Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an ESN #WOL #ESN
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Peter Staal
A lot of the effort of communitmanagement goes into converting lurkers to regulars/leaders/active members. Even Working Out Loud is aimed at coverting a lot (if not all) of the employees to become contributors. In the words of John Stepper: "Those contributions - sharing work that can be helpful to others - are what the other 99% will be seeing. That social proof will help other people know what to do, and motivate yet more people to join circles, so the 1% becomes 2%, then 3%. (One company approaching their 100th Circle observed how Circle participants were using their social intranet: “Many of them we hadn’t seen before.”)" Source: http://workingoutloud.com/blog//leveraging-the-1-rule But is it possible at all to get a majority of people contributing to an esn/community? Or is it wasted time and energy to focus on lurkers and should we only focus on active participants? A discussion I had with Stan Garfield got me wondering (https://twitter.com/stangarfield/status/853988444170801152). Curious what you all think?
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dennis.pearce@...
I tried doing broad-based training to increase adoption in my ESN but pretty much gave up on that approach. Now I mostly do focused training with groups, teams, and departments based specifically on what they want to accomplish rather than "this is better!". It's often hard for an individual to just arbitrarily change the way they're working, but if a team or department does it all together they in essence are making a commitment to each other and therefore tend to reinforce each other's behavior.
Unfortunately it's not as scalable an approach for a large organization as more standard training, but given my choices seem to be scalable ineffective approach vs. non-scalable effective approach, I've opted for the latter. Also, I could go down a rabbit hole spending hours discussing what "adoption" and "participation" mean in these kinds of discussions, because people often throw these terms around without really having common definitions. I think sometimes people confuse "community" with "platform" when thinking about the 90-9-1 rule. For example, we use our ESN platform for team collaboration, for Q&A support of internal processes, for corporate communications, and as a social intranet. So if I aggregate the participation rates across the board in order to compare that to 90-9-1, I'm not sure what that even means. |
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Glickman, Larry <LGlickman@...>
I suggest abandoning any goal a majority of your users engaged in your ESN, for two reasons:
Larry Glickman Director Network Engagement and Collaboration Union for Reform Judaism
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 7:26 AM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
A lot of the effort of communitmanagement goes into converting lurkers to regulars/leaders/active members. Even Working Out Loud is aimed at coverting a lot (if not all) of the employees to become contributors. In the words of John Stepper:
"Those contributions - sharing work that can be helpful to others - are what the other 99% will be seeing. That social proof will help other people know what to do, and motivate yet more people to join circles, so the 1% becomes 2%, then 3%. (One company approaching their 100th Circle observed how Circle participants were using their social intranet: “Many of them we hadn’t seen before.”)"
Source: http://workingoutloud.com/blog//leveraging-the-1-rule
But is it possible at all to get a majority of people contributing to an esn/community? Or is it wasted time and energy to focus on lurkers and should we only focus on active participants? A discussion I had with Stan Garfield got me wondering (https://twitter.com/stangarfield/status/853988444170801152). Curious what you all think?
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Robert L. Bogue
Speaking of lurkers … that would be me with this list 😉
I’d echo a few of the comments on the thread in saying that it’s not that the ESN tools are better or the approaches are better. Rogers covered it long ago. Adoption is driven by five factors:
(My full review of Diffusion of Innovations is at http://www.thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2012/07/01/book-review-diffusion-of-innovations/)
I think that whether it’s training, social technologies, or knowledge management, we sometimes forget that these are all means – not ends. The ends is business profitability and employee productivity. Every one of these technologies impedes employee productivity and business profitability in some ways – the question is can the business leverage benefits to outweigh the costs? That’s the point. If there’s no way to improve the organization with an ESN … then don’t do it.
Rob ------------------- Robert L. Bogue Find me Phone: (317) 844-5310 Blog: http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 9:46 AM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: RE: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
I suggest abandoning any goal a majority of your users engaged in your ESN, for two reasons:
Larry Glickman Director Network Engagement and Collaboration Union for Reform Judaism
From:
sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
A lot of the effort of communitmanagement goes into converting lurkers to regulars/leaders/active members. Even Working Out Loud is aimed at coverting a lot (if not all) of the employees to become contributors. In the words of John Stepper:
"Those contributions - sharing work that can be helpful to others - are what the other 99% will be seeing. That social proof will help other people know what to do, and motivate yet more people to join circles, so the 1% becomes 2%, then 3%. (One company approaching their 100th Circle observed how Circle participants were using their social intranet: “Many of them we hadn’t seen before.”)"
Source: http://workingoutloud.com/blog//leveraging-the-1-rule
But is it possible at all to get a majority of people contributing to an esn/community? Or is it wasted time and energy to focus on lurkers and should we only focus on active participants? A discussion I had with Stan Garfield got me wondering (https://twitter.com/stangarfield/status/853988444170801152). Curious what you all think?
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Hello Peter, First
of all, using the term lurkers is inappropriate in today's world and to
refer to people inside organizations - it's a model that was developed
for lists and forums (80s 90s)s and is out-dated. in the modern web/social media world. And the term is quite negative.So let that "lurker" term go. Lurkers are learners in my book. Catherine Shinners @catshinners Social Collaboration and Digital Transformation Silicon Valley, USA +1-650-704-3889 Contributor to Smarter Innovation (chapter abstracts) (Ark Group, 2014) Blog: www.collaboration-incontext.com On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:35 AM, Robert Bogue rbogue@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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Hi Catherine
I looked the term up and couldn't find anything about this being a negative term. It is actually descriptive of behavior observed.
