Art of Adoption

Whelp it has been a while. So first up, a little recap of these things that determine your Goals for a SharePoint Intranet and what has been discussed so far.

1. 1. Business goals versus platform goals

   2. Audience clarity

   3. Social & Engagement goals

   4. AI-readiness as a goal

   5. Success definition

Alright Social Time! Let’s gather around with a nice cup of tea and a stroopwafel and talk the day away! Sounds good, buuuttt quite impossible to execute on an Intranet wouldn’t it? Wish it could, but what we can do is ask ourselves:
“What does “social” mean for your organization?”

Does it mean people can comment on news posts? Do you want communities for social engagement and “off-work” topics? Is a platform for knowledge sharing something to call “social?”, or would you rather go for a means to show recognition to each other? Whatever way you may look at the social component of your intranet, one thing is really important to keep in mind.

“Social intranets fail when participation is assumed, not designed”

Truth be told, most organizations don’t really design a social intranet. They enable some features and hope behavior automatically follows. They just turn the comments on, create a community or two and make sure a “knowledge sharing hub” exists somewhere in the burrows of their intranet. And then they ask themselves “why is nobody using it?”. Well…cause they didn’t design participation, they switched something on. And this is bound to fail, because people don’t know:

• What belongs where

• What is worth sharing

• Who is responsible for what?

And then these lovely people simply…don’t participate. Users need clarity before they contribute, not after. People don’t share in systems they don’t understand, or trust. This loops back to the previously discussed business goals and audience clarity. If you know what your intranet is meant to do ánd show the right things to the right people, the relevance heightens. And guess what? It so happens that high relevance tends to get more participation points, but not by itself.
It needs some behavioral design, which means…adoption! For both end-users, content owners and, while you’re at it, take your application managers along as well. Create some habits, rituals and expectations. Set examples for expected behavior, design some reward or recognition systems and, most importantly, set routines.
Participation isn’t a personality trait, it’s a designed and reinforced habit.

Do I hear a: “How do I apply these things to my SharePoint intranet platform?”. Let’s take a look at some pointers.

1. Define your social goals explicitly. If you don’t define the expected behaviour, don’t expect it.

2. Reduce friction to contribute by showing people clear entry points, where to post, how to post.

3. Make it safe to contribute by creating clear ownership, predictable access and other (more on this later).

4. Create visible feedback loops by answering comments, acknowledging contributions and improving content. Without feedback, no iteration, without iteration, no intranet.

5. Embed participation in daily work. Don’t make it an extra effort, but include it in onboarding, in team rituals, in processes. If sharing knowledge feels like extra work, it won’t happen. If it’s part of the work and creates relevance, it becomes normal (the classic “what’s in it for me”).

Of course, in order to realise these “social goals” you’ll need to apply adoption strategies. But what’s also great, is some good structure. Why? Cause structure in your SharePoint Intranet, will benefit users, the adoption of the intranet, the future of your intranet and the usage by AI like Copilot.

So with another part of “Goals” down, let’s take a brief look at AI-readiness as a goal. I say “brief” cause, I foresee that as whole other topic of itself😊

1.1. Business goals versus platform goals

1.2. Audience clarity

1.3. Social & Engagement goals

1.4. AI-readiness as a goal

1.5. Success definition

Alrighty: AI…in particular Copilot as that works great with SharePoint, but hey, these basics work for most systems (yes, even offline). Guess I already mentioned it before, but if users don’t know what belongs where, there’s little context and no contribution. This part applies to both human and AI users.
So structure is a big need. Without it, your intranet is no backbone for either daily work, or for Copilot to get trusty results from.
Without structure, your intranet just becomes chaos and noise. Fun thing, that chaos actually amplifies in spectacular multitude if there’s no human ownership! Duplicates, outdates pages, and of course “version_final_v3_REAL.PDF”. These don’t only kill participation, but they also make sure Copilot will surface that same chaos with confidence.
If you deliberately include Copilot as an explicit driver for your intranet, it becomes a(nother) reason to rethink or redesign your intranet.

In practice it means you design your intranet to:

• Reduce duplicate content

• Improve you Information Architecture

• Clarify your ownership and permissions

• Surface the RIGHT information to the RIGHT people

Only if you take these scenarios as design requirements and not as a surprise outcome, will Copilot become more accurate, will users trust the answers and will AI actually save time.
Aaaandd trust me, I can and will write more about Copilot-readiness, but not today. Cause there is one part of “Goals” still open that I would like to address.

One that is quite often forgotten.

And this is: Success Defnition! *yay*

I am going to keep it short here, but please…don’t…think that “going live” is a goal, or say “well, we’ll know it’s successful when it’s live”.

“Going live” is but a step in the process. Success should be measurable and observational extracts of all the goals combined and held in the light of your audience.

Things to set as success could be:

• Adoption through news, guides and learning tracks

• Reduction in mail

• Faster onboarding for new employees

• Better knowledge findability though centralization and data optimalisation.

And that means planning ahead for your Intranet Journey.
Now that all the goal-stuff has been breach, next time, let’s take a look at planning your Intranet trip.
How will your intranet live, grow and stay relevant?” I’ll tackle that in my next blog post 😊Thanks again for reading and hopefully see you soon!