Today I was writing my monthly Newsletter (this always seems to slide to the last day of the month 😉 ) and as I was re-reading it – I always do, aware of Murphy lurking in the shadows – I noted this passage, relating to choosing a video conferencing system:

Talk to your IT people about your options; but remember that the key thing is user perception and willingness. You may want to raise the subject in a group or staff meeting, and identify what the best usage model would be in the context of their collaboration needs. Then work with IT to implement a setup that would benefit these needs.

It occurred to me suddenly that this advice, which seemed to me so obvious when I penned it, was the exact opposite of what tends to happen in reality in organizations. The way things work with an introduction of innovative IT tools, it is IT that decides what to deploy, and asking the users in advance is seldom practiced. In fact, the innovators and change agents that pull companies forward in adopting new tools tend to decide what would be a cool capability, and they proceed to instigate pilots and demonstrations that will convince management (and IT) to deploy this capability. This is certainly what I saw in the matter of Videoconferencing tools.

In a sense, this is the way to go: often the end users can’t be bothered to realize the benefits of the new technology until they see it in action. Been there: I’ve followed this path many a time. But it’s a pity, because if you were to ask the users up front what technology they need and what its attributes should be to make them use it, you could avoid the many cases where a new technology fails to “catch”.  Been there too…

So: ask your users, and involve them as early as you can in your thinking process about the new IT tools you want to deploy. By Involve, I mean more than surveys: add user reps to any team or task force you have that will affect their computing environment. You will learn much, avoid mistakes, and as a bonus have champions eager to help introduce the new capabilities to their peers.