User Adoption

Tuning out the SharePoint naysayers

Sooner or later, all SharePoint enthusiasts encounter the scariest of creatures…the intelligent, the opinionated and the immoveable naysayer. These naysayers exist at all levels of the organization and persist in deriding SharePoint without provocation or apology.

SharePoint enthusiasts fear naysayers for several reasons. First, we fear the naysayers will tarnish SharePoint’s image. Yes, we’re used to defending SharePoint against the typical anti-Microsoft rants. But these ideological rants rarely touch on or impact day-to-day operations. Naysayers present a more immediate threat. If the naysayers are vocal, sharing their anti-SharePoint mantras with project managers, executives and line-of-business folks, they can taint others’ view of SharePoint.

Naysayers can also block the use of SharePoint within key business units by simply refusing to adopt the platform. A few well-placed naysayers can cut off avenues for success, making user adoption a challenge.

But by far, the most insidious and debasing fear is that the naysayers are right. What if the naysayers see something we’ve missed–a fatal flaw in SharePoint’s design or a new Google Docs feature that will change the collaboration landscape? This fear can be crippling, and in that moment the naysayers can be like kryptonite for SharePoint enthusiasts. But remember, kryptonite only hurts if you’re Superman.

Here’s the reality: naysayers can’t really hurt SharePoint. Yes, they can be vocal in their opposition. And yes, they can make us work around them. But their greatest threat isn’t what they can do. Their greatest threat is the impact they have on us–the SharePoint enthusiasts. When we encounter a naysayer and start wringing our hands, we give away our power. And when we spend hours and hours of time trying to build out collaboration features to make the naysayers happy, we bear a huge opportunity cost.

I often talk with users that are struggling to “earn” the approval of their SharePoint naysayers. They work like trojans to try and build the perfect SharePoint site or solution for their naysayers, only to find the bar inextricably raised at every turn. No matter how far they come and how great a solution they build, it’s never quite enough to win the naysayers’ approval. They ask me what they can do to help turn the tide and win over their naysayers, and I always say the same thing–STOP!

Stop trying so hard. Stop contorting yourselves to try and become what others are looking for. And stop chasing after users that are not interested in what you (or your SharePoint platform) are offering. If you’re implementing SharePoint correctly, you should have a healthy pipeline of users requesting your SharePoint help and expertise. Why waste your time on the naysayers? Driving effective user adoption is about building tools and solutions that people want to use. Naysayers (by definition) don’t want what you’re selling. So stop trying to sell to them.

If you focus 100% of your time and energy on the customers that want to adopt SharePoint, you’ll be a success. And if you have a methodology that really works, SharePoint will start spreading like wildfire in your organization. So let the SharePoint wildfire run its course…sooner or later, those naysayers will sound pitiful deriding the virtues of a tool that has been embraced (and extolled) by the entire rest of the organization.

Kurt Vonnegut and the art of the fairy tale
This blog post goes to the heart of understanding people–how they think, how they react, etc. Understanding story arcs and their impact on people’s perceptions of life and work can make you a better SharePoint practitioner, wiki enabler and knowledge management evangelist.

Life is dramatic. But for most of us, the drama is short-lived, scattered among long periods of relative normalcy. We go through life fairly content, with blips of extreme happiness and sorrow.

Ever know anyone, though, that had an extra helping of drama? You know, the folks that have more hills to climb, more drawbacks to overcome, etc.? Kurt Vonnegut explains that this “flair for the dramatic” may be caused by those seemingly innocuous fairy tales we’re exposed to from infancy on. It’s the dark side of the Cinderella story arc.

Here’s an interesting recap of the Cinderella drama story – http://sivers.org/drama

And here’s a clip of Kurt explaining the 3 basic story arcs that underlie our expectations for life, love and happiness:

Understanding user adoption in 3 minutes or less…

Michael Sampson recently published the blog post: What’s the Key to Successful Adoption of “Social Business”? With a title like this, you’d expect to see a 10-page narrative outlining all the key reasons why social is critical to your business’ success. The narrative may include all the key decision factors for going social but wouldn’t provide details on how to get there.

