Andrew McAfee, the principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at MIT's Sloan School of Management, has been watching the shift of people and organizations to Web 2.0. He has a new book, "Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization's Toughest Challenges." McAfee is optimistic that the new social platform tools will improve the way organizations work. He coined the phrase "Enterprise 2.0."
McKinsey just released an interview with Andrew McAfee, conducted by Roger Roberts in the Silicon Valley office. If you are a premium subscriber to the McKinsey Quarterly, you can watch the video or download the PDF here.
The part of this interview that relates to law firms is this – and I am paraphrasing: When you introduce really cool social technologies into an organization, he assumed that everyone would flock to them – be drawn in by their very coolness. He said "I very quickly had that overturned." When you introduce such things to long-tenured workers or older workers, it's a big shift for them – to change how they think, work, collaborate and relate. It's not an overnight phenomenon at all.
This applies to the introduction of any new application — CRM, proposal center, experience database, ERM and others. He says, "Getting mass adoption remains a pretty serious challenge for most organizations." So, his advice, and ours is this: "…deploy the tools, talk a little bit about what you want to have happen, and then find pockets of energy, highlight them, discuss them, show the good stuff that emerges."
This is the surest way to implementation and adoption success.