Is this a personal (PC) perspective? I ask out of curiosity as I could not find anything on this.
Best and thanks
Bill
Bill Kaplan
Founder
Working Knowledge CSP
On Apr 18, 2017, at 10:47, Catherine Shinners catherineshinners@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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Bill, When I've presented the term lurker to managers and executives in organizations, to help them understand the nature of enterprise social participation, they were very put off by it. So if you're trying to educate and engage senior leaders in your organization about enterprise social networks, I'd ditch the lurker term. Also the term lurker is often used in the old 90-9-1 participation model. As the Community Roundtable notes, the participation model has a much different spread these days. Contributor, Participant and Consumer seem more helpful and relevant. As I mentioned in the blog post, often we measure contribution or participation by some specific activity someone has engaged in - creating content, posting content, liking, rating, downloading or sharing content, making social connections, joining groups. Consumers in an enterprise social network are using socially-enabled knowledge and information and sometimes immediately applying that information to a workflow or activity elsewhere, or they are gaining insight that they can apply in future contexts, or referring back to that knowledge in future contribution or participation activities. The term lurker can imply a passive, non-contributor, and I don't think is helpful to those who are trying to understand the social learning and applied value of what is being "consumed". Success stories and narratives can help tell the stories of the impact of those "consuming" and "applying" behaviors. Catherine Social Collaboration and Digital Transformation Silicon Valley, USA +1-650-704-3889 Contributor to Smarter Innovation (chapter abstracts) (Ark Group, 2014) Blog: www.collaboration-incontext.com On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 8:43 AM, Bill Kaplan bill@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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Thank you for sharing your perspective Catherine.
Best
Bill
Bill Kaplan Founder
Working Knowledge CSP
On Apr 18, 2017, at 12:27, Catherine Shinners catherineshinners@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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Stephen Bounds
Hi Catherine,
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
I agree to an extent, but I think it's important to note that people can participate in different levels on different groups. While I might subscribe to multiple communities, I am quite likely to have different levels of engagement on each. I believe the 90-9-1 model is, in part, a function of the medium. Because email and bulletin boards are post-based and don't have like/rating systems, the only way to participate is by adding a new item to the thread. This can lead to a lot of noise, with the eventual dynamic that some people will naturally pull back to a spectator mode as others consume that space (an important aspect of moderation since these can be either productive or non-productive additions). In a Facebook-style social media environment, there is increased pressure to demonstrate appreciation and awareness when consumption. In some ways the term "lurker" is a stronger pejorative term in this context, since it can be argued that social communities /require/ participation for respect and validation. While this nominally brings more people out of a passive consumer mode, the problem is that the new model can lead to click bait / "attention-whoring" behaviour which distorts community discussion in other ways. In any case, I think that discussing "lurkers" in an enterprise context is missing the point. There's rarely the critical mass in an enterprise network to support general passive learning and unless exceptional circumstances exist, why wouldn't you just encourage your staff to join a public group on that topic? Instead, it seems to me that the primary use cases for ESNs are either the explicit circulation of educational material, or use as a business-specific problem solving mechanism, ie getting people with a passion on solving a particular business issue working together. Harking back to the original point, most people organically participate in groups when they are both empowered and interested about a topic. Unfortunately, there is often still a pervasive sense of discomfort by managers and staff in the use of ESNs because it is seen as "wasted" time. And it only takes one or two political consequences from people speaking their mind for use of the space to become completely poisoned against genuine discussion and debate. Generally speaking, if an ESN is not seeing uptake then one or more of these is true: (a) interesting material isn't being circulated or meaningful business problems aren't being raised (b) people don't feel they can or should participate (c) people don't feel rewarded for participating (d) people already have more effective ways of communicating or collaborating on these problems elsewhere It is very difficult to address all of these blockers, which is why the vast majority of ESN efforts fail. Cheers, -- Stephen. ==================================== Stephen Bounds Director & Principal Consultant knowquestion Pty Ltd E: sb@... M: 0401 829 096 ==================================== On 19/04/2017 2:27 AM, Catherine Shinners catherineshinners@... [sikmleaders] wrote:
Bill, |
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chuck georgo <chuck@...>
I would like to offer that no matter what we call them, users will vote with their “attention” to whatever portal or content we present to them, and that level of attention (IMHO) will be directly attributable to the two factors of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) – 1) utility and 2) ease of use.
