Thursday, October 21, 2010

The challenge of getting “buy in”


In my organization there are a lot of relatively smart people; college educated, technical folks who understand complex systems.  The challenge I have seen is getting them to “buy in” to a new way of doing things.  As a SharePoint and web 2.0 person, getting others, the types mentioned above, to engage and embrace the new technologies has been a challenge.  You could place some blame on me for not forcing the issue.  However, force is never a good way to convert. 
Failure however is a great conversion tool.  This group was raised on the “C:” drive and understand and are familiar with the digital junkyard known as the “shared drive”.  Although it would be devastating to some, I would like to see the “shared drive” crash.  Then I could go back and say, “Well, if you had moved your files to the cloud, SharePoint etc. you would not have lost all that work.”
Tell me again where did you say you saved that file?  Can you email the latest version of the spread sheet… Pain to my ears…..

2 comments:

Jake said...

Z,

I feel yoru pain brother.. I work with some individuals (my boss) that can barely use the basic programs. The Shared Drive is something they don't trust.. because it has "gone down" in the past. I struggle with file version control, they insist on emailing the same damn file around 100 times and creates so much confusion. The problem in my organization is the sharepoint development is basic and the developers are entry level programmers at best. You know what I am talking about because we have used the same sharepoint site.
I am with you on this web2.0 cloud sharepoint push, but it doesn't help with the organization I work for insists on working in the dark ages...

Jason Qualkenbush said...

If you want Sharepoint buy in, you might want to look deeper into the version control part of it. Then check to see what audits/compliance points that addresses. I'm not sure what it addresses in the company I work for, but having version control hit two audit points, as well as having better access controls than a shared drive.

We never had success getting people to use technology because it's the proper fit. We get people to use it because it "passes the audit".

Days Hours and Minutes to the end of the Myan Calendar

" name="timezone"/>

Democrat = Tax Cheat

المسلحة الكافر = Armed Infidel

Change has come to Washington D.C.
Rangel
Daschel
Geithner

Our 2009 Tax return to the US Govt = I.O.U.
Thank you California for setting the stage.

Thanks for voting America!