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Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: Part Two – Change Management Efforts and Results

by Bill Ives

December 11, 2009 at 3:01 am · Filed under Event Announcements

This is the second in a six part series on Booz Allen’s award winning implementation of Enterprise 2.0, termed the Hello.bah.com (Hello). In June 2009, Booz Allen was honored with the Open Enterprise 2009 Innovation Award so it is a good example to explore in depth. In this second post we will look at the change management efforts and results. In future posts we will look at the operational and financial impact, the lessons learned, and plans for enhancements. Walton Smith, the Program Manager of Booz Allen’s information sharing efforts and lead for the Government 2.0 client practice, has agreed to be interviewed for this series and his time is appreciated.

As Walton mentioned in our last post, the challenge is only in part technical. Broad culture change and user input became integral to Hello’s rollout and acceptance within the firm. This is one reason he staffed the team with as many change management people as technical people. Enterprise 2.0 systems are more transformative than many past technologies. Walton said that in the past a person with the most knowledge has power. Now the person with the most connections has power. This is also what Maria Azua found (see The Social Factor by Maria Azua: Enterprise 2.0 Primer).

This transformation has to be both understood and accepted in the organization. Walton related a meeting with 25 partners about the new transparency. One person focused on risk and said a rogue employee could determine the best experts in a topic and then try to recruit them. Another saw the upside of being able to find the right person for a staffing challenge at any point in time, even the middle of the night. For most, the benefits far outweighed the risks.

Hello is not a mandated system like email. It was rolled out in a “soft” launch and then promoted virally. Walton wanted to have good content on the system before many people experienced it. He told the story of Partner who was bit skeptical. He asked her to look into what information the system had in her area. She found over 200 documents, many she was not aware of, and became a supporter.

Much of the promotion was targeted to staff with 5 to 15 years experience as these people have the connections and knowledge to make the system become widely adopted and useful. Walton found that personal meetings worked best, either one on one or in small groups. People did not want to hear about the new tools but rather how their jobs could be made easier and more productive. This is where the advance priming of the system with sufficient content proved useful as the focus of these meetings could be more on the tangible accessing of people and content than the potential of new tools.

Walton started the roll out in the largest office outside of the central offices. He wanted people in the field to feel that the system was for them and supported their needs. He also wanted their input in the early phases to ensure this objective was achieved. I certainly agree and have found that getting field input at the early stages is another critical success factor.

The Hello team used the Prosci change method in conjunction with the enterprise 2.0 adoption curve to drive adoption. Prosci posits that all change occurs at the individual level, thus individual change is necessary to bring about team and organizational transformation. Prosci advocates building strategy around creating Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Action, and Reinforcement (ADKAR). Hello’s change strategy used the ADKAR approach to focus messaging for social media advocates, early adopters, mid-adopters and late adopters. They did not invest in resistors as they either will adopt at their own pace or will continue to resist.

I think this approach makes sense but it is the personal aspects more than the specific methodology that makes this implementation successful. Now more than 80% of the firm has logged into Hello, 53% have added content, and there are more than 4,000 searches on the system every day. These are impressive numbers. In my next post, I will cover the financial and operational impact. For Twitter comment son this series please use the hashtag #bahe20. Thanks.

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Lee WhiteDecember 11th, 2009 at 11:43 am

Bill

Thanks. This is very timely. Working on just this issue at Cisco. I really liked the part about having as many CM people as technical peoiple involved in the implementation.

Looking forward to the next post.

Lee

ffblogDecember 11th, 2009 at 3:01 am

New Post “Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: Part Two – Change Management Efforts and Results” http://bit.ly/6bmwoB