“Clients usually ask us how they can drill that hole in the wall. As consultants we are obsessed with finding the best drill that does it in the fastest and most cost-effective way. Sadly, we often forget to ask the client why he or she needs that hole in the first place.” (coaching advice from a VP in my previous company)
Think about the following problem and respond with the first thing that comes into your mind: “I have 24 bottles of water to carry from the supermarket, which I obviously can’t carry all by myself. How do I get them home?”
My first reaction would be to use a car, but if you don’t have a car you can order it online at one of the big supermarket chains and get it home delivered. Problem solved? Yes.
This solution would be a good example of “finding the best drill” as discussed earlier. So let’s take a step back and wonder why we need all this water in the first place. Perhaps I don’t trust the water quality that comes out of the tap. Perhaps I just don’t like the taste. Perhaps it has never occurred to me that in certain regions the tap water is perfectly drinkable.
A solution could be to figure out whether the tap water is perfectly ok to drink in your region and buy such a small water purifier to filter the tap water. This avoids me to even have to think how to carry 24 bottles of water home. Focus on the cause of your problem, rather than the problem.
Let’s bring this to a more familiar corporate environment and think about the following problems:
1. “There is a lack of communication in our company.”
2. “We have absolutely no idea what the customers are saying.”
3. “Our employees can’t find each other.”
Very popular solutions to these problems are:
1. “We need a company blog.”
2. “We need a Twitter account.”
3. “We need SharePoint.”
There is an instinctive reaction to come up with solutions that seem to make a lot of sense at first. If you have a communication problem on the one hand and you know that blogs are an extremely easy way to communicate, then a blogging platform must be your solution. Problem solved.
When someone asks for your help with their SharePoint platform rollout because they want to improve the communication inside the organisation, just take a step back. Ask them what is broken with the way they are doing it now in the first place. Why SharePoint? What do they hope to improve? When do they consider the communication inside the organisation as successful?
Throwing in a social software platform in your organisation isn’t going to solve the challenges you are facing. You first need to figure out what is wrong with the process in the first place. A good starting point might be to have a chat with some of the employees. People that are dealing with that (broken?) process every single day might be a good source of information, don’t you think?
You might learn that the most obvious solution isn’t going to solve the problem at all. Perhaps a surprising result could be that employees find that there are far too many emails being sent out with newsletters, announcements, updates etc. so the problem is that nobody reads them anymore. Your new company blog isn’t going to solve that.
So stop reacting like Pavlov’s dog. Focus on the people, not on the technology.
Exactly right. Social software is not a solution or a goal, its an enabler. There are dozens of failed sharepoint (and other systems) rollouts all over the place. But the problem is a cultural one, where the technology can only play a part.
Furthermore, we really need to keep those babies in perspective – real and imagined.
Agree! The focus should be on the principles and the benefits – not the tool.
I usally say that you can choose the worst tool in the world – but still be successfull with the right attitude and focus. And of-course the other way around – the most comprehensive tool available purchased for nothing.
I’ve seen them both happen. Last year in November I wrote a blog from the experience.
It always amazes me when I’m meeting with a client and the first thing they say is they want accounts on all the social media sites. When I ask them why they almost always say because they heard that was what they were supposed to do. Often little thought goes into the actual logistics of it all, like all the work required to build those profiles and keep them active.