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You’ve just sat down to start your SharePoint governance plan. You’re ready. You’ve had your

coffee, popped your headphones in, phone diverted to voicemail. The cursor is blinking at you,

just crying out for your plan to come to life.

Stop right there! Before you do anything there are four things you absolutely must know. Paul

Culmsee, SharePoint expert, Dialogue Mapper and award-winning author, has come up with four

“home truths” about SharePoint governance that will make the daunting task of developing a

governance plan a whole lot easier.

Some of these you might have already done (don’t you love it when you’re ahead of yourself?)

while others may be not so obvious. The tricky thing about these home truths is that without

them, your whole governance plan may come crashing down. Just like good governance is critical

to the success a SharePoint project, these home truths are the cornerstones of any good

governance plan.

Now that may sound rather overwhelming, especially if you’ve already started your plan. But don’t

worry. We’ll take you through these home truths step-by-step and show you how to implement

them.

So what are these so called home truths?

Let’s have a look.

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The very first thing you need to understand is this: don’t define governance.

Now that may seem nuts to you. You’re about to start on a major SharePoint project. If you don’t

define what governance is how can you ever understand it?

Are you ready for the first SharePoint governance home truth? Here it is:

“The more comprehensive the definition of governance is, the less it will be understood by

anyone”.

There are a couple of problems with trying to define governance. First of all, your idea of

governance may be totally at odds with your CIO’s idea of it. It’s one of those words that is almost

impossible to define like innovation, quality and sustainability.

The other problem you’ll find is that once you try to define

governance, you’re taking your eye off the prize. Remember,

that perfect world in which everyone wants to use

SharePoint? (Hey, everyone’s allowed to dream, aren’t they?)

If you start out thinking “to govern is [insert definition here]

which means I have to do all these things and produce all

these outputs”, then you’re in real danger of producing a

whole lot of documentation that has more value as a

doorstop than anything else. And you’re no closer to

reaching your SharePoint goal.

“The more

comprehensive

the definition

of governance

is, the less it

will be

understood by

anyone”

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So instead of asking what governance is, reframe your question. Ask yourself “what difference is

SharePoint going to make and how does this align to our organisational initiatives?” Once you’ve

answered this you are going to be in a much better place to figure out who needs to do what and

where accountabilities need to be. And then you can concentrate on how to get it done.

Remember that governance is just a means to an end, it is not your ultimate goal. Don’t get

suckered in to over defining it and fall into the trap of producing a plan that is over-engineered

and elaborate.

So there’s your first SharePoint governance home truth.

How was that? Not too painful?

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Here’s our next SharePoint governance home truth:

“There is no point in asking users, who don’t know what they want, to say what they want.”

If you ask your users what they want SharePoint to do, they’ll probably come up with something

like “improve collaboration” which doesn’t tell you much. This may be because they hear these

kinds of platitudes way too often in SharePoint projects (more on that topic later). The more likely

explanation is that they probably don’t know what they want. Yet.

Don’t worry, they’ll get there eventually. With some help from you of course.

To get your users to tell you what they really want, you’ll first need to understand a bit more

about how their minds work (as scary as that sounds).

Cognitive Learning 101

Very few of us learn in a linear fashion. Despite this, there are a

lot of methodologies that suggest following an orderly process

is the best way to work. You begin by understanding the

problem which might involve gathering and analysing

requirements from customers or users. Once you have the

problem specified and the requirements analysed, you are

ready to formulate a solution and eventually implement that

solution. Very neat and tidy.

Many project managers, cheque signers and just about every program management office around

will try to operate this way because it promises order, certainty and control. And fair enough when

your performance is being judged by getting stuff done to an agreed time and cost. There is only

one teeny issue. For some scenarios, it simply doesn’t work.

“There is no

point in asking

users, who

don’t know

what they

want, to say

what they

want”

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Most of us follow a much more non-linear learning style. Especially when a problem is new or

novel.

Let’s say you are researching why the sky is blue, something you know very little about. Would

you go to the library, read all the books you can find on the subject in order of date published,

formulate a solution and write it? You are probably more likely to read something, follow a

reference to somewhere else, speak to someone researching the same thing and get scared

because you’ve realised you’ve focused on the wrong thing, drink a whole lot of coffee, do a bit

more research and slowly, solutions begin to emerge.

Sound familiar?

This diagram from Dr. Jeffrey Conklin, an expert in collaborative technology research, shows the

difference between these two patterns of problem solving:

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SharePoint is a green line problem

If a problem is new and it’s unclear what hurdles you might encounter along the way, like most

SharePoint projects often are, people’s understanding of the problem is probably going to

change along the way. And this is going to keep happening.