So one portal’s lurker is another portal’s heavy user :) More on the TAM - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_acceptance_model r/Chuck From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 7:06 PM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: Re: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn Hi Catherine, I agree to an extent, but I think it's important to note that people can participate in different levels on different groups. While I might subscribe to multiple communities, I am quite likely to have different levels of engagement on each. I believe the 90-9-1 model is, in part, a function of the medium. Because email and bulletin boards are post-based and don't have like/rating systems, the only way to participate is by adding a new item to the thread. This can lead to a lot of noise, with the eventual dynamic that some people will naturally pull back to a spectator mode as others consume that space (an important aspect of moderation since these can be either productive or non-productive additions). In a Facebook-style social media environment, there is increased pressure to demonstrate appreciation and awareness when consumption. In some ways the term "lurker" is a stronger pejorative term in this context, since it can be argued that social communities require participation for respect and validation. While this nominally brings more people out of a passive consumer mode, the problem is that the new model can lead to click bait / "attention-whoring" behaviour which distorts community discussion in other ways. In any case, I think that discussing "lurkers" in an enterprise context is missing the point. There's rarely the critical mass in an enterprise network to support general passive learning and unless exceptional circumstances exist, why wouldn't you just encourage your staff to join a public group on that topic? Instead, it seems to me that the primary use cases for ESNs are either the explicit circulation of educational material, or use as a business-specific problem solving mechanism, ie getting people with a passion on solving a particular business issue working together. Harking back to the original point, most people organically participate in groups when they are both empowered and interested about a topic. Unfortunately, there is often still a pervasive sense of discomfort by managers and staff in the use of ESNs because it is seen as "wasted" time. And it only takes one or two political consequences from people speaking their mind for use of the space to become completely poisoned against genuine discussion and debate. Generally speaking, if an ESN is not seeing uptake then one or more of these is true: (a) interesting material isn't being circulated or meaningful business problems aren't being raised (b) people don't feel they can or should participate (c) people don't feel rewarded for participating (d) people already have more effective ways of communicating or collaborating on these problems elsewhere It is very difficult to address all of these blockers, which is why the vast majority of ESN efforts fail. Cheers, -- Stephen. ==================================== Stephen Bounds Director & Principal Consultant knowquestion Pty Ltd E: sb@... <mailto:sb@...> M: 0401 829 096 ==================================== On 19/04/2017 2:27 AM, Catherine Shinners catherineshinners@... <mailto:catherineshinners@...> [sikmleaders] wrote: Bill, When I've presented the term lurker to managers and executives in organizations, to help them understand the nature of enterprise social participation, they were very put off by it. So if you're trying to educate and engage senior leaders in your organization about enterprise social networks, I'd ditch the lurker term. Also the term lurker is often used in the old 90-9-1 participation model. As the Community Roundtable notes, the participation model has a much different spread these days. Contributor, Participant and Consumer seem more helpful and relevant. As I mentioned in the blog post, often we measure contribution or participation by some specific activity someone has engaged in - creating content, posting content, liking, rating, downloading or sharing content, making social connections, joining groups. Consumers in an enterprise social network are using socially-enabled knowledge and information and sometimes immediately applying that information to a workflow or activity elsewhere, or they are gaining insight that they can apply in future contexts, or referring back to that knowledge in future contribution or participation activities. The term lurker can imply a passive, non-contributor, and I don't think is helpful to those who are trying to understand the social learning and applied value of what is being "consumed". Success stories and narratives can help tell the stories of the impact of those "consuming" and "applying" behaviors. Catherine Catherine Shinners <https://about.me/catherineshinners> Merced Group <http://www.mercedgroup.com/> Social Collaboration and Digital Transformation Silicon Valley, USA +1-650-704-3889 Let's network on LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineshinners> Talk to me on Twitter <https://twitter.com/catshinners> Contributor to <http://www.alignconsultinginc.com/books/smarter-innovation> Smarter Innovation (chapter abstracts) (Ark Group, 2014) Blog: www.collaboration-incontext.com <http://www.collaboration-incontext.com> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 8:43 AM, Bill Kaplan bill@... <mailto:bill@...> [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> > wrote: Hi Catherine I looked the term up and couldn't find anything about this being a negative term. It is actually descriptive of behavior observed. Is this a personal (PC) perspective? I ask out of curiosity as I could not find anything on this. Best and thanks Bill Bill Kaplan Founder Working Knowledge CSP On Apr 18, 2017, at 10:47, Catherine Shinners catherineshinners@... <mailto:catherineshinners@...> [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> > wrote: Hello Peter, First of all, using the term lurkers is inappropriate in today's world and to refer to people inside organizations - it's a model that was developed for lists and forums (80s 90s)s and is out-dated. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker> in the modern web/social media world. And the term is quite negative. There are new models of participation, and one of them is the a Benchmark Participation Ladder developed by the Community Roundtable <https://www.communityroundtable.com/> . It is reflects what their findings from their annual State of Community Management survey which they've been doing for 7-8 years now You can see a visual of it in the blog post below. I've written about it in this blog post - Lurkers are Learners: Understanding new Models of Participation <http://www.collaboration-incontext.com/2015/11/lurkers-are-learners-new-approaches-to-understanding-participation.html> There are, in, fact, very specific definitions about what is meant by contributing, participating, consuming and I mention those in the blog. But looking at these categories is only one gauge of community health, and are indicators of how comfortable people are with the modality of social collaboration and help inform how you should be designing and tuning your training, support, advocates programs, etc. Often people look at these community health metrics as goals, not indicators. The successful integration of the enterprise social network into important workflows will yield business benefits around productivity, innovation, efficiency, healthier organizational culture, flattening of communication flows, etc. and an enterprise community management program should be able to measure those business benefits and report on them to management and to the community at large. So let that "lurker" term go. Lurkers are learners in my book. Catherine Shinners www.mercedgroup.com <http://www.mercedgroup.com> @catshinners Catherine Shinners <https://about.me/catherineshinners> Merced Group <http://www.mercedgroup.com/> Social Collaboration and Digital Transformation Silicon Valley, USA +1-650-704-3889 <tel:%28650%29%20704-3889> Let's network on LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineshinners> Talk to me on Twitter <https://twitter.com/catshinners> Contributor to <http://www.alignconsultinginc.com/books/smarter-innovation> Smarter Innovation (chapter abstracts) (Ark Group, 2014) Blog: www.collaboration-incontext.com <http://www.collaboration-incontext.com> On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:35 AM, Robert Bogue rbogue@... <mailto:rbogue@...