Howard Lenos writes about the 90-9-1 rule as a benchmark for assessing participation in online communities. Here’s a comment I left on his post that looks at how the rule changes inside organizations:

One point about the 90-9-1 rule that I see in my consulting work inside organizations: the ratio is quite different. The ratio trends toward 60% knowledge champions (people who contribute most often), so the focus needs to be on the 40% that contribute occasionally or only passively read content.

There’s work to be done here, but the existing structure in organizations – unlike online communities on the open web – helps influence people to become more active contributors. For instance, if everyone on your team is using the wiki for meeting agendas & minutes, and you’re the lone holdout, the others will encourage you to use the wiki too. They’ll do it b/c they don’t want that one email they have to deal with from you when everyone else is better connected thanks to the wiki.

The key to success is how they do it – if they’re hard on you for being slow to switch, you might dig your heels in an refuse to succumb. On the other hand, if they show you how to contribute, and give you some direct support, that may be all you needed to get started in the first place.