Adoption
of Social Software
Chris Sparshott
IBM Social Software

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

Capabilities
of Social Software
@ Customer

Lotus Quickr
collaboration and content management portal
 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. * These platforms will
require a separate
purchase when
interoperability with
 Built on the industry leading IBM JCR Lotus Domino IBM FileNet * IBM CM * Other (*)
Quickr is supported
WebSphere Portal platform
Native support

Lotus Sametime
5

Lotus Connections
Profiles
Quickly find the people you need by searching across your organization using
keywords that help identify expertise, current projects and responsibilities
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
Homepage
Provides you with a consolidated, drag & drop customizable view, via widgets, of
the other five Lotus Connections services

Adoption
Why bother?

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)

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

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

Approach
Which one?

Do
Nothing?

Top-down
Middlespace
Bottom-up

Bottom
up

The difference in the Generations
Generation
Traditionalist Boomer Gen X (Chris) Gen Y (Chloe)
Born
1922 - 1945 1946 - 1964 1965 – 1976 1977 – 2000
between…
Too much and I’ll Continuous &
Training The hard way Required to keep me
leave expected
Collaborative &
Learning style Classroom Facilitated Independent
networked
Communication style Top down Guarded Hub & Spoke Collaborative
Problem-solving Hierarchical Horizontal Independent Collaborative
Decision-making Seeks Approval Team informed Team included Team decided
Command &
Leadership style Get out of the way Coach Partner
control
No news is good
Feedback Once per year Weekly / Daily On demand
news
Unable to work Unfathomable if not
Technology use Uncomfortable Unsure
without it provided
Job changing Unwise Sets me back Necessary Part of my daily routine
Lancaster, L.C. and Stillman, D. When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solv e the Generational Puzzle at Work. Wheaton, IL. Harper Business, 2003.

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

Train the
Advocates

Sell
to the users
& detractors
* Directly
* Indirectly

Direct Selling: Marketing 101
• 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: W ho wants to do less email?
– Story 2: W ho wants access to accurate documents?
– Story 3: W ho wants access to information immediately without
using email?
– Story 4: W ho wants to have a video conference and not travel?
– Story 5: W ho 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

Other Promotions
• 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.

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

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

IBM’s Adoption Approach

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

Frequent and Open Communication
• 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

Employee Participation
• 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

Top
Down

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

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

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?

Where
to next

IBM
Thank you
Chris Sparshott
IBM Social Software

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