Last week I had the pleasure to visit EMC and check out their internal EMC One Enterprise 2.0 communities. I wrote about it here. I just wanted to follow up with a little more information. Over the weekend I met with a few friends who work at EMC and asked them about EMC One. I’ll categorize the responses into two groups.
One group expressed that they use the EMC One communities, and they found them very productive and helpful. In one case — surprisingly helpful. The general feeling from this group was very positive. They were happy that EMC One is available for them to use and leverage to get their work done in a productive manner.
The other group said that they have not even had a chance to take a look at EMC One. They are simply too busy. Two told me that they just don’t have the time to be too social. I’m not sure how to describe it in one word: indifferent? distant? It was not exactly negative. But there was some tension in their words. I got the sense that they were unsure about the expectation on the part of EMC — both at the corporate level, and more importantly at the level of their immediate supervisor — regarding their participation. Their response indicated to me that they were not sure if they should be using EMC One or not.
This came to no surprise to me. It’s quite typical of the transformation process towards a successfully integrated collaborative culture that leverages E2.0 tools. Some employees will be early adopters, some will lag behind. I’m reminded of Geoff Moore’s Crossing the Chasm curve — which describes the adoption pattern, and most importantly, that there is a gap between the early adopters and the early mainstream. From what I could tell based on the conversation, the first group I spoke to were in the Early Majority, and the second were either in the Late Majority or the Laggards.
So what happens when you run into someone who is in the Late Majority or Laggards part of the curve? The Late Majority folks need to know that participation in an internal community is not only allowed, but in many cases expected. My response to one friend who told me he was too busy working was “maybe if you leveraged the conversation with other co-workers you could get more done, and you would not feel so busy?” Is he the only person in the entire company who can solve the problems he faces? Is there no one who could help him? I can’t say for certain, after all, I’m just a friend, and I don’t know what he really does there. But to comment that he does not have time to be too social — well, this really indicated the need to shift mindset.
E2.0 is not about being social and friendly, though it helps. Internal communities are focused on work. Companies spend money to create these internal communities, and they do this so that employees share knowledge to help the company gain advantage. Why pass up the opportunity to use a tool that should help you in your career? Every community manager I have ever spoken to gets this point. But many of the Late Majority and Laggards don’t. My advice to the community managers — get the managers, thought leaders, and departmental heros into the community. Get them to use the community, to participate in it. Talking about it is not enough. Others will follow the behaviors of successful employees, at least enough will.
As for the Laggards, I remember the wise advice of a mentor of mine when he told me “In business, you don’t have to wait for everyone to get on the bus. It will be too late. Just make sure you get the right people aboard, and you can take off.”
E2.0 professionals need to get a handle on the barriers to adoption. My casual conversation just hinted at some of the issues. However, we’re going to have to catalog and characterize these barriers so that we can start to deal with them in effective ways. I plan on sharing more anecdotes of E2.0 barriers in this blog, and over time we’ll develop a better perspective on the many issues and potential resolutions. But I’ll need your help too.
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