The four levels of organizational support

One of the earliest detectives in the annals of literary fiction is Monsieur Jackal, a creation of the French writer Alexandre Dumas in the mid-19th century. M. Jackal had a favorite saying: "Cherchez la femme!" [i.e. "look for the woman"] - which is not to say that women are the criminals, but rather, he believed that in any crime of passion or Big Trouble, a woman could be found to be somehow at the bottom of it. (Please put the flame-throwers away, these are M. Jackal's thoughts, not mine.)

In much the same way, whenever discussion turns to the subject of corporate behavior (e.g. say, user adoption), one slightly-mangled phrase invariably leaps to my mind: "Cherchez l'incentive!" [or, more properly, "cherchez l'incitation!"]. In my experience, a majority of the behavior in corporate life, whether by individuals or by teams, can be explained by the incentives in place. I use the term "incentive" in its broader sense - incentives can be positive or negative, planned or unintended, serious or silly, monetary, social or moral. (For a fascinating discussion about the unintended consequences of incentives, I highly recommend the Levitt and Dubner book, "Freakonomics"!)

What does this have to do with Enterprise 2.0? There has been a flurry of blog posts this week about the different management approaches for addressing 2.0-style initiatives in the Enterprise. The discussion was kicked off by a simple and interesting post by Euan Semple: "The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?". In a testament to the thought-provoking power of Euan's writing, this post was picked up, dissected and commented upon by a variety of high-powered blogs, including: Tim O'Reilly, Andrew McAfee, Dennis Howlett, Dion Hinchcliffe, the 21st Century Organization, Ross Dawson, Dave Snowden, The Fast Forward blog , and others ... (a veritable who's who of thought-leaders for Enterprise 2.0!)

In essence, Euan suggested that corporations could take one of three approaches to address Enterprise 2.0 principles and tools:

1. Do Nothing
2. Get out of the way
3. Keep the energy levels up

While I agree with Euan's main points, and appreciate the beautiful simplicity of his post, it seems slightly incomplete to me. In terms of organizational response in the real world, there is a fourth possible outcome, although it's rarely a deliberate strategy: entities within an enterprise, whether high-level managers, end users or teams, could actively resist the introduction and uptake of these new Web 2.0-ish tools, such as by creating policies against it. Managers and users, even those who otherwise happily use Web 2.0 technologies at home, might nonetheless try to block them at work, for a variety of reasons. Different individuals have different incentives, and not everyone's incentives are aligned with each other or with those of the company as a whole! [If this seems unduly pessimistic, then I can only say that it is borne out by experiences I've had in some of the work environments I've had the (mis)fortune of working in.] To some extent, this view follows the thoughts of Andrew McAfee on this subject, here and here, if I understand correctly what he's saying. I've also written in a previous post about reasons why IT may introduce barriers to the introduction of new technology in the Enterprise.

Clearly, this is not true for all companies. Certainly there are the innovators and fast-followers who rapidly embrace new technologies; my position is simply that, at the other end of the continuum, there are also companies with managers and entrenched employees who may actively obstruct their introduction. If the number of such companies is non-trivial, then it should certainly be a concern to the champions of Enterprise 2.0, and should be addressed as such.

To put it visually, I see reactions to the new directions of E2.0 as classified into four types, as shown in the diagram below:

It is that first type [the "obstructionist" enterprise?] that interests me. What types of incentives can be put in place by top managers to minimize this type of behavior, that raises a barrier to the adoption of new technologies? Wide-scale user adoption is impossible without that barrier being overcome; without significant user adoption, even highly promising new technologies die still-born.

I hope we see more discussion about this topic from the above-mentioned blogs, the thought-leaders of Enterprise 2.0!

P.S. On a related note, I started thinking about the following question: If we were to plot a graph of the "Ease of user adoption" against the continuum of the four types shown above, what would the curve of such a graph look like? My guess at this curve, using a highly scientific method (I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it into being), is shown below.

As shown above, my feeling is that the maximum gain comes from getting out of the way! Would you agree or disagree? I welcome more informed feedback on this topic.

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Comments

[Daniel Siddle]

Looking at your curve made me think that it probably depends on the stage your at when it comes to adopting Enterprise 2.0 technologies. I'd say in the early stages you need to push it quite hard to get the message out there that these tools could offer some value. You need to plant the seed in the minds of the people who will possibly use them. Once that's done you'll then definitely need to get out of the way to discover the real value of the tools. You need to sit back and let the tool either live or die in the real world. If it dies, great. Learn something from it and move on. If it lives and gathers momentum then you won't be able to sit back and do nothing but you will need to stay out of the way so that you don't end up forcing users down a path they don't want to go.

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