Globally local - locally global

Future proofing intranet governance

One way to future proof your intranet is to future proof the governance.

There are 3 ways to do that, and I recommend doing all 3!

1. Implement cross-organizational ownership.

If you do not already have a cross-organizational ownership model in place, move in that direction. The Global Intranet Trends for 2010 showed that 14 % of the nearly 300 participating organization have this model. In Stage 3 (more mature intranets) it rises to 22 %, still not very high.

A cross-organizational model means all the key functions and divisions of the organization have representation on the Steering Committee or Advisory Board or whatever you call your top-level decision-making body.

This puts Business side by side with Communication, IT and HR, the traditional “owners” of the intranet. They can then fulfill their traditional roles of enablers and Business can take the role it should have long had as a major decision-maker for the intranet.

2. Lock in your flows to and from the intranet decision-makers and publish them.

Cross-organizational ownership ensures you full coverage of your organization. There are no black holes where the intranet is concerned. That’s good.

However, you cannot of course have dozens of people on the decision-making body, so you will have people who represent different segments of the organization.

A common problem is that the people being represented do not always know who represents them. When strategic decisions are being discussed, these people are not consulted in advance and asked for input. Sometimes they are not even informed about the decisions that are made. This leads to confusion, and worse, rejection of decisions and “we”ll do it our way”. It’s understandable if no one has talked to them!

The representatives themselves may never have thought clearly about the fact that they represent other people, not just themselves.

So, by making the consulting and communicating flows between the intranet decision-makers and the rest of the enterprise visible to all, the intranet is protected from breakdowns coming from people’s lack of awareness and lack of being involved.

The Steering Committee itself must integrate formal reporting by its members to ensure they are carrying out their “obligations” to their “constituencies”.

A simple way to do this is to publish Steering Committee names, roles and constituencies on the intranet itself. There should be also be publication of decisions made, action items including who and when.

Locking this in through visibility will ensure that when a decision-maker loses interest in the intranet or is not doing the job right, others will notice and hopefully help

3. Invite young staff to strategy sessions on a regular basis.

If you’ve implemented cross-organizational ownership, you’ve got no black holes from the organizational viewpoint.
However, you also need to make sure you don’t have black holes from the seniority viewpoint.
The actual members of the Steering Committee will usually be fairly high level people with seniority in the business. If a few members of newer staff, preferably young staff, are invited to join the Steering Committee for regular strategy sessions, the blend of years of experience with new ways of working can stimulate everyone.

When I say “new staff”, I’m thinking of young professionals who have been in the organization for at least 2 or so, but not yet long enough to be ingrained by the organizational culture.

They will bring fresh ideas to the table, and will be sufficiently involved in the organization to be able to formulate the business value in ways that will make sense to the senior people.

Having strategy session like this once a year will keep your intranet decision-makers on their toes! It will also ensure that new voices are being heard.

Global Intranet Trends Report - published next week

For those of you who are wondering, the 2010 report will be published the first week of November.

Many thanks to all of you for your emails of encouragement. This year's report will be worth waiting for!

Here's where I sit in early evening when I take a break from writing.

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?

J.Boye in Aarhus - hope to see you there

I will be in Denmark the first week of November for the J.Boye Aarhus 09 conference. I participated in the conference last year and found it to be a stimulating and friendly event.
This year I’ll be running a workshop on Tuesday November 3rd on Intranet Governance, and doing the keynote for the intranet track on Wednesday morning.  It will be the first public presentation of the Global Intranet Trends for 2010, and I need to get my presentation ready!

The programme is looking very interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing many friends again. The Aarhus conference offers lots of opportunities to network and meet new people, and I recommend that you consider joining us if you can. Let me know and we'll arrange to meet up.

Spacebook: government as a process

I often say that the intranet is a process, not a project. I did a slide 4 years ago that I used then quite often in workshops and still use today: "One slide worth a thousand words". I came across a printout of this slide a couple of months ago in the office of one of my clients where he had posted it on his wall.  He told me he referred to it often when "educating" his manager about intranets being more than technology and well-executed project plans.

 Government as a process was one of the tracks at Gov 2.0 Expo last week, and here is a link (YouTube) to a 5-minute presentation made by Emma Antunes, webmaster for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, last week at Gov 2.0 Expo.

I met Emma several years ago at a conference in California where I was presenting the results from the very first Global Intranet Strategies survey, which takes us back to the fall of 2006. It's exciting to remember back 3 years and see how fast intranets have evolved since then.
I still remember giving a workshop at that conference and showing participants some numbers from the 2006 survey about 2.0 experimentation and some of the people saying "not in my intranet!". There was quite a strong resistance from some of the intranet managers. I remember one of them being very worried about "losing control of his intranet". Note the "his".  Those were the days where some intranet managers still thought the intranets "belonged" to them! I have not come across that thinking in some time now, thank goodness.

