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The culture of organizations is the most common barrier to implementing collaborative Enterprise 2.0 technologies into businesses today. Employees are commonly set in their ways and introducing new applications and ideas can upset the daily workflow and create resistance. The good news is that there are proven ways to expedite cultural changes within companies.

To begin we must describe some general use cases in order to determine what type of results we can expect from Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. The first general use case is “experimental.” In this case we are relying on small test groups and company evangelists to move things forward. Our second is a “well-defined” use case, where someone in the company has signed off on the new social software.

Looking at “well-defined” use cases with senior management support we tend to have a range of options available to overcome company culture when introducing new applications.

Remove Alternatives – Simply remove the old software and require employees to use the new. This is the quickest way people will adapt. Sameer Patel’s case notes how a leading chip manufacturer gave workers 45 days to migrate their emails to new Wiki software before the email server was wiped clean.

Storytelling – New efficiencies and opportunities for growth are envisioned by senior management as they outline ideas for the workplace of tomorrow. “People need to have a sense of what the future looks like, so be very clear on that,” says BP’s Fiona MacLeod.

Incentives – Recognize and reward top contributors and celebrate breakthroughs and milestones. Social software participation can also be included in performance reviews as suggested by Andrew McAfee.

Executive Reminders – If upper management is making it very clear that this is the direction things are going, people tend to jump on the bus quickly. No one wants to risk losing their paycheck by ignoring company initiatives.

When in “experimental” stages many of the direct approaches to “well-defined” use cases are not available. Here are some tactics that are effective when experimenting with enterprise social networks…

Model Behavior – Project leaders and evangelists can influence usage by removing alternatives from their own routines. If the only way for fellow employees to communicate with these leaders is through the social software then more will have to adapt.

New Use Cases – By introducing various new cases where social business applications can be used, more employees will make connections and see benefits.

Senior Sponsor – After an initial test launch try to attract the attention of a senior manager to build support.

Measuring performance for “well-defined” use cases can be done by deciding whether the job set out to perform was accomplished. Also it can be benchmarked against the replaced processes. Measuring “experimental” usage is done by collecting wins. The cases where the software was helpful to an employee, turnaround time was increased, new information was found and new connections were made are all examples of wins.

Source: Social Computing Journal