Globally local - locally global

When "global & local" becomes "common & specific"

How do you handle global and local content on global portal? A question that has as many answers as intranets! However, in my work with many complex, global organizations, I have developed 8 fundamental guidelines.

1. Replace the concept of "global/local" with "common/specific".

"Global" suggests from the top; "local" suggests from the bottom. In reality, global companies have content that is common to all that may have been developed in a “local” part of the organization.

Likewise, content developed globally (by HQ for example) may have a very specific, "local" audience.

Using the terms "common" and "specific" remove the hierarchical angle and make people focus on who needs the content rather than who created it.

2. Think of the global intranet as collection of spaces, with each space having a purpose from the user viewpoint.

Examples of spaces: News, Workplace, Employee Services, About. These spaces will later become the components of the global navigation bar.

Develop several hypotheses, each one with a combination of spaces. You should be able to make a simple statement about each space for each hypothesis: "This space is designed for (user) to (action)". 

An example will show you how important the exact wording is. What follows is 3 different ways of describing the "News" space.

• This space is designed for all employees to be informed about news from the company. (meaning primarily internal communication-driven)
• This space is designed for all employees to be informed about news from and about the company.(meaning both internal and external news sources)
• This space is designed for all employees to share news. (meaning users can contribute news)

Attention: The success of this step depends on having already positioned the intranet and where it fits in the workplace web.

If you are not working within a portal concept, you may think of each "space" as an "intranet site". The conceptual work is the same, because each site must have a specific purpose and scope. You will then have an intranet landscape made up of a collection of intranet sites, many of which will be specific. However, one will be common to all, and will have the content, features and services that are relevant to all employees. It is surprising sometimes to realized how small this may be in volume compared to the specific!

3. Identify the type of content, services and features required for each space.

Do this for all the spaces involved, for all the hypotheses. This will help clarify the real differences. Go into just enough detail to be clear on the purpose of the space.

Each space will have a combination of common and specific content. Some spaces will be primarily common content, others mainly specific. The specific may be driven by geography, profession, organizational. For example:

• The news space will have a few news items relevant to everyone, a few more relevant to the person's country or business division, and others specifically relevant to the person's profession.
• The workplace space will be heavily dependent on profession and organization.

This work can only by done in close collaboration with business and functional managers. Users must also be involved, but not at this stage if your organization is large. They will be involved later as the spaces are developed in detail.

4. Identify the appropriate type and amount of customization.

This will differ for each space and for the landing pages for each space. You will need to distinguish 3 types:

• No customization = same for all
• Implicit customization = controlled by the system, based on user profiles (e.g. geography, profession, organizational unit)
• Explicit customization = controlled by the individual user

Then you need to define who determines the content/services required for each type. Some examples:

• The communication manager may control what everyone in a given country must see
• The global marketing manager will decide what marketing people around the world need to access
• The local marketing person will decide for the local team

Work out general principles at this stage, without actually assigning names. This work is a starting point for some of your governance principles.

5. Sketch out wire frames for the landing pages for the spaces.

This is the fun part where you put pencil to paper. I highly recommend not using computers at this point. Let people sketch the way they see the landing pages. Ask them to add arrows, notes and details about the type of content, who owns it, what type of customization, etc. Keep this work at a high level.

A couple of suggestions:

• Make sure the common content is visible, but give priority to specific over common.
• When you have disagreements, don't force a decision. Draw both ideas. List the advantages and disadvantages of each.

6.Determine the appropriate place for collaboration spaces.

The debate will be: should they be inside the "workplace"-type space, or should they together in an area called "Collaborate"? There are advantages to each. Some companies decide to do both.

Whatever the decision, ensure that they do not become mini silos of their own.

7. Use the "About" space to counter balance the customization of other spaces.

Just as web sites have "About" sections for the public, an intranet should have an "About" space for employees. There are a lot of exciting concepts that can be developed for this.

A major objective is to ensure that people have visibility across the organization. This is the place where business units and teams can present themselves. It can include a section specially designed for new employees. It can be highly user-driven; it can be primarily corporate communication-driven. Senior management can have their own communication platform here.

