Updates from Social Media Workshop 2 (III)

The Challenge of introducing new tools: About attitudes and preferences

Today we received some fundamental questions about social media practices. Getting social media into use is indeed a crucial issue and we got one question about possible ways to achieve staff adoption and involvement. I wrote this contribution with inout from Nancy White for the workshop and I am sharing it here:

In order to engage staff into social media it is important to take into account different learning styles and preferences in the way people make choices:

Learning a new tool is often not that simple:

• Some enjoy tips and trick conversations within a group.
• Some learn alone, and click themselves through the pages jungle.
• Some might need some coaching, sitting down and go through the step-by-step approach.

The workshop for example combines the first two aspects. The virtual environment isn’t necessarily the best one for the hands-on part. But it is definitively a tip for you whenever you have a chance to do it to try to sit down with someone who knows and ask this person to guide you through a tool with the computer in front of you.

Also, being exposed to new tools generates feelings of:

• Resistance to spend time exploring it.
• Fear of not being able to understand how it works.
• Worry of liking it so much that we need to re-organize our way of working, get team members convinced and start a new adoption cycle.
• Doubts of loosing focus and putting the tools first instead of the people.

When it is about making choices we are often overwhelmed by the so many possibilities. It’s just like buying a pair of shoes:

• Some are impulsive, go and focus on one pair of shoes and just buy it.
• Some are hesitating and try out everything available in their size.
• Some are systematic and look mainly at the prize and make a pre-selection.
• Some know exactly what they need and buy the one pair that fits their need.

Making a choice about a tool and introducing it in an organization can certainly be far more complex then buying a pair of shoes. What I want to highlight is that we need to be aware of those preferences and be prepared for an adoption pathway in zigzag. (Nancy White once told me after I shared my frustration to get a blog adopted that it takes 7 times, 7 attempts to get it right.)

Finally it is about making a tool trendy, because when people follow a trend they overcome fears, doubts, and worries more easily to follow the crowd (for the girls in this workshop: I am sure all of us have at some point bought the most uncomfortable pair of shoes to be trendy…).

Here are some tips to make your tool trendy:

• Try to find a champion in your organization or team.
• Create a core group around you and the champion to then enlarge the user group progressively.
• Keep using the tool for a while even if it is not adopted immediately or used.
• Experiment with the many features of the tool.
• Try to find a community of likeminded to share your doubts, and experiences (the KM4dev one is a good starting point).
• Invite external “experts”. For some reason organizations tend to trust them more than their own staff 
• Find entry points for launching the tool (like an event, a workshop).
• Believe in what you do and don’t be afraid of insisting in your views (and that is the tuffest part for many of us).

Photo Credit: Hubspot

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