"If you can identify who the super-users are, and invite them to be early adopters, this really increases the success rate. We have developed a tool in response to that, an algorithm for identifying who the super-users are within a network with multiple geographical and function areas. These people are key in the uptake of new tools, have an important role in innovation and can synthesise ideas coming out of the organisation. They are information brokers. If you have a merger-and-acquisition situation and you are in charge of integration, you can identify the super-users to find out who you need to speak to first. If the CIO wants to roll out a new wiki, they will want to know who the pilot users should be, get these people together and promote the technology. These people should be recognised and harnessed as resources and given more support."
Supply On Demand
Adam Thilthorpe, professionalism in IT programme manager at the British Computer Society, says super-users tend to start implementing technology when the IT department is not quick enough to respond to needs, whereas "people want it now. The CIO needs to be conversant with what the needs are".
Good PR skills help. "Where there is a technically-savvy workforce, IT is able to make people have the feeling that it is tying in with what they want to do, for example, to have chat rooms. Users feel they are getting value and IT is the enabler and the guardian of funky stuff. When people feel they have to circumnavigate IT is when the problems start."
STA Travel global webmaster Craig Hepburn warns CIOs that the days of complete control of content are starting to be numbered.
"IT definitely needs to employ a different skill set internally. We're interested in engagement metrics and how to understand the power of certain people, both internal users and customers discussing travel on Facebook and travel blogs," says Hepburn.
"Super-users are using blogs to help promote themselves as sales people, for example. We try and create best practice and reward it, and give people the opportunity to come up with ideas. I was put in place to structure local activities and, once we got all the countries online within a content management system, my role then became what we could add on top of that, and to foster their ideas and developments. I am not an IT person and I am interested in what we can do and deliver without huge IT skills. The IT people focus on the server support and databases."
Where staff use of Web 2.0 becomes core business there is the danger of the CIO being left on the sidelines providing nuts-and-bolts support while the technology driving the business is in the hands of the users.
However, from what experienced hands relate, it seems that a CIO with a strong presence across the business should be working to identify and communicate with the super-users who may be the key to helping IT meet business needs.
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