Christine Morrison will be speaking at the Dachis Group Social Business Summit 2010 about her recent experiences using public social tools at Intuit. She gave us a glimpse of what she’ll be talking about.

The technologies are talked about frequently, but in your experience are the challenges around getting technology to do something specific, or are they around people and processes?

In my experience, the challenge is usually changing people’s attitudes about what matters and why.  Once everyone (or at least critical mass) buys into strategies and tactics, the technical tools are pretty easy to figure out.

Getting diverse constituents to agree on process changes, or new processes can be difficult. Any tips you can share on bringing people together?

The answer is, it depends.

If the goal is to just make a new, first-ever process that’s never been attempted before in your organization happen (and it doesn’t have to be large-scale right off the bat), I recommend a skunkworks operation: prove your case in a limited, low risk way, and use that data to drive adoption across the organization. The overhead in this scenario is a lot easier to achieve: you usually just need one well-placed promoter who is willing to take a risk on a new way of doing things. Some of TurboTax’s most long-term, strategically important social initiatives were launched this way (Live Community and Inner Circle, for example).

If the goal is to get everyone agreeing to and participating in a large scale new process, then it’s critically important to:

1. Strategically choose the people who you want involved (for example, people with a certain skill set or people who are organically “into” what you’re doing already) and get their input early and often so they feel like they’re part of the process.
2. Once kick-off occurs, make sure people who participate get recognized in ways that matter to them (some people like to be mentioned in senior staff meetings, but some people just like a nice t- shirt).
3. Find a way for people to collaborate, even if it’s via email or another online tool.

What would be your best piece of advice to someone who was looking at launching a similar initiative in their own organization?

1. Be really clear on what you’re solving for and why.  The “why” should be a business objective that everyone can buy off on.
2. Don’t be afraid to try new things.
3. Make sure you win over at least 2 VP-level sponsors – one isn’t enough.
4. Bring your humility with you: talking directly to customers online has a way of humbling people and in my experience it’s better to start that way.