The Social Software Grassroots Myth

signed!

And then there’s the whole tying social software to real business outcomes thing and getting your executives to buy in and fund that sucker.. Good technology is the enabler, yes, but the harder part is getting that top-down communication to coincide with the bottom-up viral spread.

Who are you talking to that still thinks viral is the ONLY way enterprises will truly adopt social software? I thought those days were over (which, I suppose is your whole point.

Well said, Gia! That’s exactly my point. As the social software category matures, there’s growing evidence of the limitations of the Grassroots approach to tech implementation. But it astonishes me how many “Joe the Plumber” Grassroots stories are still being presented as best practice.

The Joe story is less harmful than the “don’t bother Joe, IT will get to it eventually” story.

If no Joe ever tries to get something going, than it will probably be that much longer before IT considers the possibility.

If no Joe ever tries and fails, then when IT gets around to selecting a system, the decision will come down to the colors in the brochure (or, rather, the quality of the steaks and hookers).

Yay Joe!

IMO the best chance of “grass roots” success is what you allude to — bringing together a community around a shared interest. In past lives I’ve used social tools for to for competitive intelligence and better yet around deals. Bringing together sales leads, SME’s, architects, product marketing etc. to support a deal. Social tools are a great method of curating and sharing information.

It’s an “ok” argument. I think you’re setting up an extreme straw-man argument. I find few organizations or strategists arguing that the “only” way to do this is a grassroots approach. But if you look at the history of collaboration and social software – there have been a series of examples where vendors have been successful with a bottom-up approach. Lotus Notes (despite some top-down examples) was mostly a localized, bottom-up adoption model. Windows SharePoint Server is a classic example of a bottom-up approach. Even web conferencing was often a grassroots movement where business people or departments made localized decisions to use Placeware, WebEx (disclosure, I now work for Cisco), and other tools. IM is another example where employees used consumer IM at the grassroots level. I could go on…

You’re point overall is one I agree with – a platform approach is often where things end up as we balance the desire to reduce infrastructure complexity, gain operational efficiencies, etc while at the same time deliver a repeatable framework for business applications/solutions. I just think you went a little over-the-top in demonizing a grassroots approach which – if you talk to KM/community-building strategists – can indeed be a very effective approach in certain contexts and situations. It’s one tactic to keep handy – not the only one. As Gia points out, it’s not so black-and-white – you need to balance bottom-up with top-down.

These are very thoughtful points, Mike. Thank you. And I certainly agree with you (and with Bill Seitz above) that the Joes of this world can be instrumental in prodding their organizations to do the right thing.

I wholeheartedly agree that social software and the environments they create need BOTH vocal top down support and some serious bottom up energy/interest to be successful at the enterprise-wide level. You can’t take advantage of the full opportunity without a common infrastructure but you can also fall completely flat without some bottom-up interest. In fact, if I could only select one, I think I would still choose the bottom-up energy. To me, the fallacy in your tale is that there is only one Joe because you are right… if Joe is out there on his own or there is only one Joe in each business group, you will have islands.

As a knee jerk “bottoms-up”per, I’d request more clarity about whom you’re addressing.

You may be saying: “senior managers, don’t rely on the Joes to drive innovation in your IT infrastructure”. Great.

You’re definitely saying: “Joe (and senior managers): once the IT infrastructure is in place, bottoms-up innovation of content is vital and to be encouraged”. Great again.

But if you’re saying: “Joe, in the absence of IT infrastructure innovation, sit on your hands”, I’d sharply disagree. As noted with web conferencing, it’s precisely the Joes that drove pcs (long ago) into the corporation, and I’m glad they did.

Bonus post by Joel Spolsky on what a lowly programmer can do to bring modern tools and practices to her sadly benighted software development shop: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html

Thanks for your post. I would agree with other that have posted here that it is really a combination of both. With Top-Down support it clearly gets everyone’s attention…at the same time you need Bottom-Up support to ensure that people are using these tools and integrating them into their workflow.

What is an interesting area to explore is WHY these grassroots stories continue to emerge. For me it is an indication that IT is not close enough to their customers to hear what the pain points are for how they struggle with company wide communication and collaboration. IT needs to transform themselves and how they engage with their customers, truly embrace the core elements of community and figure out how they listen and deliver what their customers need to be successful. This is a a way for IT to truly emerge as the hero and truly drive change within an organization.

Mike, that’s beautifully said. We’re seeing IT step up to play that role in more and more organizations, but it has taken some time. The other comments on this post also bear out the level of frustration that some folks are still feeling.

I think there’s some merit in this, but it be presented in a bit of a one-sided fashion which doesn’t present the possibility of another, more positive, outcome.

Plaudits to Joe for taking some initiative. And there remains risk in an environment where Joe is the sole champion of collaboration software. Somewhere around the point where the meetings get postponed is where I think Joe’s employer missed a trick. The success of the teams using the tools should’ve been an massive indicator to the organisation that there was a burning platform for change and, at that point, the leadership should’ve picked this up and got involved, escalating it to a change initiative like any other (i.e. requirements driven from the center to avoid some of the pitfalls you talk about). Perhaps Joe’s reward for his initiative could be a move into the project team or acting as project champion.

Sure, the risks you point out with grassroots sourced software are relevant. But they shouldn’t act as an inhibitor to people “on the ground” taking initiative for bringing innovation into the business. The organisation, and its leadership, needs to be flexible and observant enough to recognise what the adoption of grassroots software is a symptom of and address the causes accordingly.