That’s the plan. We’ll order people to blog. We’ll threaten them with dismissal if they don’t. Start blogging…. or you’re FIRED!

OK… perhaps another approach.

Suw Charman has written a fantastic article entitled: “An adoption strategy for social software in enterprise“. If you are thinking about deploying an enterprise blogging tool or an enterprise Wiki, reading this article will be well worth your time.

For me, the most powerful part of the article was right at the beginning. Suw says:

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time - people become convinced of the tools’ usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad-hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

Top-down instruction may seem more appropriate in some environments, but may not be effective in the long-term as if the team leader stops actively making subordinates use the software, they may naturally give up if they have not become convinced of its usefulness. Bottom-up adoption taps into social incentives for contribution and fosters a culture of working openly that has greater strategic benefits.

The challenge in many institutions is getting management to realize the importance of the bottom up approach.

If you are a senior executive and if you want to generate innovation, if you want to get the most out of these new social software tools, you cannot rely solely on direct command and control approach to management.

No one ordered Einstein to come up with E=MC².

Direct management tools need to be replaced with oblique tools, much like a central banker guides an economy by adjusting an interest rate.

What kinds of tools are needed to reap the rewards of social software?

They are the same tools that compel people to work hard in any social setting. You can play to their egos, give credit where credit is due and allow people to take ownership and responsibility.

Practically what does this mean? Don’t over engineer the blogging or wiki solution. Give people a general framework, but let use of the social software tools grow and evolve from there.

Quoting Wikipedia’s article on Theory X and Theory Y, you need to assume “employees are ambitious, self-motivated, anxious to accept greater responsibility, and exercise self-control and self-direction”.