These choices will depend on your culture, intranet maturity and resources. This section will evolve over time.

8.Attack the home page last!

The home page is the hottest territory on the intranet and will be subject to much debate! It is the "promise" of the intranet. It symbolizes what the intranet is all about.

Examples of decision you need to make:

• It should not be completely news-driven if the intranet is intended to be a work tool.
• It should have some degree of user control if the organizational culture embraces empowering employees.
• It should give "equal billing" to news from headquarters and news from countries and business units if the organization considers itself to be global.

It is critical to leave the home page discussion to the end. It take on real meaning after the other points have been discussed and agreed. 

*****

There are a lot more criteria to be considered, but this post is already too long!

Thank you Adam and Pernilla for asking the question. I welcome contact from any reader who would like to continue the conversation, by commenting here or by email.

Corporations are WAY behind the curve in real-time social media

This article is a must-read for intranet managers: Is "Social Media" Really Changing the World? by Jared Cohen.

Here are some quotes to whet your appetite. Cohen says:

"'Social media' is merely a way to describe new tools in an old and narrow paradigm where we measure success by how many people are reached."

He talks about the organizations who participated in the recent Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City and goes on to say:

"The groups who spoke at the summit were aware of their challenges: .... they used urls and websites instead of offices and leveraged open source platforms in the absence of budgets. In each of their cases, these technological tools are about more than the exchange and posting of information; they have also allowed them to organize and mobilize in real time to raise funds, circumvent restrictions on civil liberties, hold governments accountable, build tangible documents like petitions, orchestrate counter or parallel elections, and connect people with judicial and legal resources...."

"...The term 'social media' as we know it today appeared in July 2004 as a reference to participatory media like blogging, wikis, social networks, and related technologies. This is all well and good if technology was still primarily about connecting people to information, which is really the essence of media. However, this term has become obsolete in a world where technology has become a critical tool for connecting people not only to information and ideas, but also to other individuals, entities (NGOs, companies, governments, etc.), and more recently actual resources be they financial, medical, or judicial."

"The power of technology today will be determined not by web traffic and viewership, but by its ability to strengthen and more importantly facilitate connections in real time."

This speaks to my heart as I am currently working on one of the chapters in the "Global Intranet Trends for 2010" where I have identified the "real-time intranet"' as one of the emerging trends that is transforming the workplace web. The real-time intranet connects people to people in organizations where there is often no official means for making contact.

Micro-blogging is a good example. The use of Twitter or Yammer inside enterprises is extremely low today. However even the limited number of experiences described by the intranet managers who participated in the 2009 survey shows indications of what is coming.
One example is the intranet manager himself who said: "Micro-blogging has allowed me to build relationships with other members of the organization I would otherwise have no knowledge of or ability to influence."

I am convinced that micro-blogging has a critical role to play in organizations and in the workplace web.

Any experiences to share?

"Brazil is hot on intranets" say Viberti and Saldanha

   I did not realize how lively the intranet scene is in Brazil until Fernando Viberti got in touch with me and became a Network Partner for the 4th annual Global Intranet Strategies survey. His blog is definitely worth reading: "Gestao e governança web". "Web management and governance in English."
Lots of in-depth posts.

(I use Google's Word Translator which I've recently installed in my Firefox navigation bar in order to follow intranet blogs in languages I don't speak!)

I've also heard from Ricardo Saldanha, President of the Intranet Portal Institute which is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, set up to stimulate and help professionalize the Brazilian intranet space by bringing case studies and best practices to light, in a knowledge-sharing way. Fernando Viberti is also one of the Portal Institute's directors.

Brazil also has its own Intranet Portal Award, founded by Ricardo, and now in its second year. It was started in order to recognize outstanding intranets. The first single-day event for this award is apparently considered to be a turning point in the Brazilian intranet space by intranet professionals, end users and vendors.

In addition, there is an Intranet Portal site with a discussion forum on corporate portals and intranet projetcs in Brazil. It now has around 3 thousand subscribers.