> [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> > wrote: Speaking of lurkers … that would be me with this list 😉 I’d echo a few of the comments on the thread in saying that it’s not that the ESN tools are better or the approaches are better. Rogers covered it long ago. Adoption is driven by five factors: * Relative Advantage – The value to the person (who listens to What Is In It For Me (WIII-FM) compared what they’re doing now. * Compatible – How aligned to what they’re doing today? (This is a problem for ESN adoption) * Complexity – What’s the apparent complexity to the person * Trialability- Can they try it and go back to old ways? * Observability- Do they see others using it? (My full review of Diffusion of Innovations is at http://www.thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2012/07/01/book-review-diffusion-of-innovations/) I think that whether it’s training, social technologies, or knowledge management, we sometimes forget that these are all means – not ends. The ends is business profitability and employee productivity. Every one of these technologies impedes employee productivity and business profitability in some ways – the question is can the business leverage benefits to outweigh the costs? That’s the point. If there’s no way to improve the organization with an ESN … then don’t do it. Rob ------------------- Robert L. Bogue Find me Phone: (317) 844-5310 <tel:%28317%29%20844-5310> Blog: <http://www.thorprojects.com/blog> http://www.thorprojects.com/blog From: sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> [mailto:sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> ] Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 9:46 AM To: sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> Subject: RE: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn I suggest abandoning any goal a majority of your users engaged in your ESN, for two reasons: 1. It’s unrealistic, at least in the short term. One could argue that the concept of social networking has been around long enough now (Facebook was launched in 2005, and they weren’t even the first ones!) that this approach should feel comfortable and sensible for most people, but it’s not. Email, as unproductive as it might be for group communication, is still the default behavior. And, it’s possible that corporate executives are not yet leading the way to the new platform through behavior or policy. Greater engagement will come, but it will take significant time, and most importantly, patience. 2. Focus your time and efforts on people who are already engaged. Make sure they are using the platform well. Are they employing ESN best practices? Are they utilizing all the functionality available to them? Are they getting others involved through their usage? Your engaged users are your “low-hanging fruit.” Spend time with them to make your ESN a more robust place, and then those who are un-engaged will have more evidence of why the ESN should be the place where they are doing their work, and more reason to try to change their own behavior to take advantage of all the benefits that an ESN provides. Larry Glickman Director Network Engagement and Collaboration Union for Reform Judaism lglickman@... <mailto:lglickman@...> From: sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> [mailto:sikmleaders@...] Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 7:26 AM To: sikmleaders@... <mailto:sikmleaders@...> Subject: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn A lot of the effort of communitmanagement goes into converting lurkers to regulars/leaders/active members. Even Working Out Loud is aimed at coverting a lot (if not all) of the employees to become contributors. In the words of John Stepper: "Those contributions - sharing work that can be helpful to others - are what the other 99% will be seeing. That social proof <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__workingoutloud.com_blog__faq-2Dhow-2Ddo-2Dwe-2Dget-2Dmanagement-2Dsupport&d=DwMGaQ&c=UT72XLgLSquXuWqngwXwRw&r=QnUTjr4P7sDONUpybFz-883clbWdeI61GDCCHOVeiVU&m=jf4I-VxEVN42_u2onUjdrqyRRPI0kZ8hhVSnBPSp15s&s=-jYjjOdkoNN8rxwkQ_DokDlep3e_HUncArWkgBVq0Eo&e=> will help other people know what to do, and motivate yet more people to join circles, so the 1% becomes 2%, then 3%. (One company approaching their 100th Circle observed how Circle participants were using their social intranet: “Many of them we hadn’t seen before.”)" Source: http://workingoutloud.com/blog//leveraging-the-1-rule <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__workingoutloud.com_blog__leveraging-2Dthe-2D1-2Drule&d=DwMGaQ&c=UT72XLgLSquXuWqngwXwRw&r=QnUTjr4P7sDONUpybFz-883clbWdeI61GDCCHOVeiVU&m=jf4I-VxEVN42_u2onUjdrqyRRPI0kZ8hhVSnBPSp15s&s=Jxy9nz1CIn0-kQ2k3E9m0Z7moH7UN67LgfpjkLL63_E&e=> But is it possible at all to get a majority of people contributing to an esn/community? Or is it wasted time and energy to focus on lurkers and should we only focus on active participants? A discussion I had with Stan Garfield got me wondering (https://twitter.com/stangarfield/status/853988444170801152). Curious what you all think? |
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Matt Moore <innotecture@...>
Peter,
"But is it possible at all to get a majority of people contributing to an esn/community? Or is it wasted time and energy to focus on lurkers and should we only focus on active participants? A discussion I had with Stan Garfield got me wondering (https://twitter.com/stangarfield/status/853988444170801152). Curious what you all think?" Perfectly valid question. A brief search of Google yields some interesting results: https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=lurking+and+enterprise+social+networks Including an Australian PhD on this topic and a paper by Michael Muller. Both worth a look. And I get why Catherine isn't comfortable with the "lurking" term. It does have negative connotations in many contexts. Personally, I can understand why their is a focus on driving contribution (esp. if you are paying on a per user basis). However I would suggest that the focus should be on exactly why people should be contributing to something in the first place - business purpose should trump pure quantity. If the purpose requires broad participation then you need to invest in making that happen (and recognise that it will require a significant investment of time). If it doesn't require that then don't. I would also note that newer tools like Slack focus on small contributions in small teams rather than the "post to the world" vibe that previous tools had. Regards, Matt |
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Robert L. Bogue
Matt –
I think it’s possible – but not profitable or appropriate – to drive engagement. The engagement as you infer is likely to not be valuable.
