Enterprises are increasingly looking to deploy new collaboration technologies to improve how their employees work together. We present tactical guidelines for ensuring business users accept this technology, and use it effectively to cut costs and improve business performance.

• Your IT organization must collaborate more with users to ensure they accept the proposed collaboration technologies.
• The intended users of workplace applications can turn out to be one of the main problems that threaten the success of rollouts.
• Initial rollouts will be far more successful if they target specific business issues.

• Talk to users about the work they do, not about the functionality they want.
• Separate operational requirements from innovation. Provide explicitly for both.
• Ensure collaboration offerings and services cater for specific processes and roles.
• Make collaboration easy and part of employees' jobs.
• Find and encourage the innate collaborators in the organization.

The users within your organization are likely to be the biggest threat to an easy deployment of workplace collaboration tools. But this issue can be overcome if you combine a variety of approaches. These include directing employee enthusiasm in a constructive way, encouraging collaboration throughout your organization and helping the IT department to allow innovative, value-creating activities to happen.

Enterprises are increasingly looking beyond the most common collaboration tools (primarily e-mail, shared calendaring and instant messaging) to more advanced capabilities like team work spaces, Web/audio conferencing, wikis, blogs and other social software. The intended users of these tools are often one of the main (if not the primary) problems that threaten a project's success. While technology issues can be a concern, especially with emerging forms of collaboration, the main reason for project failures is lack of acceptance from end users. These applications rarely crash or fail in some spectacular way; most often problems tend to build up quietly over time, or usage slowly drops off after the initial introduction. Without specific initiatives to encourage usage, they just slowly fade away.

Users create problems in three main ways.

They resist the introduction of new technologies, primarily by ignoring them.

The concerns that makes users distrust these new capabilities are extremely diverse. Sometimes this wariness comes because they think management will use technologies like presence to monitor when they are at their desks. Others are uncomfortable with the new ways of interaction that these technologies encourage, or even require. Change is always difficult to manage, especially when it introduces new power and influences relationships. We often hear that end users feel no compelling need to use the new capabilities and are not inclined to take the time to learn about them, as learning to use them is heaped on top of the work they are already doing. They are expected to use these new capabilities in the "spare time" that they do not have.

They adopt new technologies too enthusiastically, without regard for issues like security, architecture, compliance or standardization.

While enthusiasm is generally a good thing, too much can lead to problems like redundancy, as users bring in technologies from different vendors that may already be available in-house. Users that find a product they like often end up using it for many different purposes, even when a more appropriate tool is available. Users can show an almost irrational devotion to a product they have found, resisting any attempt to move them to a more standardized platform or resisting minor changes in the user interface. While too much enthusiasm can lead to problems, it is generally easier to address than studied indifference. Encourage innovation by providing a safe "sandbox" for eager adopters to play in, or by creating specific projects to try out new possibilities. Directing energy onto a productive path in this way is easier than trying to create enthusiasm where none exists.

They find ways around rules and restrictions developed by IT organizations, particularly when these rules are applied with a heavy hand.

As end users become increasingly IT-literate, they are chafing at IT limitations (see "Gartner Clients Substantially Reject Tight Control Over Users"). In some cases, active resistance is the unfortunate consequence of the IT department's sometimes overzealous efforts to prevent use of consumer and other non-approved software. When IT departments put barriers in place preventing use of innovative software without providing an alternative, users find ways around those barriers. This effect is closely related to the overenthusiasm described above. The solution is also similar. Rather than only telling users what they cannot do, IT departments should provide approved alternatives that do meet IT requirements and concerns. Note 1 describes the kinds of capabilities that early adopters are typically looking for. You should address the enthusiasm for these tools first by providing approved products or at least tolerated alternatives.

Just one of these forms of opposition from end users can be a nuisance, but if two or more of these forms of behavior are present, they can seriously cripple your workplace efforts. Here we describe four best practices for avoiding these pitfalls.

