Dealing with resistance

One of the main barriers for organisations aiming to use new technologies for social projects is likely to be mindset – and often not of your target audiences, but of your internal and external stakeholders. If you work in or with large organisations, particularly ones that have been running for a long time, the pressure to preserve the status quo is huge and overcoming the barriers to taking risks and working in a new way will most likely be a major part of your work.

Objections to new ways of doing things are usually deep-seated and rooted in good intentions and experience, particularly fear of reputational risk, distraction from core objectives, loss of productivity and costly project failures. Concern for organisational reputation, protecting precious resources and budget, and avoiding excluding people who aren’t tech-savvy, and a general sense that these technologies are a fad are all common arguments.

One of the biggest obstacles is fear of losing control – or of giving people autonomy to take risks. Steve Dale and Michael Norton reflect on this in the context of communities of practice for local authorities. One person said “I’m not sure that we have permission to innovate in our organisation.”

It can also be hard to convince leadership that working with social technology is commercially valuable and doesn’t mean paying you to chat to your friends on Facebook. Colin McKay, who works in a government agency in Ottawa, Canada, says in The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organisations that it is hard to convince your boss to even experiment with social media, because it is perceived as being a lot of extra work and first you have to deal with the fact that it’s blocked by existing organisational policies and firewalls.

These are real concerns and you need to understand them, and learn how to articulate the opportunities as coherently and persuasively in a way that acknowledges people’s concerns.

Just as there are common arguments against social and digital technologies, so too are there common ways to respond. For example, here’s NTEN’s list of Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond. And David Gurteen has produced a comparison of the centralised and decentralised views of World 1.0 and world 2.0 that may underlie fears of adopting social technologies.

Jeremy Gould, who until recently worked in a UK Government department, offers various ways to respond:

  • Observation: Do nothing or listen. The returns on investment are largely unproven, so avoid the pain of early adoption. But even if you don’t start to implement, listen in to the conversations taking place already, and learn to use the tools.
  • Interaction:  Reflect or Converse. The next step on from listening is to acknowledge what others are doing, and then join in the conversation.
  • Initiation: Experiment or embed. Free or low-cost technology tools allow for small-scale low-risk exploration – although you will probably need support in using them. From experimenting you might move to development of tools hosted within the organisation, with the benefits of integration but with greater cost and complexity.

 

How to handle organisational culture shift

by Amy

  1. Starting using free tools, maybe in your non-work hours, to understand their application to the organisation.
  2. Get an ally at the executive level.
  3. Prepare a portfolio of the field and create your case for change (but do your research first).
  4. Share how changes relate to and support organisation's goals, mission, and vision.
  5. Tie adoption or use to staff evaluations.
  6. Share the results, successes and your evaluations with key staff as proof of your case for change/adoption.
  7. Read WeAreMedia's collection of advice and resources on Dealing with Resistance.

I've found that organisations adopting new tools have less resistance when staff evaluations include adoption and use of those tools. For example, when introducing a wiki for staff-wide use, take note of who made edits, and how often, and so forth, and then share this back with everyone to reward the people who are getting stuck in.

How to plan social technology for an organisation

by David (based on material by Terry Grunwald)

  1. Gain full commitment of the decision-makers: the Chief Executive and Board. Encourage them to gain hands-on experience – you need to help them learn to fly, and they can't do that as passengers.
  2. Be clear on your context and purposes before you tackle how you’ll reach them. The choice of tools should follow clarification of purpose, audience, users.
  3. Explain from the start that you will need to re-think the direction, style and operation of your organisation as you adopt new technologies. You may need a new business model, not just new technologies in the Web 2.0 world.
  4. Expect to change the culture of the organisation, particularly if it is currently hierarchical, siloed or internally competitive.
  5. Establish procedures, protocols, roles and responsibilities to match the new ways of working.
  6. Build the costs of technology into normal operational budgets. Don't treat it as a one-off project; do ensure you cover staff and support costs, and expect these to be far larger than hardware or software costs.
  7. Integrate your new online tools with other communication methods, and other projects; make them useful to your colleagues.
  8. Identify potential for collaboration, co-development and co-marketing. If someone else is doing it, you may be able to link to them and build on their community and technology.
  9. Design for evaluation. Monitor how the technology is used, against criteria for success.
  10. Be realistic and go for some quick wins, and remember to tell stories to the rest of the organisation about what’s happening.

If you want a quick start, you can also try a workshop using the Social by Social Game. It’s a good way to get people talking about social problems and new technologies – and you might find some real projects that people in your organisation want to work on with you.