Adapting your adoption approach

Editor's Notes

1. These slides were first presented at Social Connections VII in Stockholm on 13 November 2014. The audience consisted primarily of representatives from organizations having are being about to implement social intranets, the majority being based on IBM Connections. Making such platforms available to your employees enables employees to communicate freely, to share content, updates and bookmarks widely or within self-managed communities, both in plain view of all colleagues or with restricted visibility and access, to comment, to rate and to notify each other of interesting contents. It is like bringing the features of a wide range of popular social networks and peer-to-peer tools we know from the public space into one collaborative environment, within the firewall; networking, updates, comments, file sharing, blogs, wikis, bookmarks, forums, communities, ideation, crowdsourcing of ideas and priorities – all in one. However, after decades of us working in an insular fashion, hoarding documents on our hard drives, misusing email by spamming our mailing lists with questions, discussions, “Reply to all”, often with heavy attachments that may send our poor colleagues to mail jail, most of us are too stuck in our ways of working (although a favourite pastime on lunches and in coffee breaks is to complain about them and their effects). Just making new tools available rarely is a magic pill that suddenly changes the way we all work and makes all our old, ineffective habits go away overnight. For companies to reap the benefits of increased efficiency, boosted innovation, faster resolution of challenges through improved access to internal expertise and experience, either through asking or finding it documented online or in shared documents or presentations as well as more knowledgeable and inspired employees (and reduced dependency by the company on a few experts), they need to help employees realise why it is in their own interest to invest some time and effort in changing their ways of working, in sharing information instead of hoarding it and to collaborate online with each other. This presentation is about such social intranet adoption efforts. After this background, let’s move ahead to the content.
2. Since August 2013, I have been involved in social intranet adoption for an anonymous client in China. Very big, very high tech, very young workforce, very Chinese What do I mean by “social intranet”? For most of us, especially here, it equals IBM Connections and any integrations with other tools. But since what I’m about to present is relevant for most platforms, I use a more neutral expression.
3. So what do I mean by “Chinese”? The relevant aspect here is about hierarchy. When I first visited China more than ten years ago, I struggled to wrap my head around how they could combine communist politics with a capitalist economy. Finally, it struck me. It’s all about authority. The difference is only what it is founded on; politics or money? An illustration of this atmosphere is that in this project we have bent over backwards not to talk about “social”. It sounds a bit too disruptive for China. Instead, we’ve been talking about knowledge sharing. It’s pretty obvious that the predominant management style in China is based on McGregor’s Theory X
4. McGregor’s theory is NOT about attitudes and motivation of employees. It is about managerial assumptions about employee attitudes and motivation. Basically, Managers who subscribe to Theory X believe employees only work because they are forced to, are motivated only by money or punishment and that the only creativity they display is about how to avoid work and responsibility. They develop a culture of command and control. Managers who subscribe to Theory Y instead, believe employees can find work motivating in itself, are creative and seek responsibility and professional development. I think management has much in common with parenting. How many of you are parents? Hands up! I suppose you, as parents, also have learned that your attitude towards people has a tendency to become self-fulfilling? Kids who keep being called troublemakers have a tendency of turning into that role. Similar with employees. Management by command and control and with a minimum of motivation and trust hardly stimulates employees to take initiatives, risks and responsibility. And you tend to recruit people who match your style and prejudices. Or you scare away the others. So, managers who subscribe to Theory X tend to become surrounded by Theory X employees. Is this unique to China and my client? No way! It might be more common and maybe more accentuated, but I’m sure you can all name a bunch of theory X managers from your experience. Maybe even some from your current environment. With this as backdrop, let’s have a look at our usual transformation toolbox:
5. I believe that usually, when we try to build adoption of social intranets, most of us use a similar set of tools. We might use different names for them and balance the mix slightly differently. This illustration gives a glimpse into my toolbox and my default balance. Of course, I rebalance and tweak for each client based on their context, maturity and budget. Yours might be slightly different, and I’d be thrilled to hear more about it in a break later on. But I I’d be surprised if the differences are drastic As all other tag clouds, this slide looks a bit messy. Well, there’s some kind of structure anyway
6. I do have some kind of structure in the tool box displayed here. I have grouped the initiatives by those involving Executives (centre) A big chunk, bottom right related to Motivation A set of activities top right, aimed at helping employees Understand the tools and the ways of working Top left we have another set of activities to Support early adopters and the like Bottom left, we have initiatives to make it Easy to work in the new ways, User Experience, integration with tools used daily and supported initiatives to boost system functions, often involving tagging of people to make it easier to find those in the know To the left, but at the middle level, we have aspects to review and adapt formally defined ways of working to support or benefit from the new ways of working. Like reviewing and revising business processes, establishing guidelines for behaviour in social media, including respective and protecting intellectual property and secure computing, plus training on these topics. In lack of a better word, I’ve called it Govern
7. As you can see from the size of the words, it has a tendency to tilt towards Supporting those who try, help employees understand how to get their job done by using the social intranet and in leaders showing the way. The only motivation work that gets more than average weight is the kind that is based on role models, peer references. All other motivational factors get just average attention… because I, and I believe: we, rely on intrinsic motivation, on an element of altruism, on openness and a reasonably democratic mindset, where anyone is expected to be able to come up with ideas and to have valuable knowledge and experience to share and where you are allowed to admit to lacking other knowledge. So let’s take a McGregor view of our tool-kit:
8. It’s pretty apparent that our usual tool-kit is geared towards Theory Y, mine is, at least. Let’s have a look at some of the challenges you meet in a Theory X culture Executive coaching – When hierarchical distances are too big. Coaches might get star struck when faced with an executive. Executives may feel awkward taking advice from someone below them When the concept of “Knowledge” isn’t about proven, impartial facts, but rather is interpreted as meaning “Instructions”. When knowledge is synonymous with blueprints, frameworks, templates instead of “my example of the tool we used to prioritize requirements in a project”. Which in turns means that knowledge can travel only downwards, not criss-crossing throughout the organization When people are reluctant to ask for help since it means, implicitly, losing face by admitting that you have shortcomings So what do we have to do when faced with a management and organization leaning towards Theory Y?
