The conquest for information worker productivity part 3

Hail thee fellow SharePoint information worker heroes!

This is the 3rd part of the "Conquest for information productivity" Article. In the first post, I wrote about conginitive readiness, so having the knowledge how to slay the dragon to save the princess. In the second article I wrote about having the right tools to accomplish your quest of honour. In the 3rd and last part of this article I will write about the mindset or attitude which ultimately will drive you forward to plunge your sword into the heart of the dragon of SharePoint un-productivity. :-)

May peace favour your swords, fellow heroes...

Changing the attitude and mindset of people to motivate them to use a certain product is tricky and definitely not an easy task to accomplish. Many many software houses are looking here for the magic sword, but that one is rarely found and even more rarely pulled out of the rock. With SharePoint we have here quite a wall to climb. The general attitude from information workers towards the use of SharePoint is not very positive. People find it hard to use, not very intuitive, nor very human friendly user experience. 
Ok, now one can say that if the user knows how to work the tool and the SharePoint infrastructure is built stable and the right taxonomy is in place, this will have a positive impact on the attitude of the end user who then might use the tool.
Quite often it is also the case that end users are just overwhelmed from the vastness of functionalities SharePoint has to offer. They don't see the forest, because there are too many trees. In this case it is very important to show the user those functionalities which have the most use for them and try to ignore the others. Another good way is to actually define common and special "User Stories". Define User stories and define the value of each and every user story conducted on SharePoint. Once the end user sees the value of certain actions, the attitude will change by itself. Users start to use the tool by themselves and can come up with very creative ways how to further optimise the presentation of information stored in SharePoint for example.

Now let's look at this through the "Technology Acceptance Model" from Davis F.D., Bagozzi R.P. and Warshaw P.R. They have put this all in a neat looking graphic.

So the actual system use you can derive from its simplicity, its perceived usefulness, this has an impact on the personal attitude towards a system. All these combined results in the intension to use and then in the actual system use. Having said that, the "external variables" might have the biggest impact on the actual system use. Everyone of us can have a bad day and then productivity is naturally low, despite on how good the system might be and how big my brains are or what an awesome person I am. :-)

Ok you might think now this is all fine and makes sense, but what could I do in practice to increase end user adoption and user engagement with SharePoint?
Here are a few examples:

• SharePoint lets you work from wherever you are and whenever you want. Some people are just more productive in a non-office environment. Let them be out there and let them have autonomy. Autonomy is a very important motivation factor and also creates trust between the company and its employee. Instead of just having casual Fridays, how about having a remote work Friday? Of course social interaction at work is very important for team building. So being all the time cut off from your team is not very good either. But finding the right balance is the key here as in so many things in life.
• SharePoint allows social networking. Especially with SharePoint 2013 you have very useful and powerful features which allows you to connect with your colleagues and share content faster and easier. One can say it's all about networking. The same rule applies for within the company. Cultivate your network also within the Organization and you can be sure that you might end up in very interesting projects or new job opportunities.
• SharePoint is a communication tool. Use it for that! It's not only a web based document management tool where I put documents in folders and then cannot find them anymore. When we work, we communicate. Every e-mail, every chat message, every item we put in our calendar is communication. To raise productivity, tailor your information architecture in a way that you don't need to look for information. Present it on a silver tablet to your end users. They will love that. Especially that they have more time on more important work. Like that users feel productive and productive users feel happy, because they have accomplished something.
• Gamification! Everyone talks about Gamification nowadays. Gamification offers a powerful set of mechanics and tools to drive end user engagement and motivation. It uses mechanics of games in a non game environment to boost productivity, motivation and loyalty. There are already many products out there which offer Gamification elements for SharePoint, for instance Badgeville. Gamification is a super interesting topic and can be used perfectly to gamify user actions in SharePoint intranets. You will definitely hear more about this topic in this blog :-).

Conclusion

Ok, I have now the knowledge, the tools and the attitude to go and slay the dragon and save the princess from the dragons fiery breath. The only way to really get there is to pick up the sword, face the danger and go for it. Without action there is no reaction. If you know you can do good things with SharePoint, then do it, and show it the others what you have done and empower them to do same or even smarter things. This will help you to slay the dragon in no time!

SharePoint, strength and honor

Ser Jussi