I tend to turn the question on its head. Instead of asking how do I drive engagement, I ask what would have to be present for people to WANT to engage.
I don’t ask questions like what can you contribute to a KM system. I ask what could one of your peers contribute to the system that you would consume. Then we goal people on contributing things that at least two other people use. The result is that the content quality is higher. When they game the system they tend to do it in a way that creates the desired results.
In my world, I straddle many different worlds. Learning design. Knowledge Management. Organizational Change. Technical Leadership. I’m always going to be a lurker in some contexts because I’m learning or because I don’t have the capacity to share things from other disciplines. Trying to drive me to participation in every area is a fool’s errand. My personal goal is to contribute the maximum value that I can – which sometimes means letting conversations go by without my contribution. (As I’ve done repeatedly here.)
Addressing Catherine’s concern – lurking is associated with “lurking in the shadows” (which is probably it’s full statement anyway). We fear what’s lurking in the shadows because of our distant past struggle for survival. It was/is inevitable that it would pick up a negative connotation.
Rob
------------------- Robert L. Bogue Find me Phone: (317) 844-5310 Blog: http://www.thorprojects.com/blog
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 11:33 PM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: Re: [sikmleaders] Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
Peter,
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dennis.pearce@...
I devote a considerable amount of space in my doctoral dissertation (http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=finance_etds) to the problem of "adoption" and some of the issues with trying to apply the TAM model to it. Starting on page 16:
-------------------- "ESNs also present problems for existing adoption models in the research literature, in part because of their blended nature due to the intersection of the groupware and social media trajectories discussed earlier. Attempts have been made to apply many different theories and models to explain social business adoption: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTF) and Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) (Zhang, 2010); Diffusion of Innovations (Cardon & Marshall, 2014); Technology-Organization Environment Theory (TOE) (Saldanha & Krishnan, 2012); Hedonic Theory (Holsapple & Wu, 2007); Representation Theory (Burton-Jones & Grange, 2013); Social Presence Theory, Channel Expansion Theory, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (S. A. Brown, Dennis, & Venkatesh, 2010); Transactive Memory Theory (Keskin & Taskin, 2013). Because of this blended history, ESNs do not fit neatly into most of the more traditional models and frameworks because they have elements of adoption that are related to both business use and social activity. The groupware trajectory has behind it a long history of the study of traditional IT systems, where the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has a strong hold. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the primary driving forces for the adoption of new technology. Although well established, TAM is derived from the study of IT systems that were designed for a specific purpose. In most of these systems there is little flexibility in how they are used, and the purpose is often one that is necessary for some particular business process. In these cases, “adoption” is simply a matter of use or non-use. However, ESNs are often voluntary in the sense that business processes can be done without them. An employee or team might choose to use email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings to collaborate, rather than the social platform. And as illustrated above, those employees who do use ESNs might choose to use them in a variety of ways, at different frequencies, and for a variety of purposes, some of which may not be directly business-related. As a counter to TAM, hedonic theory arising from research on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suggests that adoption is dependent on enjoyment and perceived critical mass (Harden, 2012; Sledgianowski & Kulviwat, 2009; van der Heijden, 2004). It is not difficult to imagine that perceived usefulness and enjoyment might both play key roles in the adoption of an ESN." -------------------- I go on in more detail, but in essence models such as TAM try to describe the adoption of a technology, but what most companies really want when deploying an ESN is the adoption of a behavior. These are two very different things. |
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chuck georgo <chuck@...>
It’s interesting…you have just hit on something that has troubled me greatly in my many years of working to build adoption of KM…we tend to want to make things more complicated, rather than working to make understanding and adoption easier.
So, to me (and please, no offense intended), it really doesn’t matter how many models there are to explain contribution, lurking, adoption, etc., the simple truth is whether or not the intended users are ACTUALLY USING whatever process, portal, or solution you developed for them.
At the end of the day, most of our discussions are around the “technology” – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, ipad, smart phone, most KM solutions today DO depend on technology. Unfortunately, most of it is not designed by users - I see this every day, not only in the context of clients, but also in many of my own personal online interactions (as I am sure others in this group experience).
I think that we really only need to ask TWO questions of users: 1) is this ____ KM tool easy for you to use?; and, 2) is it useful to what you are trying to do? And, IMHO, both of these get to the heart of behavior, because if the answers to these are not “hell yeah” than we will not see the behavior to come back and use it again and again.