9. It’s even more important to get Executives on board, engaged and active as the employees are so very used to follow their lead (and find it hard to believe that they have changed their mind set to the more open, transparent and trusting mind set of a social business). But, executives don’t only lead by example. They actually formally lead and manage the organization. They decide budgets, they make policies, they set and follow up on goals, they promote employees etc. In a theory X organization, we need to work much more with such tools. And we might need to re-think how some tools are applied as well as our communications, the messages we use
10. …our Theory Y mix and balance towards….
11. More emphasis on showing and telling of executive endorsement. More talk and even more action. (3 of 4 Exec items increase in size) More of all the Motivational tools, including re-modelling the formal processes for goal-setting, appraisal and career promotion, including various ways of benchmarking* with peers (all Motivational items increase except “Inspiration sessions”) Less support of early adopters and more pushing of training, of course with a major piece of that training referring to the executive support and how the changed ways of working will help you not only to be more inspired and develop your professional proficiency, but also help your career and maybe even affect your paycheck. (Reduction of all items in the top left oval “Support” but increase in “Pushed training) An increase of communication to explain and promote concepts that have not been widely used and accepted: (Increase in “Concept Communications”) Like anyone being able to possess and share valuable knowledge and experience, not only the official experts Like the value of bite-sized knowledge, not only massive frameworks The value of shared experience (how we did it) to supplement various kinds of instructions (how to do it) – frameworks, blueprints…. Increased efforts of reviewing and redesigning policies and processes to redefine the formal aspect of work (Increase in the middle, left oval “Govern”) And of supporting that move by stronger efforts of integrating social and the usual work tools (Increase in Tools integration bottom left) * By Benchmarking I mean any way of comparing employees with each other as well as departments, geos etc with each other. It could be reporting only visible to administrators and management. It could be reporting and dashboards for employees where they can compare themselves with averages or anonymous top performers. It could be gamification, using badges and top lists visible to all. This is an area that may be subject to limitations from a legal or labour market point of view, since we deal with (or are close to dealing with) personal information, PI.
12. Finally, you may well need to tweak or re-design some of your tools. Here are some examples of mine, but this comes down to the individual organization and your creativity I’d expect that executives in a culture dominated by Theory X have a greater tendency to rely on executive assistants and are used to ask them for help on practical things. So, train the assistants to provide the support to the executives instead of the coaches. Focus communication aimed at executives to WHY it benefits also them and the company to change their ways of working, communication and managing Executive blogs is a common way for executives to lead by example. An even stronger way, and much more motivational for those touched, is to like, comment and recommend what employees have published and shared. This requires, however, scanning for such good contributions, an activity which busy executives may not put at the top of their list of things to do. So, let’s do it for them and supply them with a shortlist of good things to read and comment. It may be done manually or using analytical tools. If the culture is utterly closed, with an unwillingness to lose face or admit to shortcomings by asking questions or to express differing opinions, you might even want to create orchestrated discussions between executives, managers or other well known colleagues to show that it is ok to do so. Yes, I know it’s cheating, but if it helps changing the culture, it might still be worth it. As Theory X cultures have a high respect for authority, peer appreciation may face difficulties catching on. It might be necessary to make some concession to start with. One could be to highlight or separate likes or comments from appointed experts on the topic at hand
13. When starting on this project, I thought I was rather neutral, but it quickly became obvious to me that I even had to reconsider my subconscious assumptions. Maybe that applies to you too? Executives can never be too involved in leading by example Motivation is key, as long as we haven’t integrated our social tools with tools necessary to perform your work tasks. But motivation can come both in the form of carrot (which I prefer) and stick (which sometimes is needed) The more I have worked in this field, the more I have found that it all boils down to us having to redefine the meaning of “work”:
14. In many big companies, especially in the ones listed on the stock market, employees in general and middle managers in particular tend to work with a focus that is both short (this quarter) and narrow (own department). But the benefits of social intranets, knowledge sharing, working out loud, transparency, openness etc rarely show in your own department in this quarter. They rather show up some day, somewhere in the organization, but you cannot know for sure where or when, nor even if you will be able to trace it back to the source
15. So, the ways of working that are supported by a social intranet resembles investments rather than immediate and measurable results. I suggest we include that in our definition of work
16. Peter Bjellerup is a social business consultant, working for IBM since early 2005, nowadays in the Global Center of Competence for Social Business, a team of “flying doctors” supporting sales, solutioning and starting up engagements covering the different aspects of social business. While Peter’s customary focus is internal, the team at large works with the full range of the field, from social business strategy, policy and process review and redesign, social media marketing, social customer service, social intelligence and analytics (both external and internal), all of which usually involve some or a lot of change management for social business. Before joining the client-facing CoC, Peter has worked internally in IBM on social intranet adoption.