If you sometimes get discouraged about your intranet evolving at a snail's pace, think back a few years and reflect on the progress you've made. Remember that it's a process you're dealing with - a gradual change - and not a self-contained project.

"Evolving towards the intranet-enabled online workplace" Munich, 24 Sept

I'll be joining one of the J.Boye communities of practice in Munich on September 24th. This international group is one of the many CoPs run by J.Boye. (More information here.)

I have entitled my talk ""Evolving towards the intranet-enabled online workplace".
It is clear that intranets are changing. I see evidence of this everywhere I go. I have had two large global organizations on the telephone in the last 2 weeks, and both are facing challenges of how to transform their intranets into effective, online workplaces.

They both realize that a large part of this is getting the balance right between global requirements and local requirements. I'll rephrase that to say "getting the balance right between common requirements and specific requirements." I wrote about this earlier in the year: "Intranet purpose: 3 angles".

Practically speaking, many intranet managers today have to reconcile two strong strategy drivers that collide with each other. The first is the "common culture, shared vision" corporate communication departments strive to build, especially during times of radical change such as what is happening currently in many organizations. The second is the "now and fast" needs expressed by local business units, always under operational pressures.

Transforming intranets into online workplaces, or even simply making them the "front door" into online workplaces requires making certain strategic decisions and bringing these decisions to life in organizations where day-to-day activities take precedence over stepping back and taking time to think.

It also involves either making collaboration part of the intranet, or at the very least, positioning it within the online workplace with a user-centric logic.

Points I will cover in my talk:

• How can the intranet/portal be positioned in the online workplace?

• Definitions: Online workplace, intranet, portal
• Three models: diverse, hybrid, unified
• What is included in the intranet and/or the online workplace?
• Strategy process: more than just paper

• Defining the role of the intranet/portal

• Mission statement: getting a real one - the process
• Making it live: see it, hear it, breathe it

• Collaboration: where and how does it fit into the online workplace?

• Definitions: teams, communities
• Where should team and community sites be placed?
• How should they be owned and managed?

I'm looking forward very much to discussions with the members of the J. Boye CoP next week, and hope to challenge them and that they will challenge me.

Note: It is possible for non-members to be invited to attend one CoP meeting as a guest before deciding to join. There is information on pricing and membership options on this page.
(Disclaimer: I am not a member of J.Boye but work with them frequently in their CoPs and conferences as a speaker and workshop leader.)

283 hours of intranet reporting!

We officially closed the 4th annual Intranet Strategies Survey today. Many thanks to the 283 organizations around the world who participated!

Here are some statistics to show you the dimension the survey is taking on:

• The number of participating organizations has nearly tripled since the first year in 2006.
• The survey itself has not gotten shorter! Both 2008 and 2009 contained over 120 questions.
• This year we have an even greater wealth of collective intranet experience: 283 managers each spending about one hour makes 35 full days of "intranet reporting" to consolidate and analyze.
• We are growing in new regions. Both Russia and Brazil are two countries on the upswing this year, thanks to network partners in those areas.
• Intranet managers are getting more involved in the design of the survey: the results of the pre-survey Quick Poll in May, and the suggestions from 9 intranet managers who did a pilot drive of this year's questionnaire were instrumental in shaping the final version.
• Several fellow intranet consultants also brought valuable suggestions to some very specific parts of the survey.
• Over 50 bloggers, twitterers and communicators have helped spread the word enthusiastically since June.
• When asked where they heard of the survey, quite a few organizations this year answered simply "Twitter". We had a very fast RT (retweet) network this year, thanks to lots of you.

More later on the survey highlights, but again, many thanks to all of you in the global intranet community.

The official report will be published in the second part of October, but I'll leak some trends here soon!

Survey deadline extended to Friday 4 September

At the request of participants who have just returned from holidays, we have extended the deadline for the Global Intranet Strategies Survey. Instead of closing today, August 31st, it will close at the end of the week,  Friday, September 4th at end of day, Pacific Standard time.
So if you haven't started it yet, or not had time to finish, you still have this week to do it!
Contact us if you have and questions, or even if you'd like to sign up and do it in the next few days. (More information here.)

Social media & the intranet, not a generational question

I was very interested in the New York Times article "Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens"
I quote:
"Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations."

And...
"The notion that children are essential to a new technology’s success has proved to be largely a myth."

What about Facebook?

Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive says that Twitter is a “... one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.” (read Facebook)

Take look at this article and see how it could apply to your intranet. Are you looking for colleague-to-colleague communication, a real-time communication channel or both?