As you might guess, I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor J
r/Chuck
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 9:20 AM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: [sikmleaders] Re: Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
I devote a considerable amount of space in my doctoral dissertation (http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=finance_etds) to the problem of "adoption" and some of the issues with trying to apply the TAM model to it. Starting on page 16:
--------------------
"ESNs also present problems for existing adoption models in the research literature, in part because of their blended nature due to the intersection of the groupware and social media trajectories discussed earlier. Attempts have been made to apply many different theories and models to explain social business adoption: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTF) and Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) (Zhang, 2010); Diffusion of Innovations (Cardon & Marshall, 2014); Technology-Organization Environment Theory (TOE) (Saldanha & Krishnan, 2012); Hedonic Theory (Holsapple & Wu, 2007); Representation Theory (Burton-Jones & Grange, 2013); Social Presence Theory, Channel Expansion Theory, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (S. A. Brown, Dennis, & Venkatesh, 2010); Transactive Memory Theory (Keskin & Taskin, 2013).
Because of this blended history, ESNs do not fit neatly into most of the more traditional models and frameworks because they have elements of adoption that are related to both business use and social activity. The groupware trajectory has behind it a long history of the study of traditional IT systems, where the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has a strong hold. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the primary driving forces for the adoption of new technology. Although well established, TAM is derived from the study of IT systems that were designed for a specific purpose. In most of these systems there is little flexibility in how they are used, and the purpose is often one that is necessary for some particular business process. In these cases, “adoption” is simply a matter of use or non-use.
However, ESNs are often voluntary in the sense that business processes can be done without them. An employee or team might choose to use email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings to collaborate, rather than the social platform. And as illustrated above, those employees who do use ESNs might choose to use them in a variety of ways, at different frequencies, and for a variety of purposes, some of which may not be directly business-related. As a counter to TAM, hedonic theory arising from research on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suggests that adoption is dependent on enjoyment and perceived critical mass (Harden, 2012; Sledgianowski & Kulviwat, 2009; van der Heijden, 2004). It is not difficult to imagine that perceived usefulness and enjoyment might both play key roles in the adoption of an ESN." -------------------- I go on in more detail, but in essence models such as TAM try to describe the adoption of a technology, but what most companies really want when deploying an ESN is the adoption of a behavior. These are two very different things.
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Agree. It also comes down to “value.” Do people find value in investing their limited time in anything that does not add to their ability to be successful? This “return on value” seems consistent in every client with whom we work. Bill
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 10:07 To: sikmleaders@... Subject: RE: [sikmleaders] Re: Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
It’s interesting…you have just hit on something that has troubled me greatly in my many years of working to build adoption of KM…we tend to want to make things more complicated, rather than working to make understanding and adoption easier.
So, to me (and please, no offense intended), it really doesn’t matter how many models there are to explain contribution, lurking, adoption, etc., the simple truth is whether or not the intended users are ACTUALLY USING whatever process, portal, or solution you developed for them.
At the end of the day, most of our discussions are around the “technology” – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, ipad, smart phone, most KM solutions today DO depend on technology. Unfortunately, most of it is not designed by users - I see this every day, not only in the context of clients, but also in many of my own personal online interactions (as I am sure others in this group experience).
I think that we really only need to ask TWO questions of users: 1) is this ____ KM tool easy for you to use?; and, 2) is it useful to what you are trying to do? And, IMHO, both of these get to the heart of behavior, because if the answers to these are not “hell yeah” than we will not see the behavior to come back and use it again and again.
As you might guess, I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor J
r/Chuck
From:
sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
I devote a considerable amount of space in my doctoral dissertation (http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=finance_etds) to the problem of "adoption" and some of the issues with trying to apply the TAM model to it. Starting on page 16:
--------------------
"ESNs also present problems for existing adoption models in the research literature, in part because of their blended nature due to the intersection of the groupware and social media trajectories discussed earlier. Attempts have been made to apply many different theories and models to explain social business adoption: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTF) and Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) (Zhang, 2010); Diffusion of Innovations (Cardon & Marshall, 2014); Technology-Organization Environment Theory (TOE) (Saldanha & Krishnan, 2012); Hedonic Theory (Holsapple & Wu, 2007); Representation Theory (Burton-Jones & Grange, 2013); Social Presence Theory, Channel Expansion Theory, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (S. A. Brown, Dennis, & Venkatesh, 2010); Transactive Memory Theory (Keskin & Taskin, 2013).
Because of this blended history, ESNs do not fit neatly into most of the more traditional models and frameworks because they have elements of adoption that are related to both business use and social activity. The groupware trajectory has behind it a long history of the study of traditional IT systems, where the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has a strong hold. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the primary driving forces for the adoption of new technology. Although well established, TAM is derived from the study of IT systems that were designed for a specific purpose. In most of these systems there is little flexibility in how they are used, and the purpose is often one that is necessary for some particular business process. In these cases, “adoption” is simply a matter of use or non-use.
However, ESNs are often voluntary in the sense that business processes can be done without them. An employee or team might choose to use email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings to collaborate, rather than the social platform. And as illustrated above, those employees who do use ESNs might choose to use them in a variety of ways, at different frequencies, and for a variety of purposes, some of which may not be directly business-related. As a counter to TAM, hedonic theory arising from research on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suggests that adoption is dependent on enjoyment and perceived critical mass (Harden, 2012; Sledgianowski & Kulviwat, 2009; van der Heijden, 2004). It is not difficult to imagine that perceived usefulness and enjoyment might both play key roles in the adoption of an ESN."
--------------------
I go on in more detail, but in essence models such as TAM try to describe the adoption of a technology, but what most companies really want when deploying an ESN is the adoption of a behavior. These are two very different things.