Do you need a good reason to go to Brazil on a business trip?
If so, think about participating in the two-day event in November that will be the culmination of the Intranet Portal Award for 2009. The first day will be dedicated to winners' presentations and second day to discussion tracks on IT Integration (Portal), Content & Collaboration - and Governance.

Welcome to Giacomo Mason - Intranet Management, Italy

Apologies to Giacomo Mason, whom I've known virtually for several years, and forgot to put him on the list of Intranet Blogs...

http://www.intranetmanagement.it

His blog is in Italian, but you can get the gist of it from this automatic translator that Giacomo provided:

http://www.intranetmanagement.it/en/

I tried to put the English translated version in my NetVibes, but could not make it work.

Does anyone know how to do this? Giacomo's posts are worth it!

Who's playing in the Intranet online space?

It's a tie! At last, there are as many blogs by intranet managers as by intranet consultants. Bravo!

I just redid my lists of intranet bloggers and online groups and divided them into 3 categories:
Intranet managers, Intranet blogs (consultancies) and Intranet Groups Online.

Intranet Managers

In alphabetical order...

1. Andrew Fix, Coming out of my Shell
2. Dorjem, Intranet Overseer. Helping intranet teams know more about the resources available to them
3. e24 Intranätgruppen, Jesper Bylund. Intranet manager for Malmo city intranet. Blog in Swedish
4. infoarch , About my experiences as an information architectfrom Samuel Driessen, information architect at Océ-Venlo
5. Injela, Frank Hamm, intranet manager, Aareal Bank AG. In German
6. Mark Morrell, Intranet manager at BT. Blog on "an insight into how intranets are managed"
7. Mashazine, Michael Hafner (Erste Bank Group)
8. Social Intranet: life in the trenches, Patrick Sikes, HSN (the Home Shopping Network) in St Petersburg, Florida
9. TeCoMan, Fabrice Poiraud-Lambert. In French. About "collaboration électronique au service de l'agilité des organisations"
10. Think Intranet, Strategic intranet management, by Abigail Lewis-Bowen, Johnson & Johnson
11. Wheat and Chaff , Peter Richards

Intranet or intranet-related consultancy blogs

1. AlexManchester
2. Column Two, James Robertson
3. Globally local…locally global, Jane McConnell
4. Intranet Blog, Toby Ward,
5. Intranet Experience, Sean R. Nicholson.
6. Intranet Focus Martin White
7. Intranet Life (IBF)
8. Intranet Matters, Stephan Schillerwein.
9. Intraskope (internal communication, some posts related to intranets)
10. Jboye Blog (many posts are intranet-related)
11. Michael Sampson: Currents (collaboration)

Intranet Groups Online

I’d like to give special recognition to Dorje McKinnon, a “real intranet manager” who finds the time and energy to facilitate an online group. I don't know of other cases like Dorje!

1. Intranet Benchmarking Forum, Linked in group managed by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum. Approval required to join.
2. Intranet Global Forum, Facebook group created by Toby Ward. Open to anyone interested in intranets.
3. Intranet Professionals, Linked in group created by Anne Mitchell. Open to all intranet professionals.
4. Kiwi Intranets, An Online Group for people that reside in New Zealand who manage or maintain intranets. Anyone is welcome to join. Founder Dorje McKinnon.
5. NetJMC&Co, Linked in group created by Jane McConnell. Dedicated to intranet managers. Approval required to join.

You can find permanent links in the lists in the left column of this blog.

Please repost, link to or tweet about this list to help give all these people the coverage they deserve!

Get in touch if you have a blog or group that falls into one of these categories, and I'll add you to the list. If you are listed above, and want to change how I described you, let me know!

Intranet Checklist for the Flu Pandemic

 With enterprises preparing their plans in case of a flu pandemic this fall, now is the time to get your intranet ready.
If you haven't started yet, you'll barely have time to make it before the flu hits according to predictions in many countries, including where I live. I strongly recommend you give the checklist below to your intranet sponsor or CEO. Make sure they know how much the intranet can help your organization get through this crisis about to happen.

(Influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital, in Washington, D.C. during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Wikipedia. Public domain.)

