chieftech’s blog

Its not not about the technology | CC-BY

Review of User Adoption Strategies by Michael Sampson

Michael called his book, User Adoption Strategies, but I think of it more as the User Adoption Strategies Encyclopaedia... :-)

The emphasis of this book is on describing a range of strategies that will work for second wave adopters, rather than a magic formula approach. He does provide a user adoption model to follow that pulls these strategies into a manageable framework, but within this approach there is still room for these different options to be fitted together into what he later describes as the user adoption "jigsaw". This model consists of four steps:

  1. Winning Attention;
  2. Cultivating Basic Concepts;
  3. Enlivening Applicability; and
  4. Making It Real.

However, as Michael points out, this puzzle can be extended to fit complex situations, where different strategies need to be used at different types or with different groups. He also reminds us that this approach can take days or weeks to finalise, but then may take months or years to put into practice. As I said, this isn't a magic formula approach!

I also like the idea of the User Adoption Analyst. Even if this isn't a formal role in your own project, the job description provides some great pointers on the activities that someone in your project should be doing as part of your rollout. I know this because it pretty much reflects my own role in projects I've been involved with in the past, both as a consultant and in my past life at Ernst & Young!

However, it is important to recognise that by covering the breadth of user adoption strategies, this book isn't intended to be an academic report or even a deep management-thinkers text. The essentials of every strategy is covered in terms of what it is, how to use it, when to use it and why it works. In many cases, this should be enough to get you started but of course there is always room to explore the nuances of a particular strategy further or to understand the theory behind it in more detail. I only mention this to manage expectations - no single book can make you an overnight expert. What I mainly like about Michael's book is that he has pulled together a great reference that covers all the major approaches that you should consider.

Its also worth noting that Michael has clearly put a lot of thought into the structure of the book, with the chapters grouped into three main sections:

  • Setting the Scene.
  • The Model and the Strategies.
  • Your Approach to User Adoption.

This is the kind of book that once you've read it, you'll find yourself returning to the core chapters in the The Model and the Strategies section time and time again to sense check your approach and to remind yourself of the most typical approaches you should consider.

Overall, this is another practical book from Michael and I'm happy to recommend it.

Finally, I should give a quick nod of appreciation to Michael for the acknowledgement in Chapter 4, where he quotes the tag line of my blog:

"Its not not about the technology".

BTW I've previously reviewed Michael's earlier book, Seamless Teamwork, over on my old blog.

 

From MIS Australia: Talking change- collaboration technologies

Glenn Archer, Department of Education: Cultural change is the most profound challenge for public servants.
via misaustralia.com

No real surprises in this article, reporting on a series of roundtables held by MIS Australia with local public and private sector CIOs, talking about their experiences with collaboration technologies. It certainly reflects my own experiences with the organisations I've been interacting with this year, particularly in the government sector where my biggest concern is that the importance of internal collaboration hasn't really been debated much in the Gov 2.0 conversation (see Lee Bryant's excellent post that gets to the heart of that problem, for all sectors).

Unfortunately, no real change on the private sector front, although I do detect a little thawing of attitudes towards employee use of social networking and social media. However, its pretty much been the case for the last decade* that some companies get the value of collaboration technologies (like instant messaging, one of the oldest tools in the current collaboration suite) while others will continue to lag behind.

You can view this as a problem, but personally I think it points more to the fact that those that get the value of collaboration technology have the opportunity to use them as part of their competitive advantage. So the real issue is, are they actually getting those advantages from the tools and technologies they've invested in.

Ok. I'm going to say it again... I can't believe we are still having this debate about instant messaging technologies as if it was something new. There - I've done it.

Should government agencies move ahead with social media without a mandate?

Ben - the reality is that many federal government agencies were already making use of social media before the Taskforce was announced. In this respect it is not surprising that many have started to pro-actively address the issue of providing staff with guidelines, but still remaining consistent with current APS policy. Don't forget that the APS policy addressing this area was also updated last year. While it would be good to see a formal response to the Taskforce's report, I don't think this should stop agencies moving ahead. The outcome of the Taskforce will be a decision about a whole of government mandate and supporting infrastructure for engaging online, not determining if agencies should engage at all. That, as we are seeing, is going to happen anyway.
via zdnet.com.au

I thought I would share my comment to a report by Ben Grubb in ZDNet.com.au about various Australian federal agencies moving ahead with developing social media guidelines. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I was reading Ben Grubb's opening point correctly:

Federal Government departments have revealed they are moving ahead to implement social media policies, despite the government having not yet responded to recommendations in the Government 2.0 Taskforce report.

You can read this as both a criticism and also as a matter of fact.

Actually, and as I was involved in writing a guide for government agencies that was commissioned by the Taskforce, I'm more concerned that:

  • Agency staff aren't actually being engaged internally about social media - simply publishing a policy isn't enough; and
  • Agency staff don't have access to the right tools internally to support the level of online engagement that is emerging.

Personally its these issues I worry about and this is where a mandate is needed because words in a policy are cheap, but changing how government and how people within government actually work is another story ("Enterprise 2.0 for Government", if you like).

Three reasons why employees like to keep their own personal email archives

I've been working on a magazine article, looking at the failure of both technologies to replace email in the workplace and corporate email archiving solutions. The main theme is about understanding email from a human-centred perspective rather than simply treating email as 'data' to be managed in the most cost effective way possible. The following didn't quite make the cut in my own final edit, but I thought it might be worth sharing it here.
Over the years I’ve heard various reasons why employees like to keep their own personal email archives and they can be separated into three broad groups:
  1. Journaling - a chronology of what happened when and why;
  2. Personal Library - to record important information for future reference; and
  3. Non-repudiation - keeping copies of who said or did what, in case they need to be used as formal or informal evidence of responsibility.
This break down is based on my experiences over the years of working with organisations either implementing or trying to get more value out of existing collaboration and information management tools.

What is particularly interesting for me is that root cause that drives people to use their electronic mail system for the reasons I've listed above isn't always necessarily the same. For example, in some organisations non-repudiation is important because of particularly toxic office politics. But in other cases, users made a rational decision to keep email because of certain professional responsibilities. The lesson here is that when ever we try to ask people to move away from using email (or at least an over reliance on it), we really need to understand why they using email in a certain way and not just focus on the visible behaviours.

Anyway, what kind of strange email hoarding behaviour have you seen and how does it fit into the categories I've described above?

Photo credit: Mr Popular