Weekend launch of netjmc.net

Sunday night and I finally launched netjmc.net - my combined blog and web site. Let me know your feedback. Gobally local is still here.

Working on the weekend? Fraid so. I read this morning, yes a Sunday morning with a cafe creme at hand, made by my own expresso machine, about how the 8-hour day, 5-day workweek (created by Henry Ford no less) is no longer relevant.

Tonight it took me a few minutes but I went through my history file from all of today on the net - literally hundreds of links - and found what I was looking for: Working this weekend?  So I'm definitely not home alone!

I even saw that as the deadline nears (end of August) a few intranet mangers used the weekend to complete the survey: Global Intranet Strategies.

Get in touch if you're interested. Hope you did not work TOO much on the weekend - just enough to be part of the new generation of web workers!

More intranet manager feedback

The Global Intranet Strategies Survey always closes with a final, open question: "Do you have any comments?"

So far this year, there have been a few suggestions for improvements for next year. One involved making it easier to use from a laptop (very good point!). It's really great to have participants contributing ideas for the 2010 survey.

Many participants have found the survey a stimulating trigger to thinking about their own intranets:

"This survey is not only thorough, but it has inspired us to starting thinking about new projects and how we can mature our Intranet strategy. It has been an educational tool - thank you!"

"Thank you for this valuable survey. I participated last year and learned a great deal from the experience and the results."

"Not only do I find receiving the results of this survey worth the time it takes to complete the questions, it offers a great learning experience just reading the material and thinking about whether or not we have considered those issues and topics in our organisation. Thank you!"

"This survey is good for us very isolated and not very visionary intranet workers as it gives us ideas!"

"Great survey. Very relevant for the online environment within organisations in 2009. Sign me up for 2010."

One participant used the final field to share his thoughts on the future of intranets:

"My overall feeling regarding the future of intranets:

• Greater time spent on 'social media literacy and training - consolidating rather than deploying
• Multi-layered communications and knowledge sharing will increase (html mixed with video, audio etc)
• Authentication will be the key - people want apps within the firewall that can be used and trusted
• Recession and swine flu will ensure intranet will be a port for knowledge sharing and virtual working
• Increasing demise of the 'newspaper' homepage for intranets. Now seen as a working task-based tool - not a newspaper
• Greater importance on finding, relating and engaging people within the intranet and invites to external users to enter controlled areas of the intranet"

You still have time to sign up. The survey closes at the end of August. (Requirements for participating.)

Is your intranet team being down-sized?

Is your intranet team being down-sized? If so, you are in a minority. You should absolutely share the following stats with your senior management.

The 4th annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey indicates that over 2009....
- 27% of intranet teams have increased in size
- 60 % of intranet teams have remained stable
- Only 12% have been downsized

This is encouraging news during the current economic crisis. These figures represent roughly the first 100 participants in the study, and may change.
However, previous survey results (3 years of experience) have shown that the first 100 or so of participants are a reliable indication of the overall trend.

Have senior management realised that intranets are essential for doing business - internally and eternally? I really hope so!!

Have you signed up to participate in the study?
You'll receive a free copy of the "Global Intranet Trends for 2010" report in exchange for your time and contribution.
More info here: http://netjmc.com/survey/sign-up-JMC-global-intranet-survey-2009-2010.html
Please get in touch if you have any questions or comments.

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

Will intranets become scientific?

These are exciting days for intranets!

Studies done by different organizations, in different parts of the world, with different populations and very different survey strategies are finding similar results.

I wrote about how JMC and Nielsen Norman found the same figure when looking at intranet resources: Size of intranet teams: Nielsen Norman and JMC agree. It has happened again with Prescient Digital Media and JMC.

Prescient Digital Media and JMC in synch on social media

Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media, has published: "Intranet 2.0: Social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet."

Toby and I have talked several times over the past year when we have met at different conferences, comparing notes on the results we were seeing in the (1) NetStrategy/JMC Global Intranet Strategies survey and (2) the Prescient Digital Media Intranet 2.0 survey. (I'll refer to the first as JMC and second as PDM from here on.)

First, some background on the two studies

The JMC study is a yearly event (now in its 4th year). It targets intranet managers who must be pre-approved before they can participate. It deals with many intranet issues out of which social media is only one topic. It is a deeper survey, requiring from 45 to 60 minutes to complete. 226 organizations worldwide participated in 2009.

The PDM survey, also conducted on a global scale, was more open in inviting people to report on their 2.0 initiatives. Anyone could participate, but only those who identified themselves received a complimentary copy of the full final report. The survey, as its title suggests, was primarily focused on social media, although a number of questions on other intranet topics were included. It took place between autumn 2008 and spring 2009, and 561 organizations took part. It was a considerably shorter survey.

