How to get social media tools to work in an organization

In following-up on the Office2.0 conference, I just remembered that I neglected to link to Chris Matthew’s excellent write up on one of the better blogs/wikis sessions. Chris rounds up of some of the tips and advice that were shared for how to encourage traction of the existing tools like wiki’s and blogs within the enterprise. These notes stem from the learning that simply giving users a blank page to start with is not likely to be sufficient to gain traction with these new tools. example tips:

Adoption tricks

1. Leave obvious errrrors in wikis, and then let people fix them. They’ll immediately see how it works.
2. Corporate blogs can grow fast if you hold content contests. Ask for anything, and then let the good stuff bubble up. And let the good stuff be determined by the users.
3. Find the connectors and experts in your office and get them involved. Think of the people that have networks within the company, and who are often consulted voluntarily.

One thing though, I believe chris may have gotten backwards however was his first sentence implying that social media reduces tacit interactions. In fact, I believe the value proposition for social media not about reducing, but rather accelerating and enabling more powerful tacit interactions. Tacit work is defined as all those decisions and actions that rely on experience, judgment and context rather than simple procedure or routine.

As more and more routine work in business is automated or outsourced, tacit work is becoming an ever larger and more important proportion of average daily working activity. Furthermore, I’d argue that the efficiency and execution of these tacit interactions become increasingly key to the competitiveness of both individual employees and the firm is a whole — and this is where “social” media has the greatest potential to be transformative to enterprise.

More on this topic of Enterprise2.0 and Tacit interactions to come…

meanwhile read chris’ post here