Michael’s approach was shorter (and more effective). Rather than diving into the conceptual, he provided a video clip from the recent Unified Communications Expo. The video combines clips from six user adoption experts, providing a 3-minute summary of user adoption strategies. Some of the salient recommendations include:

  • Design your approach to meet and solve real business problems. Don’t build a platform just to build a platform.
  • Please your customers. Please your customers. Please your customers.
  • Embed social into your internal business processes. (aka align social to the way your users work)

Take a look:

 

Footnote:

Michael has an excellent book (referenced during the video clip) that summarizes collaboration user adoption strategies. An updated version of this book is due out in 2012. Stay tuned to Michael’s web site for more information.

The art of wishing for “Anything You Want”

I’m a tough sell. I’m not into self-help books, don’t watch Dr. Oz, and am generally not looking for unsolicited how-to advice on starting a business, getting on-the-job training or fixing my personal relationships. You can call me reticent or jaded, but I’m not easily moved by the average how-to guide. That’s what makes this blog post unusual. Rather than sharing a specific SharePoint solution or talking about how to calculate your Return On Investment (ROI), I’m dedicating this blog post to a truly inspirational book. So read this blog post. And then go pick up a copy of Anything You Want by Derek Sivers (ISBN 978-1-936719-11-2).

To be fair, I’ve been a Derek Sivers fan for a while. I referenced his “Obvious to you. Amazing to others” video in my Easy. Obvious, even. blog post last fall, and have been meaning to read Anything You Want since then.

Let me start off by saying that this is not a SharePoint book. It’s a compilation of thoughts, ideas and key learnings from the conception, launch, operation and eventual sale of CD Baby. (If you’re not familiar, CD Baby is the single largest web-based seller of independent music. Derek Sivers founded CD Baby as a hobby and grew it to become a $100 million business before selling it in 2008.) Sivers’ experiences with CD Baby are universal, though. In many ways, Anything You Want is the story of how a hobby reached the tipping point–the point when it gained its own momentum and became a product of its enthusiasts. Isn’t this, after all, what many SharePoint enthusiasts and coaches are after? Aren’t we trying to convince our business users of SharePoint’s inherent value and working to build momentum for this platform we all believe can make a critical difference in the way people work together?

So while Anything You Want may not have been written with a SharePoint bent, its message relates to struggles SharePoint coaches/evangelists face every day. Here are 3 key messages I took away from Sivers’ experiences with CD Baby:

  1. “Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers” (page 15). This may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how often we fail to adhere to this basic tenet of customer service. And Sivers’ focus on customer service has a twist. He encourages focusing all your efforts on your current customers. If you thrill them, they’ll spread the word on your behalf, attracting more new customers than you ever could (page 15). Those of you that have seen my presentations know that I often contrast SharePoint with online knowledge bases. While I’m a librarian at heart, I recognize that online knowledge bases are, at their core, never-ending holes of need. No matter how much care and feeding you give them, they will always require emotional propping and vast amounts of evangelism and marketing. SharePoint is just the opposite. If you build compelling SharePoint sites that improve your users’ work lives, SharePoint will market itself. No emotional propping required.
  2. “You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people” (page 3). I’m a people-pleaser, so this message is completely foreign to me. But I find it intriguing… Sivers’ point is simple–by confidently stating who you are and who you’re not, you’ll attract the customers you’re looking for. Here’s his business case:

    “Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them” (page 23).

    The point is clear–focus on the people who value your time and talent. Don’t stop the train for the nay-sayers, because ultimately they don’t matter.

  3. “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working” (page 11). This is the silver bullet. If you feel like you are expending a massive amount of energy to push a rock up the mountainside, please stop. Gravity is sending you a message and you are failing to get the point. If you have a vision and the world fails to recognize it and make it a hit, then it’s time to continue iterating and inventing. This doesn’t mean you should scrap your idea. But you shouldn’t keep on pushing it as-is. This video says it all:

Intrigued yet? I recommend going and picking up a copy of Anything You Want. It’s a quick (and valuable) read.