I talked with a Jive Clearspace customer last week about adoption struggles (I get to do this for a living now, and frankly, I’m in my dream job). They have what I think is probably a very typical adoption obstacle. Actually, two very typical obstacles.

The first one was a theme at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston in June 2008. The CEO loves social software, worker bees are adopting it like crazy, but mid-level managers are having what-the-hell moments, because they weren’t properly introduced to the business benefits of social software. They’re putting a stop to all this “social nonsense” until they get a better handle on it.

My advice: Figure out what gives them ulcers at night. Maybe it’s, “how do I meet my management chain’s objectives?” Then, figure out how to explain how your social software solution will help them achieve those objectives better, faster, smarter. For example, one of our customers tied their Jive Clearspace ROI to making critical business processes more efficient (requires registration). Discussing this with mid-level managers who care about more efficient critical business processes would probably be quite effective.

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The second obstacle was that a few of the strategic pilot groups were approaching the new Clearspace experience from an old file-centric SharePoint paradigm. “Is this where we put our files now?” The result was a repeat of old file folder hierarchies, which, of course, doesn’t promote cross-enterprise conversations. Note that at this company, constantly increasing efficiency is critical.

So, we talked about the following good practices:

Show how they’re doing their work now, and point out any inefficiencies. These folks would send an Excel spreadsheet around via email. Each person would then upload their modified version into individual SharePoint folders, then someone would consolidate them all into a single file again. (I know! OMG!)

Show how your social software solution replaces that behavior, while making them more efficient in the process. Folks can co-edit a rich table within a Clearspace page, with complete versioning and rollback capabilities. They can create author comments and general user comments to capture the collaborative conversations about the data, and even create some team projects, tasks, or even a blog to capture status reports or the like. The idea is to do the, “and that’s not all!” pitch, once you’ve neutralized the Old Way Of Doing Things.

Address the Fear of Sharing Too Soon. This is the harder, and most critical part. In most organizations, people don’t “put their stuff out there” until it’s pretty much done. All the conversations and collaboration happens before they share, via emails, IMs, phone calls, and in-person meetings.

Here’s the problem: many folks don’t WANT to share their stuff until it’s pretty much done.

• “My colleagues and my manager will think I’m a doofus if I put something half-baked out there!”
• “I don’t want anyone stealing my half-baked idea, fleshing it out and taking credit for it.”

My advice? Implement a slow behavior migration. Give those people a private, secure space or group to share their half-baked stuff so that REAL collaboration can take place. The end result won’t be an individual contribution, of course, so help them understand the meaning of co-ownership. Once they’re comfy co-baking with the people they already trust, encourage them to open those private spaces up to more people, or perhaps make them public to the organization, if appropriate.

You’re on a conference call. You’re “multitasking” – the word we all use to describe all the work we’re doing while the blah blah blah is going on over the phone.

Your attention is precious.

What kind of things would you want to see in your online experience throughout the day? Check out Sam’s The 5 Futures of Attention for some ideas…

A customer once told me they needed to get Super Awesome Highly Visible Group involved in their pilot social software environment, so that Guy Who Could Pay For The Whole Thing With a Wave of His Big Toe would see their success and haul out his checkbook. And then, of course, everyone else would want a piece of that social experience.

This reminded me of high school. Whatever the popular kids were wearing, doing, and saying, the rest of us would try to mimic. Classic The Tipping Point fare (I actually wore Hush Puppies in high school in the mid-80s. Omigod, you should’ve seen my hair).

So, who are the popular kids where you work, the ones with a bunch of organizational power? Maybe they’re the ones who bring in the most revenue. Maybe they’re so strategic to the company that if they all got hit by a bus tomorrow, your stock price would faint. You know who they are.

If you’re the woman responsible for a successful social software pilot, figure out how to romance that popular jock. Figure out the answer to, “What’s in it for me?” for them. Explain how your chosen social software solution can solve one of their current problems. If you can get them into your pilot, and it actually does help solve that problem, then poof! You’ve got the best case study you could possibly have. Use it to advertise the wonderment of your social software pilot to the rest of your organization, most especially that guy with the powerful big toe.

I want to know something.

Is your company’s IT department in tune with your business divisions? Do they play nice together? Do they work together to achieve whateverthehell is needed? I have found examples of this, like @curiousmitch‘s place of work.

Or, if this isn’t the case, are there one or two secret agents who duck the radar and grease whatever wheels are stuck in order to make it possible for IT and Business to git ‘er done?

Same question, different departments: Sales and Marketing. Or, Marketing and Engineering. Or Communications and HR.

Is there an entire army of enterprise secret agents who don’t know one another exists, perhaps? Maybe they should form an Illuminati-like society, get tattoos and hold secret ceremonies where they sacrifice small kitchen appliances or viral YouTube videos or CAD drawings to appease the Department Gawds.

Secret Agent, I salute you. I won’t blow your cover. But please, tell me your secrets.

Something my pal JD successfully hammered into my head last week caused a lightbulb moment.

Employees can choose not to use enterprise social environments.

Do you have a customer relationship management (CRM), procurement, portal, or other software you are forced – yes, forced – to use by your company? Me too. I have no choice. But when it comes to social networking and collaborative applications, there’s no “force” about it. I can choose to use it or not.

This means that the traditional way of implementing “you gotta use this” software doesn’t really work with social enterprise solutions.

So, what does work? Think about the things you use in your life that you don’t really need to use, but want to use. It’s all the things that you could live without if you had to. And I’m not talking about choosing a less expensive model of something you consider a necessity (e.g., selecting a discount diaper bag over a Coach diaper bag – a mom’s gotta have a diaper bag).

Why do you use those things? You get some kind of personal satisfaction out of them. Can you say that for your company’s CRM or procurement applications? The authors of Groundswell refer to one type of this personal satisfaction as psychic income.

I wish I had a magic answer for my customers about what kinds of things constitute personal satisfaction for everyone in their organizations, but then I’d just sound like a dumb software vendor wonk. Instead, I’d rather spend time with my customers to help them figure it out. Because one person’s satisfaction is another’s irritation.