At the time in 2006, I was leading a team responsible for our global email system and also participating in projects for our global intranet.  The intranet is the outgrowth of a high-level effort to re-engineer core business processes for a network of global non-profits, and then provide web applications to facilitate those processes.  On the other side was email, the default communication tool for these folks worldwide.  As I looked at our systems and processes, I saw a big hole.  The intranet was designed to support standardized business processes.  However, we had no effective way to discuss how to fix these various processes other than email and face-to-face meetings, and email was failing us miserably.  I went looking for ideas and came away with a bundle.

I still remember attending Andrew McAfee’s presentation on Enterprise 2.0 and the paper he had just published in MIT Sloan Management Review. His work provided the conceptual framework for explaining E2.0 to my colleagues, and it has been a huge help.  Along with information from vendors, I was able to go back and propose E2.0 components for our intranet that are now up and working.  More on that story in a later post.

Fast forward to 2009 and the #e2conf.  Why did I go?  I sensed we had reached a certain plateau in our E2.0 efforts.  The wiki component of our intranet is the most used component of the system (thanks, Atlassian!).  We are seeing positive organizational changes and new ways of working, but are still hearing from people frustrated with the intranet and finding it hard to use overall.  I and others realized that changing organizational culture isn’t a point-in-time event but a process that requires time and energy helping people learn to adopt new ways of working.  I needed some more help and ideas.

What I came away with surprised me.  I thought I would find some new technology or strategies that would help us.  Instead, what I found most valuable were the connections with some fascinating people doing some really cool and innovative things.  I did come away with some key concepts that I’ll describe below, but there was nothing “new” that was totally unfamiliar to me in an E2.0 deployment.  The fact that others are dealing with similar issues that we are was comforting, and now my network is broader and deeper than it was before.

The case studies, particularly from Booz Allen Hamilton on their Hello system, and Lockheed-Martin on their social networking application both touched on important points that we have seen in our own situation.  Here are those key concepts:

• Focus on People, not Technology: The Enterprise 2.0 ideas are more about people and organizational culture than about technology.  While everyone acknowledged that technology is important, ultimately organizations are built around people needing to accomplish business goals. Selling technology to do blogs, wikis, or other social networking won’t get very far in an organization.  Demonstrating improved communication and performance for people and teams will.  Several presentations demonstrated putting people, and the connections between people, as the central focus of their E2.0 system, not tasks, documents or news.  This idea is one I want our team to review.
• Focus on Adoption, not Deployment: Again in the people-centric vein, the clear encouragement from the conference was not to measure success by how many systems are deployed but on how people are actually using them.  Several presenters talked about metrics on adoption and the challenge of measuring ROI.  ”If you build it, they will come” isn’t usually true, especially within an organization.  People need help to learn new systems and find their way around new technologies, and especially in understanding the new social norms of using them.  While measuring ROI may be hard, make sure the focus is on real people doing real work and benefitting from the technology.
• Focus on Usability, not Features:  Another key point was usability.  People don’t want lots of features, they want tools that help them and that are easy to learn and to use.  This point also brings us back to the people-centered solution.  Long gone are the days when the solution with the most features wins, and yet us techies can be attracted by cool features (or perhaps more significantly, some major stakeholder on the project). In our own system, usability is a major complaint and one that we are working hard to address.  Unfortunately, the bar is high with lots of free Web 2.0 solutions out there that are simple and work great.  ”If Google/Wordpress/Twitter/??? can make it easy to use, why can’t you?” That’s not an easy question to answer.

Another new experience for me was Twitter.  I set up an account some months ago but didn’t do much with it because I didn’t see a clear benefit.  At the conference, Twitter was a core part of the communications during the sessions.  Each session had its own hash tag, and the conference itself used the #e2conf hashtag for general postings.  I got Tweetdeck for my iPhone and was happily following the back channel.  Then I began making a few posts myself, and suddenly people started following me.  OK, now what do I do??  I had to grok the RT’s, DM’s and @replies quickly.  In doing so I was reminded again of the emotional hurdles it takes to adopt new ways of social networking (and not just because of technology).  The initial awkwardness I felt in trying to learn Twitter is the exact same that others feel trying to learn and use the tools we’re developing internally.  It was a good reminder.  My background includes training in anthropology, and participant observation is one of the skills we learned. I find myself observing what others are doing and imitating the ones who seem to be successful, but still the feelings of awkwardness come. I need to remember this part of the adoption process.

Even starting this blog “in public” feels like a big step, just as it did when I started using our internal wiki and wrote a report “out in the open” for others to see. Now at least I have connected to a group of folks doing similar work and hopefully my contribution will help with the larger discussion.

We’ll see…