As Nathan argues, successful Enterprise 2.0 style collaboration requires both technical and cultural maturity. Also from my own experiences, I know that cultural maturity is usually the biggest hurdle: it takes bravery and trust to take a discussion to a shared space or even to an open space.

Therefore, we also perform personality tests during our pilots in Future Workspaces. We are testing a hypothesis that personality is an important factor that determines what workspace fits a person. (According to our hypotheses, other main factors are a person’s activities and personal working style.)

This would mean that for some people blogging or contributing to a wiki is a more natural way of working then for other people. However, even if personality is an important factor, this does not mean that you are “stuck” in a specific state, determined by your personality. I believe that in a culture of mutual trust and with appropriate support (starting small, sharing good practices, showing success stories, talking about things that are scary), people can learn to share more (intermediate) thoughts in an open space.

To lower the threshold for sharing in a shared space or in an open space, I combine two main approaches:

1. Help them find opportunities to embed this sharing as part of normal work processes: if they are used to creating a document with intermediate findings while searching for information on topic Y, why not put that information in a wiki page? Moreover, this may speed up the search process, as others may contribute as well.
2. Explain that sharing thoughts in a blog or in a wiki is not about sharing final results, it is about contributing to an ongoing conversation. That is one of the main reasons why I do not like to compare an Intranet wiki with Wikipedia, as it sets completely wrong standards for contributions.

Purpose of the case

• Help Rabobank define a strategy for the introduction and use of a wiki for knowledge sharing across department boundaries.
• Train KIRA employees in working with a wiki and embedding in their working practices.
• Collect good practices for the introduction and use of a wiki for knowledge sharing

Key lessons learned

• Help people to embed the wiki in their normal working processes; avoid they see the wiki as an extra task.
• Employees have to perceive a personal need to use the wiki; just knowing what one can do with a wiki is not sufficient.
• Wiki use is hampered when the need or the culture to share information is lacking.
• Not understanding how a wiki relates to other technical means can be a threshold for wiki adoption.

Introduction strategy
For RaboWiki a grass roots introduction strategy is chosen, whereby a small group of enthusiastic employees convinces others about the added value of wikis, based on their own experiences.

Step 1: Identify key user groups

Step 2: Identify & analyze key figures

Step3: Turn key figures into “evangelists”

Step 4: Turn “evangelists” into trainers

Step 5: Stimulate (unintended) use

For more information

For more information about the RaboWiki case contact Robert Slagter: robert.slagter@telin.nl, +31 53 4850 488.

Future Workspaces organizes, together with IBM, a workshop on Enterprise Social Software. The workshop will be held on Wednesday September 17, from 9:30 to 12:30 hours at IBM The Netherlands, Amsterdam. The workshop is not an introduction into blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and social networking: instead it is aimed at sharing knowledge and experiences with the introduction and usage of such social tools within enterprises. A large part of the workshop will be devoted to sharing experiences and learning from each other. We hope you can join and share your insights and experiences.

Please visit the workshop wiki at http://workspace.telin.nl for the full programme, the list of participants and a list of topics the participants would like to discuss.