People will go through a cycle of looking for solutions to help them understand the problem, and

as they discover these, their understanding of the problem changes. You might hear your users

say “actually now that I think about it, the real problem is x”. They are merely following the green

line as they figure out what their real problem is.

The most important lesson in all this is: don’t punish people for trying to improve their

understanding of them problem. If someone changes their view of the problem and you hit them

with the metaphorical baseball bat known as the scope change, they will eventually disengage

from you. A pity your solution will go away with them but hey, it was in scope right? This constant

change may be frustrating for you, but keep in mind this is a natural part of problem solving. Your

users aren’t changing their mind on a whim, nor are they trying to punish you.

Don’t fight the green line

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Here’s how to cope with your users changing path without ending up huddled in the corner.

Involve stakeholders from the

start and throughout the project. After all they are the ones that

have to live with the result and their take-up is presumably a key success

criteria.

Expect fluid requirements and

scope change. Try to be adaptable and put yourself in their

shoes.

Expect resistance and pullback - people

put more value on what they’re going to lose than what they’re going to

gain.

Get a shared understanding of the

problem through techniques like dialogue mapping (more on that

later in this eBook!)

If you follow this advice, you will soon start to see your users’ behaviour change, and hopefully for

the better.

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Here are some positive changes you might see which are key indicators you’re doing something

right:

You might start to notice your

users’ questions are more informed

- this is a reflection of their increased knowledge as well as your ability to

teach.

Then your users might start asking

you questions you don’t know the

answer to. Before you panic, don’t worry, they won’t expect all

the answers from you. Most great working relationships are great

because they are two sided – so your users starting a dialogue with you

just shows that you have started to create a collaborative partnership.

And finally your users start teaching you

stuff. Like what they have done with SharePoint that you have

never done or didn’t know you could do.

Once this starts to happen, don’t be sad your users don’t need you as much, be happy you’ve

helped them. Set those SharePoint babies free!

Remember, don’t fight the green line. When we ask users to define their requirements from the

outset and make it difficult for them to change their mind along the way, we are asking them to

conform to a style of problem solving that just isn’t natural for them or for a complex project like

SharePoint.

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3

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I’m going to give you a challenge. Let’s imagine that your SharePoint project’s goal is “to

implement SharePoint to improve collaboration”. Not an uncommon goal. Now I’m going to ask

you a question and you have to answer within 10 seconds. Ready? “How will you know when your

SharePoint project has been successful?”

Go!………..

Did you succeed? I’m guessing not. (If you answered “people are collaborating”, I’m sorry but that

doesn’t qualify).

Now imagine you were in charge of getting your team to the moon. Although it may sometimes

seem like a SharePoint deployment is on par with a lunar landing, you’ll probably agree the moon

landing is much larger in scope, cost and degree of innovation and engineering. Yet if we ask you

the same question “How will you know when your moon landing is a success?” you’d probably be

able to answer me in a snap: we landed on the moon and we returned to earth.

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So why is one so much harder to answer than the other? The answer is our third SharePoint

governance home truth: “The longer it takes to come up with a measure of success, the more

likely it is you’ve created a false goal and your project will fail.”

Improved collaboration is a false goal. These false goals

(also known as platitudes) abound in the corporate

world and unfortunately they seem to be breeding. You

know the ones, those prosaic, Confucius-like statements

that sound significant but don’t actually say anything.

Here’s a personal favourite: it is what it is. They may

sound really impressive but they’re usually just a

collection of words strung together to form an empty

statement. Give this corporate mission statement

generator a whirl and you’ll see what we mean.

[http://www.netinsight.co.uk/portfolio/mission/missgen_intro.asp]

You may have heard more than one bandied about during a SharePoint meeting. You may have

even been guilty of spouting one yourself. Come on, be honest, we won’t tell.

Give yourself an eye roll if you’ve heard any of these:

Improved Business Processes

Best Practice Collaboration

Enhanced Document Management

“The longer it

takes to come up

with a measure of

success, the more

likely it is you’ve

created a false

goal and your

project will fail”

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IT speak IT, not platitudes

Speaking in platitudes might be OK for some, but when you’re dealing with an IT team this simply

won’t fly. Why? Because they are so used to working on projects with concrete, measurable

outcomes.