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Nancy Dixon
I suggest there are many reasons for reading without posting to a community. A person may feel junior to others and feel that they have nothing to contribute as of yet but greatly benefit from reading. A person may be a part of another discipline and be interested in learning about this new discipline, but not be a practitioner in it. A person may be very busy with an initiative and have time to read, but not enough time to join in a conversation. A person may have not be well-versed in English and not want to embarrass him/herself. These seem legitimate reasons. I would not want to disparage people who have legitimate reasons by referring to them in negative terms, such as, "lurkers" or to insist, in anyway, that they "should" contribute. In some communities, I have worked with, the leader/facilitator takes a very active role in contacting members and after getting to know them personally, offers to help with any of the above issues that arise in the conversation, for example, "Just give me a call and tell me what you want to say and I'll post it for you." or "I don't think that question is too simple, there are a lot of people in the community like you that are just getting started, and would benefit from questions like that." The Leader/facilitator calling or emailing members individually is a time consuming task - but one that can reap large benefits. Nancy On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:25 AM, peterstaal157@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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chuck georgo <chuck@...>
Yes, and you should take the value equation out five levels – don’t just stop with the user, address these five levels: (apologies in advance to Don Kirkpatrick):
So, I would suggest that if you want to improve the “stickiness” of a KM tool/intervention (or reduce lurkers), then build a value chain that addresses these five levels
r/Chuck
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 10:11 AM To: sikmleaders@... Subject: RE: [sikmleaders] Re: Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
Agree. It also comes down to “value.” Do people find value in investing their limited time in anything that does not add to their ability to be successful? This “return on value” seems consistent in every client with whom we work. Bill
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
It’s interesting…you have just hit on something that has troubled me greatly in my many years of working to build adoption of KM…we tend to want to make things more complicated, rather than working to make understanding and adoption easier.
So, to me (and please, no offense intended), it really doesn’t matter how many models there are to explain contribution, lurking, adoption, etc., the simple truth is whether or not the intended users are ACTUALLY USING whatever process, portal, or solution you developed for them.
At the end of the day, most of our discussions are around the “technology” – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, ipad, smart phone, most KM solutions today DO depend on technology. Unfortunately, most of it is not designed by users - I see this every day, not only in the context of clients, but also in many of my own personal online interactions (as I am sure others in this group experience).
I think that we really only need to ask TWO questions of users: 1) is this ____ KM tool easy for you to use?; and, 2) is it useful to what you are trying to do? And, IMHO, both of these get to the heart of behavior, because if the answers to these are not “hell yeah” than we will not see the behavior to come back and use it again and again.
As you might guess, I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor J
r/Chuck
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
I devote a considerable amount of space in my doctoral dissertation (http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=finance_etds) to the problem of "adoption" and some of the issues with trying to apply the TAM model to it. Starting on page 16:
--------------------
"ESNs also present problems for existing adoption models in the research literature, in part because of their blended nature due to the intersection of the groupware and social media trajectories discussed earlier. Attempts have been made to apply many different theories and models to explain social business adoption: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTF) and Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) (Zhang, 2010); Diffusion of Innovations (Cardon & Marshall, 2014); Technology-Organization Environment Theory (TOE) (Saldanha & Krishnan, 2012); Hedonic Theory (Holsapple & Wu, 2007); Representation Theory (Burton-Jones & Grange, 2013); Social Presence Theory, Channel Expansion Theory, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (S. A. Brown, Dennis, & Venkatesh, 2010); Transactive Memory Theory (Keskin & Taskin, 2013).
Because of this blended history, ESNs do not fit neatly into most of the more traditional models and frameworks because they have elements of adoption that are related to both business use and social activity. The groupware trajectory has behind it a long history of the study of traditional IT systems, where the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has a strong hold. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the primary driving forces for the adoption of new technology. Although well established, TAM is derived from the study of IT systems that were designed for a specific purpose. In most of these systems there is little flexibility in how they are used, and the purpose is often one that is necessary for some particular business process. In these cases, “adoption” is simply a matter of use or non-use.
However, ESNs are often voluntary in the sense that business processes can be done without them. An employee or team might choose to use email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings to collaborate, rather than the social platform. And as illustrated above, those employees who do use ESNs might choose to use them in a variety of ways, at different frequencies, and for a variety of purposes, some of which may not be directly business-related. As a counter to TAM, hedonic theory arising from research on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suggests that adoption is dependent on enjoyment and perceived critical mass (Harden, 2012; Sledgianowski & Kulviwat, 2009; van der Heijden, 2004). It is not difficult to imagine that perceived usefulness and enjoyment might both play key roles in the adoption of an ESN." -------------------- I go on in more detail, but in essence models such as TAM try to describe the adoption of a technology, but what most companies really want when deploying an ESN is the adoption of a behavior. These are two very different things.
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nice
From: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 13:48 To: sikmleaders@... Subject: RE: [sikmleaders] Re: Is it possible to convert the 90 percent lurkers in an esn
Yes, and you should take the value equation out five levels – don’t just stop with the user, address these five levels: (apologies in advance to Don Kirkpatrick):
So, I would suggest that if you want to improve the “stickiness” of a KM tool/intervention (or reduce lurkers), then build a value chain that addresses these five levels
r/Chuck
From:
sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
Agree. It also comes down to “value.” Do people find value in investing their limited time in anything that does not add to their ability to be successful? This “return on value” seems consistent in every client with whom we work. Bill
From:
sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
It’s interesting…you have just hit on something that has troubled me greatly in my many years of working to build adoption of KM…we tend to want to make things more complicated, rather than working to make understanding and adoption easier.
