I sifted through my news feeds this morning and came across an article from a fellow SharePoint blogger about motivating Information Workers to use SharePoint. The original article is here:
EndUserSharePoint
Also included in the article was a video presentation from the TED group about what drives worker motivation, which is a challenge many businesses face today with the advent of social networking, on-demand access to information, and the rapid pace of business. I believe that the speaker's presentation was very telling of what motivates the modern-day workforce, and it prompted me to think more about the importance of that motivation in the success of a SharePoint deployment.
The SharePoint Server platform can be extremely beneficial in attacking so many business issues - including the question of worker motivation - when it's designed/deployed well and properly evangelized at all levels of the business. That last part - evangelization - is a key aspect that is often sacrificed in lieu of the myriad of responsibilities that today's workforce encounters.
When that evangelism of SharePoint is lost, the end result is a severely diminished return on the company's investment. All too often this puts into motion a negative chain reaction:
-the IT department, who most likely saw the initial vision for SharePoint, bears the initial backlash from the group that funded the vision
-if a deployment/customization partner was involved, the failed deployment reflects poorly on the partner because the customer didn't get the benefits they were expecting
-SharePoint as a platform suffers, because any company that goes through an expensive/underutilized/unsuccessful SharePoint deployment will not only view *their* deployment from a negative, money-wasting standpoint, but they will likely feel that way about the platform in general... this can lead to negative word of mouth and negative publicity
The ill effects resulting from a failed SharePoint deployment can be devastating. For those individuals and organizations out there that truly understand the value in the platform, seeing a negative outcome to a customer engagement is extremely disheartening.
Internal evangelism of SharePoint requires key players within the organization to A) understand and believe in the vision of a collaborative, creative, efficient work environment and B) a real passion to see that vision manifested into a functional environment - an environment that is dynamic and constantly improving thanks to the collective knowledge and creativity of the entire workforce.
Herein lies the beauty of SharePoint - when the workforce understands and believes that SharePoint is a "place" to implement their great ideas for improving the company, they'll be empowered, excited, and exponentially more productive. Workflow timeframes will shorten, a company's return on their investment in the workforce will increase, and the employees will directly see and feel their impact on that success.
If you're using SharePoint now - either as a pilot or as an enterprise-wide platform, it is essential to ask yourself if you're getting the maximum benefit from the platform on a daily basis. "Maximum Benefit" isn't measured by site collections, documents, or any other traditionally measured end-result - it is achieved through perpetual user adoption and engagement - the results of which will be perpetually demonstrated in increased productivity and profit.