Craig Roth

In my posting How a Collaboration Technology Gets Adopted I described a storyline of how a collaboration technology goes from purchasing through adoption (and beyond to value).  That technology could be social networking, SharePoint, an intranet, or a portal – I’ve seen the same pattern with all of them.  There are 3 paths for what could happen: “adoption”, “spotty adoption”, and “non-adoption” (see red highlight in pic below). If the technology is getting used everywhere, great!  If it’s a failure, ditch it.  But it’s that middle one – spotty adoption – that’s so difficult to deal with.  Why is it tricky?

First, it’s easy to miss the fact that adoption is spotty.  It takes some research to tell you that there are black holes on the org chart that rarely use it and then interviewing to find out why.  Aggregate usage stats or packed monthly community meetings won’t tell you.

Second, the technology can look like a raging success since the areas where it’s happily used speak louder than those where it’s absent.  Spotty adoption means you do have real fans, departments that have totally adopted it, and several real anecdotes where it has provided hard value.  And the areas of the business, roles, or processes that haven’t adopted it aren’t complaining – they just silently go about their business without the technology.  But anecdotal success doesn’t equal real success.  Only by a more thorough canvassing of the business can the technology owner determine which parts of the organization could derive the most value from the technology and then compare where it’s being used against that list.

Third, it’s tough to know what to do if it is spotty.  Is it worth the extra effort to do a more formal push like training, an awareness campaign, or door-to-door evangelism?  Are there some enhancements required to pull in the additional audience and what will they cost?  Quite often, the spotty usage and anecdotal success is just enough to justify staying on the current path.  It is difficult to make the argument that mediocre success is not good enough and to double down on the investment.  It’s easier to coast along and hope that the next, ballyhooed release of the software energizes those non-adopters for you.  Don’t count on vendors to solve your adoption problems.

In summary, it’s great that you’ve rolled a collaboration technology out and it’s proven it can add value to some real fans.  But, as I wrote in my posting on Getting to the Second Value Tier for SharePoint, getting to the second tier of value requires a different approach that puts the focus back on prioritization instead of just rolling it out and being happy with whoever shows up to use it.

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