So, to me (and please, no offense intended), it really doesn’t matter how many models there are to explain contribution, lurking, adoption, etc., the simple truth is whether or not the intended users are ACTUALLY USING whatever process, portal, or solution you developed for them.
At the end of the day, most of our discussions are around the “technology” – whether it’s a desktop, laptop, ipad, smart phone, most KM solutions today DO depend on technology. Unfortunately, most of it is not designed by users - I see this every day, not only in the context of clients, but also in many of my own personal online interactions (as I am sure others in this group experience).
I think that we really only need to ask TWO questions of users: 1) is this ____ KM tool easy for you to use?; and, 2) is it useful to what you are trying to do? And, IMHO, both of these get to the heart of behavior, because if the answers to these are not “hell yeah” than we will not see the behavior to come back and use it again and again.
As you might guess, I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor J
r/Chuck
From:
sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...]
I devote a considerable amount of space in my doctoral dissertation (http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=finance_etds) to the problem of "adoption" and some of the issues with trying to apply the TAM model to it. Starting on page 16:
--------------------
"ESNs also present problems for existing adoption models in the research literature, in part because of their blended nature due to the intersection of the groupware and social media trajectories discussed earlier. Attempts have been made to apply many different theories and models to explain social business adoption: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Task-Technology Fit Theory (TTF) and Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) (Zhang, 2010); Diffusion of Innovations (Cardon & Marshall, 2014); Technology-Organization Environment Theory (TOE) (Saldanha & Krishnan, 2012); Hedonic Theory (Holsapple & Wu, 2007); Representation Theory (Burton-Jones & Grange, 2013); Social Presence Theory, Channel Expansion Theory, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (S. A. Brown, Dennis, & Venkatesh, 2010); Transactive Memory Theory (Keskin & Taskin, 2013).
Because of this blended history, ESNs do not fit neatly into most of the more traditional models and frameworks because they have elements of adoption that are related to both business use and social activity. The groupware trajectory has behind it a long history of the study of traditional IT systems, where the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) has a strong hold. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the primary driving forces for the adoption of new technology. Although well established, TAM is derived from the study of IT systems that were designed for a specific purpose. In most of these systems there is little flexibility in how they are used, and the purpose is often one that is necessary for some particular business process. In these cases, “adoption” is simply a matter of use or non-use.
However, ESNs are often voluntary in the sense that business processes can be done without them. An employee or team might choose to use email, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings to collaborate, rather than the social platform. And as illustrated above, those employees who do use ESNs might choose to use them in a variety of ways, at different frequencies, and for a variety of purposes, some of which may not be directly business-related. As a counter to TAM, hedonic theory arising from research on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter suggests that adoption is dependent on enjoyment and perceived critical mass (Harden, 2012; Sledgianowski & Kulviwat, 2009; van der Heijden, 2004). It is not difficult to imagine that perceived usefulness and enjoyment might both play key roles in the adoption of an ESN."
--------------------
I go on in more detail, but in essence models such as TAM try to describe the adoption of a technology, but what most companies really want when deploying an ESN is the adoption of a behavior. These are two very different things.
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Lee Romero
Great discussion here! It's funny that this thread kicks off with a reference to a discussion with Stan Garfield - Stan and I have had many discussions about adoption / lurkers in ESNs (or communities in general) over the last several years. One of the takeaways for me from those conversations (and I'll admit - I did not read the Twitter conversation originally linked to, maybe Stan raises this there?) was that in many (most? all?) communities of any size, you DO NOT want to convert all lurkers to active participants. The logic I use is if you believe the "90-9-1" rule (or if you agree with the idea but perhaps have different percentages), if you imagine that you convert that to a simple "100", the community probably becomes unusable. As an example - we have a community that's about 10K people. In that particular community, I think the number breaks down to something more like 98-1.9-0.1. And that provides a reasonably comprehensible level of activity. If you imagine getting to a state where all of those 10,000 people are sharing / posting / commenting, it becomes a torrent of inundation and the community probably dies or fragments into smaller "special interest groups" (effectively just smaller communities). If your community is very small (say in the scale of a few dozen), maybe getting to 100 percent "engagement" results in a reasonable level of decipherable activity. Another aspect of the "90-9-1" "rule" that I always find interesting is that the "90" actually itself has differentiation. Stan and I have used the term a "join-only member". They join the community at some point but literally pay no attention to it. By contrast there are people that would fit more into the traditional "lurker" descriptor that at least pay attention and can get value from reading things in the community. Because neither of these groups shows visible activity*, it is hard to know how that big chunk of people breaks up. My suspicion is that at least a large number of the 90 are likely the "join-only" - so instead of "90-9-1", it might be better described as "70-20-9-1" where the 70% are the join-only members who literally contribute nothing, read nothing and are just a name on a membership list. * My asterisk above on "visible activity" means that depending on the tool you use to support the community it may be possible to get a sense of readership (if you can have something like web analytics on it that captures unique visitors). But not all tools provide that and when a tool supports email as an option to interact with a community (maybe on top of a web experience) you also lose visibility. Great discussion, though. Regards Lee Romero On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 2:18 PM, Bill Kaplan bill@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:
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Lee, here is the full Twitter discussion:
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