Who uses enterprise social content?

Market surveys indicate that about a third of companies were actively using knowledge based tools in their organization to cut costs, prepare for a greying workforce, etc. Unfortunately the 1:9:90 rule tends to to apply in organizations. The end result all too often is that the senior manager who thought it would be a good idea to use social media ends up being the only contributor, and shortly thereafter the iniative is dropped.

A lot of discussions are now being conducted around the concept of participation. However much is made of encoraging users to be contributors. In my experience users will contribute to a small extent but if they do not learn how to become consumers of new knowledge the diffusion of any innovative or productivity gains will be too small. Training is important to achieve this objective, but active training. Most corporate training is sanatized because its based on lectures. By creating a training that demands user involvement there is more retention and usage.

... stay tuned for a future post over small communities of practice