Consider the following common IT projects:

Replacing your old email system with Microsoft Exchange

Consolidating Active Directory

Replacing your old phone system with a Voice over IP system

Upgrading your storage area network to new infrastructure

All of these are like the moon example above. None of them are easy. In fact you need specialist

expertise to get them successfully implemented. But the criteria for success is fairly clear and

unambiguous. For example, if emails come in and go out of everyone’s inboxes, Exchange is

usually a success. If you can pick up the phone, get a dial tone and make a call, then the VOIP

upgrade has been a success.

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So when you serve up a platitude as a goal to your IT team and say “deliver this”, they have little

choice but to deliver something big and cumbersome because they are the ones who have to try

and account for the ambiguity. As a result, they will try to develop a ‘flexible architecture’ that

ends up being hugely complex, takes ages and rarely stands the test of time.

So what to do? There’s a very simple way to bust this platitude game wide open.

Reframe the question

As tempting as it may be to ask your user to explain just how to “improve collaboration” and

watch them sweat for a minute, as we’ve just seen this is futile. Platitudes can’t be defined,

remember?

Instead, ask your user “If we had [insert platitude here] how

would things be different to now?” You’ll find that you start to get

answers like increased x, decreased y. Now that is something you

can work with to start formulating real, measurable goals.

So let’s give it a go.

If you asked your user “if you had improved collaboration, how

would things be different to now? You might get an answer like

this: “We would have increased adoption”

Beware of this one! Those of you with finely tuned platitude detectors will notice this is another

false goal. Don’t let this fool you, you may just need to dig a bit deeper to find the real answer.

“If we had

[insert

platitude

here] how

would things

be different

to now?”

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Ask again “And what difference would that make to things?” Keep prodding, as many times as

you need, to find your true goal.

Here are some other really useful questions you could ask:

What aspects should we consider

with this initiative to [insert platitude here]?

If we were unconstrained, how would

we solve this problem?

No matter what happens, what else do we

need to be aware of?

What are the things that keep you up at

night?

[Thanks to Susan Hanley for this gem of a question!]

What is the intent behind [some blocker]?

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The seeds of doom are sown from the start

The seduction of a platitude is strong. Like a freshly popped tube of Pringles. Many have been

entranced by some nice sounding desirable future state incorporating a superlative like

“improved quality” or “best practice collaboration”. It may feel like you’ve done a whole bunch of

good work in a day but everyone goes home still unaligned as to what they’re actually supposed

to achieve. And this is a very dangerous place to find your SharePoint team in.

If you start off with an unmeasurable goal, unfortunately the seeds of doom are sown from the

very beginning. What is so mind-boggling is how often the platitude problem is misattributed.

Project teams will commit significant time and money into a project that is chasing a platitude,

and when things inevitably go haywire, they will blame the process, methodology, people…

everything but the mirage at the root of it all.

We’re almost there (phew!) just one more SharePoint governance home truth to go.

Here we go.

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There is one SharePoint governance home truth to rule them all. And here’s the kicker - if you

don’t follow this one none of the other home truths will save you.

Ready? Brace yourself:

“Where there is a lack of shared understanding among participants of a problem, you will never

get the shared commitment you need to see a solution through.”

Shared commitment is what gives us the energy and drive to see things through. It’s why most

organisations have a mission statement and why animals hunt in packs. When your boot camp

instructor threatens everyone with more push-ups if someone wimps out, it’s the reason you

tough it out for the good of the group. As the kids say, we’re all in this together.

Once you have shared commitment, a lot of the other

elements of your SharePoint project become a formality.

Goal setting, getting executive buy-in, user adoption,

they’ll all start to flow.

However shared commitment is a stubborn beast, it isn’t

something that can be forced. Just because we ask (or

sometimes tell) the team to be committed, doesn’t mean

they’re going to be truly committed. So how do you make

everyone want to get down on bended knee and commit

to your SharePoint project once and for all? Like our home

truth says, to get true commitment for your project, you

must first have a shared understanding of the problem.

“Where there is

a lack of shared

understanding

among

participants of

a problem, you

will never get

the shared

commitment you

need to see a

solution

through”

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Unpack the problem

There are a few ways to get a shared understanding of your SharePoint problem. Sure, you could

just ask everyone what the problem is, but just like those false goals we discussed earlier, the real

problem is often hiding. It takes a bit of work to unpack the problem.

One technique that many people working on SharePoint projects find useful is dialogue mapping.

If you remember those mind maps your 5th grade teacher loved, you know what I’m talking about.

The ones with a word in a big puffy cloud in the middle and all the related words shooting off

from it. Dialogue mapping is a bit like that, just not as fancy-free.

Here’s how it usually works: A facilitator comes in and sits in front of a big screen with a keyboard,

asks you a question like “what should the best practice be around SharePoint customisation?”

