The Maker Movement
Welcome everyone! This post is part of my wider series on how to implement low-code not just from a technology and process perspective, but also for a people enablement and adoption perspective to truly maximise value from the platform - This post gives an overview of the structured approach I’ve defined and how I’m breaking down my blog posts
Holistic Low-Code Enablement - Blog structure and navigation — EmPOWER Your World
EDIT - Since writing this original post I’ve upversioned it - You can find the updated post here : https://www.empoweryour.world/blog/enablement-engine
Sorry for the delay in this latest post folks! I’ve been out on PTO exploring the fantastic Cape Cod and Boston, MA, USA! Kayaking, Whale watching (HUMPBACKS 😍!!!), ice creams, beach, a few shops, theatre, Duck Tour, Harvard, lobster, and most importantly fun times with friends and family 😊 Now I’m back, caught up and getting myself ready for 4 speaking events where I’ll be talking about Maker Enablement! Check out my Events pages to see where I’m speaking either virtually or in person!)
Anyway… Let’s get back to the topic of Maker Enablement! We’ve had a look at the difference between a Centre of Excellence and Centre of Enablement, how maker enablement needs to be built on a scalable governance foundation, how we can look at the value of the Power Platform not just from a solution value perspective but also the people / organisational, and IT value too. Then we had a look at how we can structure those value outcomes through a vision, strategy, roadmap and OKRs, and the slipped into the Organisational Change Management world and started exploring Top-Down vs Bottom-Up enablement, and introduced you to the concept of Viral Change (It’s also important to point out that the term ‘Viral Change’ is a trademark owned by Dr Leandro Herrera who has done LOADS around the concept of using Peer-to-Peer networks to transform organisations, and whose books I found completely by accident earlier this year and can thoroughly recommend! Go and check him, and his organisation ‘The Chalfont Project’ out to learn more!)
We’re now going to start looking at ‘The Maker Movement’ which is a framework of activities that I’ve used to successfully enable people and organisations by establishing new behaviours, enabling those new behaviours to help people be successful, and then reinforcing those behaviours.
The Maker Movement
In this post I’m going to give a high level overview of the components and describe how we can use them iteratively to grow adoption / enablement over time and how a thriving community is central to that.
THE CENTRE OF IT ALL
Community - This is critical! This is how we bring people together. Our community is not just makers but also leaders, governance teams, IT teams, potential makers and leaders… basically any one interested in the Power Platform! This is where we want to make things visible - Use cases, learning resources and approaches, successes, challenges, questions, answers… We want these things to be visible as we want to ‘work out loud’ and establish a safe place where people are encouraged to, are happy to, and WANT TO share and to help each other. It’s often the case that ‘Knowledge is Power’ we want to establish a culture where ‘SHARING knowledge is Power’ and helps all of us!
ESTABLISH BEHAVIOURS
Leader -These may be senior leaders or business leaders who set direction for the organisation or teams but as we spoke about in the Viral Change section we might not have all the leaders aligned and understanding the change… These leaders are people who are showing the leadership behaviours we’re looking for… Setting direction, inspiring people, encouraging and enabling the success of others… These may be people managers but equally they could be anyone with a network of contacts, or with infectious energy, charisma, influence, ideas who others follow.
People - These are our most important people who we’re trying to establish new behaviours in. We’re trying to change the world one person at a time. We’re designing for an individual and scaling. They could be our ‘shirtless Dancing Guy’ who I shared the video of in my Viral Change post, or the ‘first followers’ who are mentioned in that video.
These are our makers, our SMEs, our potential makers, our champions. These could be people who want to be citizen developers, people who are great at coming up with use case ideas, people who are great at designing and user experience. They could be people who have an interest in how we govern, secure data, keep people’s privacy.
This step is about identifying them, attracting them, inspiring them, showing the paths that others have trodden to help them understand how to start, what direction they might go in and why it might be interesting.
ENABLE BEHAVIOURS
Educate - Once we’ve got people interested, or continuing to keep them interested, we need to teach them stuff…. This might be teaching them about the platform, it’s uses, it’s capabilities, what value it could release… Or it could be how to analyse a problem, how to design the data that will make it all work, or how to engage with users to understand their pain points and what would make a digital solution AWESOME for them. It could be how to start using the maker portals to build stuff, how to use components, how you use solutions, how you publish….. Or it could be teaching them HOW to learn in a world where the platform, the maker portal, the capabilities and features, are rapidly evolving… How we bring the way we learn OUTSIDE of the office into how we can learn INSIDE the office.
Solve Problems - So once we’ve got aware, motivated, and educated people… Let’s help them be successful! There is no buzz quite like the one of seeing someone sharing with you their first app or flow. Seeing the fire and excitement in their eyes! How do we do that? Help them recognise a Power Platform opportunity, how to approach it, how to plan it, how to design it… then how to develop it, support it, maintain it, measure it!
By helping them be successful with their first solution they will get that dopamine hit of excitement and want to find another one and keep learning, solving problems, and having successes!
REINFORCE BEHAVIOURS
Celebrate - People have been brave - They’ve put them outside of their comfort zone, they’ve owned their own development, they’ve created a solution for their colleagues, or perhaps they’ve encouraged their team to try something new. Perhaps they’ve helped someone else to start learning or have helped them overcome a challenge. We want to celebrate people demonstrating the behaviours we’re trying to establish.
Our celebrations can be small and personal directly to the person, or they could be big and using story telling to the whole organisation through multiple formal, or informal, comms channels, or anything in between.
Share - To create viral adoption we want to make sure the stories around the people, the leaders, the use cases, the learning approach etc are shared far and wide. Ideally by others, not the PP team. We want to encourage the behaviour of people sharing their own stories, their knowledge, their ideas, their problems, their successes. Sharing them with their friends and colleagues, with their peers, with their leaders, with other communities to encourage others to follow their steps and be inspired to start their own journey to educate and solve problems, and to help others.
These are the basic principles of the Maker Movement. Over the coming articles we’ll get into more detail around each of these elements and bring them to life and help people understand how they might use them to grow adoption and enable people.
