I was intrigued by a post by Mike Crocker on the Jive Software Clearstep site on "Getting More Executives Using Communities" commenting on another post by Steve Borsch.

This article reminded me of an experience with Lotus Notes, early in its adoption cycle.

Trying to find an application to win over executives, IT applied impeccable logic and decided that Lotus Notes had virtual discussions, executives had lots of meetings therefore executives could use the discussion application to conduct their meetings, saving time and money.

Of course, no executive would swap a meeting for a discussion thread. An executive’s strengths were in people skills, reading body language, non-verbal communication, assessing the person, their character, and their ability to fully grasp and implement a plan.

At the time, this perspective was lost to IT, which saw information more distinctly from its context.

It’s not that those executives were opposed to using technology.

If IT understood these underlying requirements and an application to help schedule, plan, and prepare for meetings was implemented, it would have been far more successful.

Steve Borsch’s article reminds us that different users have different personal as well as professional requirements from applications and the real challenge of communities is balancing these implicit requirements while fulfilling the communities’ purpose.

Executive buy-in is critical to the success of these systems within companies, and it must be made clear how these tools enhance and extend the knowledge and skills within the community, to get things done.