Focusing on Adoption (exclusively) is a Dead-End

For an early adopter market, adoption in this space always seems to get a bad rap.  Why is that?  Because adoption is not the end-game.  It’s the beginning.  In the Council, the members are focused on changing hearts and minds and promoting the use of social tools in order to drive acceptance for a new way of working.  In Deloitte’s excellent report issued today, Social Software for Business Performance, we couldn’t agree more with the findings.  In fact, the rap on “adoption” uses our research to make the point.  There is no benefit in adoption for adoption’s sake.

It’s important to understand that “technology” adoption is the beginning of the journey.  It’s the first wagon wheel turn on a Westward Ho! trek toward complete embrace of a workforce that is socially calibrated and connected.  If you want to experience the benefits of working socially, workforces need to be comfortable and see the benefit of the radical internal organizational change it requires.  It sometimes amuses me that the folks who are critical of the adoption effort required are not particularly proficient in working socially in the first place, and cling to the world they know which is process-oriented and rooted in the industrialization (machining) of the enterprise.

I’ve often said that the adoption story is much less about the technology than it is about the organizational dynamics required to rewire the culture toward a more open, more egalitarian society if you will.  My source on this does not hail from any new technology fad.  In fact, it’s a paper originally published in 1957.  It is a supplement to a paper called, “How Farm People Accept New Ideas.”  It draws from a sociology, not technology foundation.

Introducing these concepts and making them stick inside a large organization is, indeed, a lot like cat-herding.  But, these are not cats or kittens. Change is painful and difficult inside large organizations.  One of the best quotes we heard from last year’s BlackBelt Workshop at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference was from one of our members who said, “These are not cats we’re herding; they’re Tigers, and they bite!”

Business process oriented vendors are getting savvy to social.  Council members just had a great Q&A yesterday with SFDC’s Chatter lead, Chuck Ganapathi, yesterday, and we’re planning a demo and conversation with Tibbr in the near future.   My prediction is we will see new business processes that replace or obsolete old ones more and more as, well, adoption proliferates throughout the enterprise.

Social Business on the Ground

When we set out to investigate case studies, we were looking for “slam dunk” examples where 2.0 initiatives were inextricably tied to business results. In effect, we wanted to begin to dispel the criticisms that e20 was just the next silly, narcissistic exploit to enter the enterprise on the heels of yet another consumer fad: web 2.0.

Well?  We didn’t find those “slam dunk” examples. But, neither did we find any “failures.” What we did find was a massive movement shaking the bedrock of enterprise as we know it. The enterprise plates are still firmly in place, but our investigation revealed tremors– sudden energy being released among the employee population that is poised to crack the foundation of business as we’ve known it.

Time and time again we heard, “This is the most important initiative I’ve ever worked on in my professional life.” There’s something chilling, something inspiring about the people and companies who are leading the charge toward reinventing themselves to become socially savvy. As you read through these profiles and cases, you’ll come to appreciate while all of these companies are still early in the process, they all are confident they will succeed in their long term goals.  Some are realizing early successes already.   The prevailing operational mission at present, however, is to succeed at catalyzing the “ideological reformation” at the root level of the organization that needs to take place before real business value can be extracted, measured, and fine-tuned.  It’s a bit of a Catch-22, and almost as maddening and dangerous as originally described in the novel that coined the phrase.

We will continue to track the progress of these early adopters.  Regardless where you are in the spectrum, we all succeed when every case succeeds.  We’d like to thank IBM and MIT’s Center for Digital Business for lending support and sponsorship to this series of cases and profiles. Special thanks to all @20adoption members who participated in the series.

Current profiles and cases are posted on The 2.0 Adoption Council web site.  Feel free to download at will.  We have a few more coming, as well.

The Chief Evangelist Officer – How does your CEO compare?

We have a wide range of experiences with executive support relative to adoption of 2.0 in the Enterprise.   Some of our members are ecstatic when their CEO blogs on an internal platform without first going through PR; some try to keep the initiative under the radar of the leading executives.  We’ve seen it all.

That said…

This video by member @ted_hopton‘s company, UBM, is the new standard-bearer.   For all of you battling for executive support, watch it and weep.  🙂

Of course, we all hate the fact UBM calls its socio-collaborative platform a Wiki, but we’ll take it.

Awesome job UBM team!

Working Out Loud*

It occurred to me recently that my blogging has all but slammed to a screeching halt.  Since the Council was bought by Dachis Group, I’ve barely managed to blog at all, and my tweeting has wound down considerably, as well.   This is not to say I’ve slowed down with social engagement, in fact, it’s the near opposite.   I man the command center at Council central on our Jive and Socialcast social sites, and I monitor Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well as our Dachis Group Yammer account all day.   I have a persistent chat going all day with my assistant on Skype, and I’m generally monitoring the social web for keywords I’m tracking via Google alerts.

I’m just not sharing a lot externally with my e20 neighbors outside of the Council, save for what I manage to post on Twitter or share via Facebook.  So, ironically, the social web has turned me anti-social.  I’m less transparent than I’ve ever been since I started blogging in 2006.  This is a peculiar and sad state of affairs, because I certainly know more now than I knew when I was blogging avidly.