Business critical checklist:

1. Can staff access the intranet from home?
2. Do you have on line collaboration spaces and tools in place so that teams can continue to work?
3. Is your senior management team ready (psychologically and technically) to communicate to staff via blogs and on line chats?
4. Have you set up extranets or other online solutions with your key clients and your key partners so that you can continue doing business?
5. Have you equipped all your managers with smart phones?
6. Do you have the means to send urgent messages to all managers? (text messages, twitter channel, ...)

7. Are your critical HR processes on line so that staff can carry out their basic administrative needs without coming in to the office?

Real important checklist:

8. Do staff have access to real-time chat tools for their daily communication needs?

9 Are you preparing training materials in the form of podcasts and videocasts so that new employees can get up to speed fast?

10. Have you started communicating with staff about the possibility of having to work from home or work in circumstances where our normal communication around the coffee machine may not longer be the norm for a while?

The 2009 Global Intranet Strategies Survey deals with all the points above (and many others) so if you have not yet signed up to participate, please do so. More information here: http://netjmc.com/survey/sign-up-JMC-global-intranet-survey-2009-2010.html

What happened to SharePoint?

Our friend SharePoint, a very hot topic in the intranet space 12 months ago, was hardly mentioned in the 2009 Quick Poll.

I did not put it on the list, and there were only 10 comments in the open question suggesting to include it (out of the 50 people who commented, out of the 165 total who took the Poll).

Their suggestions for issues concerning SharePoint:

1. When to use SharePoint, when to use the intranet

• "Amazingly, people are using the word Sharepoint as if it were generic for I don’t know what. I’ve never seen a commercial brand name gain such traction so fast in the intranet world. It’s scary."
• "Secured content: intranet or SharePoint?"
• "SharePoint or intranet: appropriate identification of when to use either"

2. Governance

• "Governance intranet / SharePoint"
• "Governance/control of SharePoint Designer, now that it's 'free.' "
• "SharePoint Issues."

3. Numbers & stories around SharePoint

• "Would be interested to know how many organizations have or are intending to roll out Sharepoint MOSS as their portal platform."
• "Another focus on Sharepoint would be interesting."
• "I'd be interested to hear real-life stories of Sharepoint for intranet."
• ".... I deal with SharePoint in an intranet environment not intended for collaboration. I wonder about the experience of others with the same or other systems."

What do you make of this relatively low level of interest in a topic that was so hot just 12 months ago?

In times of crisis, is the intranet an afterthought?

From participants in the recent pre-survey Quick Poll... 

Our biggest pressure point

"Placement/importance of the intranet and its teams within the organisation is by far our biggest pressure point at the moment - in economic crisis, restructures are causing the intranet to be an afterthought more than ever (i.e. 'oh the intranet, well someone can just keep that up to date, we dont need much headcount for that, theres an economic crisis going on'). The challenges to deliver through the intranet instead of external high-cost mediums means the opposite should be happening in times like this, but it just cannot seem to reach the radars of those at the top." 

Top management claims...

"How can an organisation fulfil all increasing requirements in regards of functions to an Intranet when top management claims the intranet to be the most important internal communication and collaboration channel and at the same time reducing resources both technical and communication wise?"

What about the future?

"We are dealing with extreme downsizing of already stretched intranet teams. How will this impact intranets in the coming years?"

Loss of experience, less time for everyone

"Loss of experienced publishers due to downsizing (crisis). Less time for everyone to maintain "public", static, non-collaborative content. (e.g. Information about the company, or policies). Public content is important because it provides general information and "body" for people who are not (yet) using collaborative workspaces. How can we motivate owners of policies etc. to realize that their content is important and should be maintained"

My comments:

Organizations are taking huge risks by ignoring or down playing the intranet during these tough times.
Those that decide to leverage the intranet to help the organizations save time, decrease and avoid costs, and communicate and collaborate better are those that will have a better chance at surviving the crisis and becoming stronger.
I wonder how many organizations have actually calculated what they save by downsizing intranet teams versus what they will be losing.
Practically none, in my opinion.

