Carol Rozwell

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Carol Rozwell
VP Distinguished Analyst
11 years at Gartner
21 years IT industry

Carol Rozwell is a vice president and distinguished analyst on Gartner's Content, Collaboration and Social team. Ms. Rozwell explores social business strategy, including social media, social networks and collaborative communities. Read Full Bio

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Economists measure productivity – people measure progress

by Carol Rozwell  |  October 6, 2010  |  3 Comments

Because social software is – well – social, its usefulness increases as more people invoke it to organize information, share expertise and interact with colleagues. This means that getting a critical mass of people in a workgroup using social software tools is – well – critical. Yet many social software evangelists describe the value of these technologies in vague terms such as “productive” (as in “social software will make people more productive”) and “collaborative” (as in “social software will make our organization more collaborative”).

It’s great that there are pioneers willing to socialize the concept of how social software helps workers get their work done. However, if you believe that humans are always assessing the WIIFM angle of any new tool, then a more emotional description of value is needed. Telling me that social software will make me more productive doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t compel me to change my ways.

When I think of how social software tools can help me in my work, I equate value with the ability to do three things:

  • Make a dent in my work. I have no illusions about getting everything done before I leave for the day, there is just too much on the docket. But I do want to feel like I made progress on projects and assignments.
  • Do good quality work. I want to be proud of my deliverables, the work I do in general and the interactions I have with colleagues.
  • Leave to have dinner with my family at a reasonable hour. We all work long hours sometimes even sacrifice vacation time to get things done. It’s nice when social tools win us back some time each day.

This is my list of WIIFM. It’s important that social software proponents and project leaders make sure they answer the WIIFM question for their worker community.

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  • 1 Tweets that mention Economists measure productivity – people measure progress -- Topsy.com   October 6, 2010 at 5:44 pm

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  • 2 Roger Bottum   October 12, 2010 at 5:42 pm

    Carol

    Rght on, though perhaps your mainly speaking to the users of the technology, not the financial buyers?

    We saw similar issue in some research a division did 2 years ago. My favorite quote from which is “My team is producing twice as many proposals, at higher quality, but for the first time I got to see my son’s baseball games.”

    Conversely though, while team morale is a secondary message to our business buyers, they still vote with their dollars on increased revenue through increased productivity.

    Roger

  • 3 Carol Rozwell   October 13, 2010 at 5:28 am

    Roger, thanks for your sharing your experience. You mention a key point, that people who approve collaboration projects are typically looking for the $$ return. So sellers have to appeal to that motivation when they pitch their solutions. But achieving critical mass of adoption requires attention to the emotional side of how people work.

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