transportation and logistics
costs are spiraling out of control, why the heck should I be bothering to invest in building your social community? I want a bottom line reduction in cost or an increase in revenue."
The answer is self evident - the community might help you unearth resources that allow you to answer that question. Instant ROI. That happened this week when I was asked about educational resources by a large software vendor. I didn't have a good answer but I knew someone who does. Instant karma.
But reaching this happy state of affairs requires a LOT of effort. I first started building community over three years ago and it was darned hard work. I was clueless and failed miserably the first three months. Then I figured out a couple of things:
- It's all about giving to receive. 80% of what I know goes into the public domain. the other 20% I reserve as intellectual property that I can monetize. All professionals should be able to recognize the truth of that. An example might be the tax tables you publish on your website. Or a rule of thumb on certain tax deductions. When you build a reputation as someone who gives, you get way more back in return. Trust me, I know this to be true.
- Community building requires a relatively high social quotient. Steve Mann of SAP talks about this. He says:
A companies' SQ begins with its employees:
- How likely are they to want to use social media tools to connect not only with one another but with customers and partners?
- Are they using Twitter, blogs, Wikis of their own accord?
- Are they demanding that these tools be deployed internally for greater internal collaboration
- Are they part of a diverse workforce generational makeup - does it
have a broad distribution of Millennials (Gen Y), Gen Xers, Early and
Late Stage Boomers - Millennials and Gen Xers tend to drive adoption
of these tools
- Do they have a penchant for experimentation and are not afraid of
Failure? Are employees given innovation time? Time to do their own
projects?
- Are there lots of grass roots implementations afloat and are employees evangelizing them to others?
Employees with a high SQ will want to use Social Media to drive
customer intimacy and in so doing benefit not only the customer but the
brand.Steve should know the truth of this. SAP has spent the last 5 years building out a community of some 1.5 million people, but it starts with a desire to communicate and collaborate.In other words it starts with organizations with an above average SQ.
Professionals don't see themselves as great communicators but I think that's false modesty. They don't see themselves as great social beings. That's an illusion - we spend most of our time interacting with others. Too often I think that as professionals we say there is no time to think about these issues. I say that's a false economy. These are what I call false barriers to adoption that reflect our perceived culture.
When I think about how IT Counts is growing, it is evident to me that a little effort can go a long way. The journey is worth it. It is up to you to take the first steps.