What collaboration could be and should be

One of the most relevant descriptions I've read about what collaboration is and isn't comes from Michael Sampson, specialist in team productivity and collaboration. His 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity: What Teams Need from IT Systems to Be Productive is well worth reading. You can download it for free (requires registration).
It will give you an exciting, challenging view of what people really need when they work together in virtual teams. You'll find yourself thinking "If only I had that in my company!"

The 7 pillars:

• Shared access to team data
• Location independent access to team data and members.
• Real-time joint viewing capabilities.
• Team-aware calendaring.
• Social engagement tools.
• Enterprise action management.
• Collaboration auto-discovery.

Michael has also published a short document (31 pages) where he reviews the capacity of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to support the 7 pillars. Interesting to read, especially for people planning or currently implementing SharePoint. I won't say more to "spoil" the fun of discovering his viewpoint. You can download a sample, and purchase it here (individual, group and intranet licences available).
His recent book Seamless Teamwork (published by Microsoft) offers both strategies and practical tips for how to best utilize SharePoint for team collaboration.
It does not address what a number of large enterprises are currently attempting: using SharePoint as an enterprise-wide platform for intranets. The Global Intranet Strategies Survey in 2008 showed that roughly half of the 226 organizations who participated are implementing or planning to implement SharePoint. Some of them are planning on extended the use of SharePoint well beyond collaboration.We''ll see how that goes over the next year or so....

If you'd like to work with Michael, consider joining one of the workshops he's running soon, and check out his web site where you can read more about his work. He's based in New Zealand but offers some virtual services. He blogs at Currents: Improving the Performance of Distributed Teams.

Europe workshops: (all organized by J.Boye)
- Vienna (March 30)
- London (March 31)
- Copenhagen (April 1)

Where should collaboration sit?

Here are some issues I'm working on currently:

Should collaboration sit inside or beside the intranet?
I recommend placing collaboration within the intranet landscape. That's to say, making the intranet the front door into collaborative spaces (even if they are built on a different technology). This reinforces the role of the intranet as a business support tool and makes it easier to blend information and collaboration.

Should the collaborative spaces be distributed or centralized?
Should they be scattered throughout the intranet, that is to say, integrated into different work areas or sections that are nearest the people using the spaces? Or should they be grouped together in a larger area under the title of "collaboration" or something along those lines?
Proximity to users is important. That suggests that the distributed solution is best. However, making the spaces centrally visible has the advantage of raising their visibility. When we don't know where to place something in an intranet, we often say "It doesn't matter. It can go anywhere and people can link to it." True, but risky. This can create confusion for users, and of course will create broken links at some point.
I believe it matters very much where you place the collaborative spaces. I recommend that large organizations create a dedicated area where these collaborative spaces "live".

How high up in the navigation should the "Collaboration" area be placed?
I often recommend that it exist at level 1 in the navigation, thereby becoming part of the global navigation bar. This makes the statement that collaboration is important for the organization. There is a "Collaboration central" concept much like some organizations have a "Blog central" area.
I'm currently working with an organization who is considering make "Communities" one of 4 entry points into the intranet. The other 3 are: Reference documents, an HR-related entry and an "About the organization" entry point.
This organization already has a fairly large amount of communities-driven work and projects. They want the intranet to help reinforce and lead the organization towards generalizing this way of working.

Who owns collaboration?
There are different things to be owned.
First, there needs to be a framework: a toolset and guidelines. Although I strongly believe in leaving space for experimenting and playing with new technologies, I also have seen that unless the enterprise designates specific tools for specific collaborative needs, there is a strong risk of creating "collaboration silos" because of the diversity of tools.
Guidelines need to be defined to ensure that there is a procedure (as light as possible) for opening new spaces, an owner for the new space and when and how to close the space.
This framework will be created by a central team, most likely business, communication, IT and sometimes HR people.
After that, ownership passes to the business, functional and project managers. In short, whoever is leading or facilitating the collaborative space.
Stage 3 intranets have more collaborative features than Stages 1 and 2. They also govern/regulate these spaces more than the other stages.

- - - - - - - -
I'm looking for examples where "collaboration" or "communities" or similar themes live at the top (level 1) navigation. If you have an example, can you share it with us (along with giving us an idea of what the other top level categories are)?