Comments on: Choice matters.

By: Connected - Pass the flour, please

Connected - Pass the flour, please — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:02:29 +0000

[...] existing usability.” This is ultra-important for social and collaboration software, because people can choose not to use it. How can a restaurant stay successful if nobody eats their cooking? SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: [...]

By: admin

admin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:17:19 +0000

Agreed, Richard. My kind of carrot is, “You mean I don’t have to fill out status reports anymore? You can just see what tasks I’ve completed, plus all my other work, right there in the social environment? I am so there.”… or… “Hell yes, I want fewer emails! I’ll be happy to ‘live’ in a Q&A forum, and write up some wiki pages in that same space.” … or… “You mean I wouldn’t have to train every new sales rep personally anymore? I could just advise them on and off, and direct them to the social environment to watch the right people and topics? Sign me up.”

By: Richard Fahey

Richard Fahey — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:02:02 +0000

@6 A colleague recently wanted to send out an email to thousands of people asking them to join a new internal community. They were going to say they would give prizes to the top contributors after a few weeks. Once I heard of this I asked them to change it. At the end, we compromised and they said they would award prizes (e.g. ipods etc) to a random selection of participants in the community. I actually have an issue with rewards in general. Rewards and punishments are 2 sides of the same coin. They are both very effective at producing compliance

I feel with a carrot you are saying it is inherently desirable to give a reward, that people ought to get something for what they contribute quite apart from the consequences this may bring. In a collaborative environment where everyones input together results in the creation of a knowledge repository i.e. individual achievement typically is built on the work of other people’s earlier efforts, who “deserves” the reward when lots of people had a hand in the performance? I feel we should not treat people like pets and try to implement behaviour modification programs within social environments.

People should participate because of the 3 Cs. These are:
Content – The social environment has content which people want to engage with and contribute to
Collaboration – We are social creatures and like to join in discussions and meet others.
Choice – The more people feel part of a process, the more their point of view is solicited, and they more choice they have over their participation, the more likely they will contribute.

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:49:13 +0000

@8 Sid, I think you just encapsulated my point. The software needs to be usable enough to become a non-issue.

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:55:24 +0000

@7 You *know* it always comes down to poop with me.

By: Sid

Sid — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:54:57 +0000

So, what happens if you really really want to use social software but the tool your Enterprise has gone for sucks (read SharePoint)? Buy a bigger bag of carrots?

By: troyjen

troyjen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:41:28 +0000

Gia, so you seem to have settled on a “crappy” theme for the day

By: Gia Lyons

Gia Lyons — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:43:28 +0000

@3 Richard, what if a carrot is to get one-off questions out of email and into a public discussion forum? If I were an SME, that would be a big carrot for me. But, I agree: reward systems need to change to encourage social behavior.

@4 Troy, agreed. But, you can fertilize the grassroots effort, I’m thinking. Just need to find the right shit.

@5 Ruth, yes! In fact, what you describe is what Jive’s roadmap reflects (soon to be made public). Create “one” environment – with proper controls, of course – that enables an extended enterprise (employees, customers, potential customers, business partners, former employees, etc.) to interact.

By: Ruth Kaufman

Ruth Kaufman — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:22:55 +0000

Another factor in a person’s choice about which social environments to use is who else is using the environments in question. Enterprise environments are usually (always?) behind the firewall, and while there may be ways to give access to clients and partners, there’s often process overhead and time lag in doing so… and these visiting or honorary members are probably not as invested in using the environment as the employees, who are natives.

Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, people may work for an enterprise, but their professional networks span institutions. We need social environments that let us interact with our choice of people, whomever their employer. Note our collective use of Twitter, for example. I wonder if there’s already a demand for this sort of public social environment with more security and accountability — e.g., an offering from an industry association to meet the social needs of an industry vertical.

By: troyjen

troyjen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:57:45 +0000

Personal opinion – forcing Social Networking is akin to forcing a confession. The final content you get out of such activities will mostly be false, contrived, and just not all that useful.

The other piece of it is that I consider it to be much more of a bottoms up media, than a tops down. You can’t force a grass roots effort.