For most users, it is not enough to simply release a product into the enterprise. While some users will figure out how to take advantage of it, the vast majority will not, or will use it ineffectively. Users need to be convinced, even seduced, into using new technologies in much the same way that consumers are convinced that they need soap with a new fragrance; users must be marketed to. Most of the standard techniques available to marketers can be adapted for enterprise use. Write-ups in the company newsletter extolling the exciting reasons to use a new product are comparable to print advertising. Demonstrations at department meetings are similar to TV ads. Demo stands in the lunchroom serve the same purpose as trade shows. Testimonials from colleagues or senior executives are like celebrity endorsements. Using the new technology for a high-profile purpose (an all-hands meeting by the CEO, for example) can have the same impact as a product placement in a popular TV series. Classic training, in either a classroom or e-learning setting, should also not be forgotten.

We often see organizations deploying collaboration tools seemingly at random. This happens because, rather than proactively deciding which tools can provide value, IT departments often simply respond to diverse requests from end users or react to vendor releases. Many deployments thus become solutions looking for a problem. A better strategy is to choose your tools in response to specific issues that the organization is facing. Match the capabilities of the tool to the particular issue. Products deployed in this way have a much higher chance of demonstrating value and user acceptance.

For example, organizations struggling with how to get employees in different locations to work together more closely, while saving costs, should consider investing in Web and videoconferencing technologies that bridge these geographical gaps. These could be supplemented with instant messaging and shared work space tools. When rolling these capabilities out, ensure that everyone knows they are linked to that business objective. Pilot new ways of working with several departments using the new technologies to ensure that they are meeting the requirements, and match how they work.

Currently, collaboration facilities tend to be offered on an ad hoc, voluntary basis; disconnected from the work that people do. Collaboration technologies are made available because someone believes in them or sometimes it is just because the vendor has offered them as part of a larger bundle. When made available in this way, it is up to individual employees to decide if, and how, they need to collaborate, and with whom. However, embedding collaboration directly within business applications and directing, or at least suggesting, when collaboration would help, and with whom, greatly increases the likelihood of collaboration happening.

For example, some companies make Web conferences a standard part of their project management methodologies. When the project reaches a certain milestone (for example, when design or user acceptance projects are completed), a meeting held by Web conference reviews the status before a project proceeds to the next step. This conference is not voluntary or accidental; it is a standard part of the process. Another best practice is to require project participants to post status or design documents in a team work space to meet a deadline. In this way, the collaboration tools become part of the way work gets done, rather than a supporting mechanism for work that gets done elsewhere. When designed in this way, use of collaboration tools is virtually assured.

User attitudes are not your only challenge. The attitude of your own IT department can also dissuade employees from using your collaboration tools. Because the demands placed on IT departments for the past few years have focused on issues of cost reduction, risk elimination, control and compliance, most IT departments have unproductive attitudes toward deploying collaboration technologies. Thus, when they provide these tools, they often more or less dump them on users, without any thought as to how this relates to the work that employees are doing. Users are expected to make the connections themselves as to what, and who, is useful.

Beyond those sanctioned tools, the initial reaction to all other technologies is obstruction. Anything but the approved list of products is forbidden. These reactions are indicative of the most important priorities assigned to IT departments from senior management. They can be summarized as "Do anything necessary to prevent bad things from happening." This risk-averse standpoint is responsible for many of the overly repressive policies we see in place today.

These attitudes need to change to a more collaborative relationship between your IT department and your end users. By understanding and becoming more involved in business processes, IT planners can guide how collaboration tools are introduced to the organization. Eventually, IT priorities must shift to "How do we allow innovative, value-creating activities to happen in a way that won't endanger the enterprise or its operations?" Once this shift occurs, it is much less likely that the IT organization will be an inhibiting factor.

• Devise a strategy to deal with the three main problems caused by end users.
• Find ways to leverage the energy of enthusiasts before imposing limitations.
• Embed collaboration in the business process; don't expect employees to use it in their spare time, or to figure out when the capabilities should be used.
• Develop a more collaborative relationship between the IT department and end users.