All that being said, I am going to attempt to get back to blogging.  We debate a lot of important issues inside of the Council that deserve to be exposed to an external audience.  Another way we’re going to attempt to do this is via our new Podcast series that I announced this morning.  Of course, I have to respect the confidentiality of the members’ work-specific related issues, but the general trends we’re watching and trying to make sense of would benefit by some group discussion.

So consider this a short re-introduction.  I have a number of posts I’ve been mulling over.  I won’t waste a lot of time perfecting them, but will make every effort to stimulate some conversation.  Stay tuned.

*Work Out Loud is a great theme coined by our member @thebryceswrite

Nomination Season Begins! Who will be Internal Evangelist of the Year 2010?

Photo credit: Alex Dunne

It’s that time again.   Last year was our inaugural celebration awarding a Council member, “Internal Evangelist of the Year.”  (#IEoY09)

We created this award to recognize an individual who has gone above and beyond the #dayjob requirements and truly has been an inspiration for the company leading a radical (and most often) difficult transformation of the large enterprise.

As I said last year, the same is true this year:

“…the job of the internal evangelist is far, far more difficult. These folks toggle between fighting the good fight every day and then slipping uneasily into a sort of DMZ where they can peek out into the broader community for support and the rejuvenation they need to go on fighting another day. It’s often a thankless job with no clear roadmap for advancement, yet the majority of them do it because they believe in the principles of the 2.0 movement. I celebrate them!”

Interestingly enough, last year’s award winner, Claire Flanagan, was promoted to Social Collaboration Director at the Boston E20 conference.  Hence, she created her own roadmap for advancement and was publicly and privately recognized for it by her employer.   We’ve all had an amazing year.  When I posted about the IEoY09 last year, we had just 40 members in the Council.  We now have 6x that number and the percentage of our “heavy users/most engaged” far surpassed 40 a long while ago. Even with the natural churn (members coming, going, new jobs, etc.), we are consistently growing and individual members have the accretive value of every new node’s contribution to the group intelligence.

So, this year’s winner will be harder to choose than ever.  The final selection will weigh heavily on the member’s recommendations from colleagues in the company, but we are considering all nominations including self-nominations.  Do not be shy!  Vote for your favorite Council member.  It’s good for the member to be recognized for achievements and career advancement; it’s good for the company in that it reinforces how critical the social business effort is to the organization; and it’s good for the sector as it validates the passion and enthusiasm this particular trend brings to the landscape for business reinvention.

Here are the rules/instructions:

1. The nominee must be a member of The 2.0 Adoption Council.  If you would like to recognize someone who is deserving of the award and is leading a social business transformation at your company (or any company), please simply ask them to join the Council.  The Council is free to join for qualified members.

2. We are looking for that extra something.  How did the member sway opinion in the company or in the industry at large?  Did the member demonstrably take a risk that paid off?  Are there any success metrics you have regarding adoption or transformative change in the organization you can tout due to the members’ efforts?  Has the business realized any measurable gains specific to the 2.0 effort?  In other words, the IEoY award is not a popularity contest.  It’s an achievement reward.

3. Where to vote:
– We have two forms for nominations.  My preferred form is the same one we used last year on Google.  You can access it here.
– We have a duplicate of the original form on SurveyGizmo. You an access it here. We needed an alternative web address, as many of our members cannot access Google apps behind the firewall.  Please only use this form if you do not or do not wish to use the Google form.

4. Deadline for submissions is October 22, 2010.

5. The Twitter hashtag for this year’s award is #IEoY10.  Most of the Council members can be found on Twitter.  Jamie Pappas has a list, and the @20adoption account follows members on Twitter.

The award will once again be a main stage event at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference (West) this year held at the spacious Santa Clara Convention Center.

Good luck all evangelists!   As you know, I am your most loyal, enthusiastic fan and you are all winners to me. Let the race begin!

A Year’s Summary of Personal Reflection IV

Every year for the past four years, after the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, I have written an introspective piece about where we are on our journey bringing 2.0 to the large enterprise.  These pieces tend to be idealistic, and I ask readers to bear with me.  You can read their predecessors at this link.

I’ve decided to write a final piece in this series, as we are now well on the road to market acceptance.

In short, the Enterprise 2.0 journey reminds me of learning how to drive a stick shift  my first car: a ’66 Ford Mustang convertible.  Like every new driver, I was extremely excited about the prospects of getting behind the wheel and experiencing the life-changing freedom that comes with mobility.  Each year the Enterprise 2.0 market has grown, it’s been like a new gear on my 3-on-the-floor stick shift.

1. Years 2006-07/Gear 1.  We focused on just getting the clutch engaged and propelling the the damned thing forward.  Those early years were the most difficult of all.  I used every trick in the book to get people interested in the space, including invoking the name of Bruce Springsteen.

“I believe there is something BIG going on here– not because I’m an investor, not because I’m a CEO of a web 2.0 company, not because I’m a journalist of a SF-based publication, heck– I’m not even on the West Coast.  I feel a little like Mr. Springsteen in those early days, playin’ his heart out in those NJ dives hoping someone would dance, or better– listen to the lyrics.”

A handful of us hardcore Enterprise 2.0 bloggers kept pounding away and trying to get some attention for what we all saw as something, “New under the Sun” to quote Andrew McAfee.

2. Year 2008/Gear 2.  We got the thing to move by 2008 albeit in slow gear.  Momentum began to pick up toward the end of 2008 with