They capture the idea, any arguments against this idea, and any supporting statements.

Question, idea, pro, con.

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Dialogue mapping essentially paints a picture of your discussion and organises random thoughts

into orderly groups. Most importantly, it shows the rationale behind a decision which is crucial to

creating a shared understanding of the problem. Here’s one of Paul Culmsee’s dialogue maps.

See how he has ordered all sides of a complex discussion into an orderly and pretty good looking

diagram?

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The serial repeater: The guy in

the meeting that keeps giving

you the same answer no matter

what the question is. Dialogue

mapping helps you capture the

question, acknowledge it and

move on. The next time the serial

repeater asks his question you

can refer him back to the map

and ask him if he’d like you to

add anything to his original

thought. Repetition gone.

4

Four reasons dialogue mapping rocks:

It not only shows the decision made, it shows all the options you’ve

looked at, and their pros and cons.

At the end of it you get a visual artefact that you can keep (and put on

the fridge if you like). It serves as a reminder of your decision which is

handy when people start floating off track. It’s also useful for those

meetings that span multiple days. You can saunter in on day two without

having to climb the mountain again because you’ve got a something to

start with.

And it will make your meetings super productive by tackling two of the

most irritating people who seem to always pop up in meetings:

And most importantly, your users will have a shared understanding of the

problem and are more likely to have a shared commitment to achieving

the solution.

1

2

3 The grenade lobber: The person

that derails the whole meeting by

steering it in the direction they

want it to go in. Shattering your

well thought-out agenda into tiny

pieces. When the grenade lobber

pops up, capture the question (or

more likely the comment) or even

better link it to another thought

in the map, then move on. Your

grenade lobber won’t know what

hit him.

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The best thing about this technique is it’s a life skill. It works particularly well for SharePoint

projects but once you master it you can apply it to any problem solving situation. Although

we probably wouldn’t advise using it to sort out your relationship problems unless you have

a very patient partner. By involving your team in understanding your SharePoint problem

rather than defining it for them, you’re more likely to have a team with a shared commitment

to achieving your SharePoint goal. Now that’s a force to be reckoned with!

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So there you have it, the four home truths of

SharePoint Governance.

When you think about it, they aren’t that complex. And they certainly aren’t hard to

implement into your plan. But with a bit of massaging and reframing the way you view

things, you should be well on your way to SharePoint governance success.

There are actually many more SharePoint governance home truths but we know you have

lots of important work to do and we wouldn’t want to distract you from that.

Luckily for you, Paul Culmsee is presenting at Share, a SharePoint conference for business

users just like you. And guess what he’s presenting on? You guessed it, governance.

18 - 20 November 2013 | Crown Promenade, Melbourne

www.shareconference.com/au

@Share4Business

Share for Business

Share Conference [

[

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WIKIPEDIA IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

Don’t try to define governance. It will only confuse

you and before you know it you’ll have created a

whole lot of documentation that has little worth.

DON’T ASK USERS WHAT THEY

WANT, THEY DON’T KNOW (YET)

In the world of SharePoint, problems are never black

and white. It’s going to take people a while to

understand the problem and this might change

along the way. Be patient. Be flexible.

BEWARE OF PLATITUDES DRESSED

AS GOALS

Platitudes masquerading as SharePoint goals are

dangerous. They lure you into thinking you’re doing

some really exciting and important work and before

you know it, you've sunk a lot of time and effort with

nothing to show for it. Be a SharePoint goal

archaeologist and dig a little deeper to find the real

goal.

SHARED UNDERSTANDING =

SHARED COMMITMENT

Shared understanding is the ultimate success

indicator. If you don't have shared understanding,

everything you do afterward is highly unlikely to work.

It’s only when everyone understands what they are

working towards can your project truly succeed.

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Paul Culmsee is an IT professional

and sense-maker with over 21 years’ experience.

He’s well-known for his strategic focus on

SharePoint governance, information architecture,

ROI and SharePoint delivery, and for his blog

Clever Workarounds.

He is one of only four CogNexus Certified

Dialogue Mappers in the world and is the

author of award winning book The Heretic's

Guide to Best Practices: The reality of solving

complex problems in organisations.

Paul is speaking at Share Conference on SharePoint Governance Home Truths - the top five reasons

SharePoint governance efforts fail. And will be leading a full day workshop on becoming the ultimate

SharePoint BA by using dialogue mapping to elicit requirements, bring clarity to your users & techies and

make SharePoint SING. Find out more at http://www.shareconference.com/au

Connect with Paul:

Blog: http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/

Twitter: @paulculmsee

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/585/355

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