Noodling Around Change Management and Social Media Adoption

Recently, I reconnected with colleague, Joitske Hulsebosch, who I met in 2005 through Nancy White's Online Community workshop.  I interviewed Joitske about her work way back in 2006.   I asked for some recommendations on Twitter for the best practical sources for change management.   Joitske recommend  Learning To Change.

She also pointed me to an older post on her blog about one of theories of change in the book based on thinking styles.  I did a mashup with social media framing.  Now, have to get my hands on that survey and see if there my noodling holds water.

From the English book review:

"In the third chapter, "Thinking about change in five different colors", Caluwé and Vermaak introduce their color model. They start this chapter by stating the word "change" has five different meanings. The five ways of thinking addressed by the model include different views on what the authors say, "why and how people or things change" (p. 42). The different colors include:

* Yellow-print thinking. People change their standpoints only if their own interests are taken into account.
* Blue-print thinking. People or things change if a clearly specified result is laid down beforehand.
* Red-print thinking. People change if things are appealing and inspiring to them.
* Green-print thinking. People change if they learn. They are motivated to discover their limits.
* White-print thinking. Everything changes autonomously, of its own accord. "

The book, written in 2002, does not address social media and change management or even technology. That lead me to the above noodling.

I also wondered about the historical context of change management and technology tool adoption, asking on Twitter if there case studies about the adoption of the typewriter in the workplace.  Lucy Bernholz, who shares my interest in contextualization, pointed me to this essay about artifacts and change describing the change brought about by the introduction of the typewriter into the workplace.

Think about some of the changes reflected by this typewriter, manufactured by E. Remington & Sons around 1875. It tells a story of innovations in technology and manufacturing. The adoption of the typewriter, at just the same time that women began to work in offices, reflected changes in women's roles, new ideas about the organization of work, and the rapidly growing corporations of the day. In turn, the typewriter brought about and helped to accelerate social change, opening up new jobs for women in the office. Changes in Business and the Workplace. The typewriter, by reducing the time and expense involved in creating documents, encouraged the spread of systematic management. It allowed a system of communications that shaped the business world.

Another Twitter follower, Holger Nauheimer, pointed me to his blog on change management which has lots of resources.  I was struck by his reflections of the Web2.0 Expo:

The growing awareness that there is a need for change management to accompany Web 2.0 projects in organizations. I arrived with my concept of Web 2.0 being a tool for change facilitation - which it is. But I had to realize that introducing social media as a tool for better collaboration, either across an organization or with outside stakeholders needs to be facilitated. It's like the introduction of personal computers 20 years ago into offices, or a big ERP project. And it seems that as long as the netgen generation hasn't entirely taken over all positions within organizations, there will be resistance to implementation of Web 2.0. For a couple of reasons: IT departments want to protect the security of the company's system, Boards fear that will not be able to contain openness and transparency once people are encouraged to write blogs, collaborate on wikis, etc. And putting customers into the driving seat of product development actually means turning how many companies work upside down.

Joitske poses a good question when she asks, "Can you shift your organization's culture by introducing social media?"Joitske observes that the power of social media is more about the culture of openly sharing knowledge, collaboration, and engaging in co-creation.  She points out that having  the tools does not mean you have improved the collaboration between your professionals.   It reminded of the questions we discussed in the early 1990's about using online collaboration tools for nonprofits.  For example, if an organization does work online with board can it be effective or I used to say, "a dysfunctional board offline is dysfunctional online."

She goes to pose a great chicken or egg question:

• Is your organizational culture ready for social media or do you want to shift the culture by introducing social media?
• What is the actual change you are envisioning?
• Can social media play a role in this?
• What are the other inventions that are needed to help change the organizational culture?

Joitske says you to begin with assessing the culture of the organization and see whether there is a match or a mismatch with social media cultures.

Some other change management resources mentioned by Twitter followers

@hnauheimer suggested:

http://twitter.com/snowded
http://www.cognitive-edge.com/
http://www.presencing.com/index.shtml
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/index.php

Some more resources from Facebook Friends:

Paul DiPerna

Definitely agree that Esther Dyson is a leader on tech adoption.

Clayton Christensen/Michael Horn's disruptive innovation writings (most recently about education)..

In the social sciences, I'd recommend Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. It's considered a classic.

A couple years ago I interviewed Christine Beckman (Cal-Irvine), who has done some interesting organizational research about how methods and technologies are adopted by different types of firms.

James Wu

How about Chris Hughes? Facebook and My.BarackObama.com - highly thoughtful and articulate

Scarlett Swerdlow

Well, I'm not sure about technology adoption, but Ben Cameron is an amazing thinker on change management. You can check out his remarks at our recent members' meeting

Mark Hulse

What are your best resources of change management?  I'm looking for practical sources mostly.

Comments

[Mary]

I think "change management" makes a lot of sense in the social media context. We as consultants and evangelists see these tools as inherently valuable and try to get an organizations to adopt them to increase their effectiveness. But many in the organization may have a completely different frame. They see social media not as technology for collaboration and communication, but as something new, different, and of unclear value. "Change management" seems to be a good way to frame the process of introducing new technology into an organization, and more accurately approximates the feelings of the organization. It not about tools. It's about systems and new ways of working.

[Jo Jordan]

Beth, yesterday I was reading some basic ideas in games design. You might like to google Jane McGonigle and Museums 2009.

I was reading stfuff from Charles Bateman at Ihob and the idea that games begin with paidia not ludus - free form play not goal oriented rules structure that we find in sport.

Within that idea is the idea we play with elements we find in the environment based on their implicit affordances. When we look at water and a pebble beach we bend almost spontaneously to pick up a pebble and try to skim the the water. The white box might be paidia - spontaneous freeform experimentation of elements that is influenced partly by their possibilities and partly by culture - so we learn from each other too.

And PS I'm using social media in a small town in UK and the biggest challenge is familiarity with social media - and even the internet. I'll be checking back for ideas! It's a Ning site called Olney100.

[Betsy Stone]

A friend of mine, who started her PhD with the intent of focusing on organization-level change, ended up concluding that she had to focus on change at the individual level. I think she's on to something as it applies to adoption of social media. I'm collecting a list of reasons why people tell me they don't want to dip their toe in the social media pool. Age alone can't explain their reluctance. I've met late 20/early 30-somethings who are lamenting changes in traditional communications methods. They feel traditional PR is superior; they don't know how they could possibly make the time and do the job they have now; they don't understand why people would want to connect over a public channel... and the list goes on. Bottomline: they don't think they have to make a personal change - at least not yet - and most of the tools have a high "ick" factor for them. I suppose there will be a Darwinian shakeout in the job market for people who can't stand the idea.