In the closing keynote for Share 2012, Sarah Haase is presenting on driving successful user adoption. Sarah spoke at Share 2011 in Sydney, talking about Turning the Tide and De-Mystifying ROI for SharePoint.

Key points:
– user adoption is critically important to SharePoint success. How do we get other people passionately interested in SharePoint?
– some marketing products that failed – New Coke, Colgate meals.
– common point – assumed an answer without asking the question. Didn’t ask their customers what they wanted.
– Socialtext white paper: You can’t mandate adoption. It doesn’t work.
– worse user adoption one-liners:
– … SharePoint is great. It’s the users that need help.
– … We work with SharePoint. The kind of user adoption you’re talking about is an urban myth.
– … Just throw SharePoint out there. They’ll jump on board.
– … We have 6 TB of SharePoint. Now that’s adoption!
– … SharePoint is self-evident. We don’t need any training.
– … etc.
– User Adoption Strategies: you can’t focused on extolling product features. It won’t change behavior.
– Roger’s innovation adoption curve – innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards.
– See Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm. The chasm makes it very difficult.
– social epidemics can be really helpful – think of it as something that rapidly generates change.
– … Malcolm Gladwell – (a) contagious, (b) they are caused by small, incremental changes, and (c) they bring about a sudden change.
– … we don’t have time to do user adoption slowly. We need to drive it fast.
– At Best Buy:
– … 2007 mission statement with SharePoint – “use technology to automate manual tasks and save money.”
– … started looking around at haw they were using SharePoint 2007. Found a lack of vision (no IA, few features being used, lots of user complaints)
– … developed a strategy – process optimization, information architecture, and community development.
– … the executives brought into this. Sarah became the “Collaboration Manager” at Best Buy – a new role.
– … started slowly – looking for opportunities for improvement. Achieved $500K ROI per year — in process time savings.
– the silver bullets:
– … executive buy-in for controlled release
– … business process focus, “it’s not about the platform”
– … focus on making customers happy.
– Derek Sivers, “When you’re on to something great, it will feel like uncommon good sense.”
– roadmap to success (you may need to iterate through this process):
– … (1) find what is needed – what does success look like in my organization?
– … (2) plant your stake – who you are and what you are going to do.
– … (3) take baseline measurements – you need to know where you started from.
– … (4) define your success criteria – and be specific. Eg., percentages and numbers.
– … (5) find the “right” first project – start from pain, that hits lots of people, repeatability, etc.
– … (6) get moving – initial request, storyboarding (their vision, their pain points, etc.), development in progress, etc.
– user adoption best practices:
– … Find your Yoda. The person at an organization who helps to drive user adoption and champion SharePoint success. Can see opportunities across the organization.
– … SharePoint markets itself – once you deliver your first couple of wins.
– … you don’t need to conquer the world. Just thrill your customers.
– … you can’s stop the train for naysayers. Exclude the people who don’t believe in what you do. Just move on.
– … community is the key. It gives support. Find your first follower – the one person who believes in what you are doing.