What are the success factors required to get web 2.0 right in your organization? McKinsey Quarterly studied 50 early adopters to determine what were the critical factors in ensuring web 2.0 is a success. Not all early adopters were entirely successful in implementing web 2.0 applications within their organizations. About half of the respondents reported being dissatisfied with the results of their attempts. McKinsey identified factors associated with success. In today’s post I summarize Web 2.0 strategies for participation. The following post summarizes Web 2.0 strategies for best use and Web 2.0 strategies to balance risk.

Web 2.0 Strategies for Participation

• The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top: successful implementation requires participation at the grassroots level. That participation, however, does not happen in a vacuum and employees look to their leaders to  set the tone on how and when to use these new technologies. A role-model leadership style aids this process. Sometimes it takes one champion at the senior executive level to influence colleagues’ participation and this has a positive effect on the rest of the workforce.
• What’s in the workflow is what gets used: web 2.0 technologies have a higher chance of success when incorporated in a users workflow – rather than as an add-on, a nice to have that just becomes another “to-do”. For example if a report is expected from a wiki and that is where managers go to stay abreast of progress, that is where people will spend time and energy.
• Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets: encouraging participation in web 2.0 technologies via traditional methods (for example, performance evaluation tied to compensation) has been shown to have failed. For example, evaluating performance based on frequency of posts on a wiki at one company resulted in low quality posts. Positive feedback, management participation and acknowledgement, on the other hand, typically has a positive effect.

Links and References:

Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work, McKinsey Quarterly, February 2009