When looking at the usage of social media tools, the two surveys used different scales:

• PDM - 5 levels of adoption: "no plans and no interest", ""none but considering options", "not yet but have plans", "some, limited use" and "enterprise use".

• JMC - 5 levels of adoption: : "not currently used", "being tested", "used in some parts", "in general use", and "optimised".

Comparing PDM's "enterprise use" with JMC's "in general use" plus "optimised" , we see some tools where the two surveys are amazingly close, and others where the JMC figures are more conservative.

"Old-time 2.0 tools" - nearly identical numbers! 

What I call the "old-time 2.0 tools" got similar results in the two studies. By "old-time", I mean those tools that have been around for years, long before social media and 2.0 became hot. Although they have been put under the 2.0 umbrella by many people, they've been around much longer: instant messaging, podcasts, rss, photo & video sharing and discussion forums.

Instant messaging:
PDM: 29 % "enterprise use"
JMC: 27 % "in general use" plus "optimised"

Podcasts:
PDM: 6 %
JMC: 7 %

RSS:
PDM: 13 %
JMC: 11 %

Photo or video sharing:
PDM: 9 %
JMC: 11 %

Discussion forums:
PDM: 19 %
JMC: 18 %

"Hot" social tools: PDM higher, JMC lower 

"Hot" social media tools make user-generated-content widely available. They open up the enterprise. These tools require special governance, or so many organizations think. In fact, normal, professional code of conduct applies to them, but they still scare us. These are the ones that make management nervous.

Internal blogs:
PDM: 13 % "enterprise use"
JMC: 4 % "in general use" plus "optimised"

Internal wikis:
PDM: 17 %
JMC: 6 %

Social networking:
PDM: 6 %
JMC: 1%

Tagging:
PDM: 9 %
JMC: 4 %

Getting more scientific

It seems logical to me that a survey like Toby's which is directly focused around 2.0 will attract participants who are specifically interested in 2.0. On the other hand, the JMC survey targeted intranet managers in general, regardless of their interest in 2.0.
So, I conclude that the differences on the "hot" social media tools and the similarities on the "old time" 2.0 tools confirm that each survey is coherent within its targeted population.

Question to readers: Will intranet strategy and management become a science one day?
My take is that we are clearly building a more solid basis for analysis and decision-making.

- - - - - - - - - -

Note: the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies survey is currently open, and will close at the end of August. If you'd like to participate and get a complimentary copy of the Trends for 2010 report, get in touch. Signup procedure explained here.

Global Intranet Survey recruiting in Russia

The 2009 Global Intranet Survey is being promoted in Russia on the Russian IntranetBlog.

Thank you Natalia Shvetsova, of HCI.ru, a usability consultancy in Moscow.

Natalia also helped recruit in 2008. It's great to have partners like Natalia in parts of the world where the survey is not yet a reference point for intranet managers.

Let's hope 2009 is the beginning of a significant Russian participation in our yearly intranet "meeting point"!

Intranet numbers promise lots of action

50 - The number of organizations who have completed or nearly completed the current 2009 Global Intranet Survey. It went live less than one week ago. How to sign up. More details about the topics.

One of them says "Thought the survey this year was superbly relevant to Intranet environment in 2009. Really looking forward to the report." (Thanks, Peter.)

340  - the number of intranet managers who belong to NetJMC&Co (Linkedin group dedicated to intranet managers)

25  - the number of active discussions inside NetJMC&Co.

280 - the number of followers of IntranetWatch (Twitter group dedicated to intranet related tweets).

2009 Global lntranet Survey goes live! Participate!

The 2009 Global Intranet Survey went live 24 hours ago!
Organizations who pre-registered and participants from last year all received their personalised invitation and link over the last 24 hours. If you didn't, please let me know ASAP.

If you're an intranet manager and would like to join, send me an email. More information here:
http://netjmc.com/survey/sign-up-JMC-global-intranet-survey-2009-2010.html

2009 is going to be a good year: why?
1. Because more organizations pre-enrolled than ever before. (The survey is in its 4th year).
2. And because the pilot site for the survey was tested by nine real intranet managers and two intranet consultants before going live. We got very helpful feedback in a very short time.

Thanks to all you testers for your time, your suggestions, your enthusiasm and your critical eyes.

The survey questions cover a lot of topics, and the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report will answer the following questions (and others!):

(Note that organizations who participate in the survey will receive a free copy of the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report. Publication date: second part of October 2009.)

The workplace

• Are intranets catching up with what people need to do their jobs? 
• How are they facilitating doing business? 
• Are they becoming the online workplace for employees or are they primarily communication tools? 
• How do employees access the intranet: from where, what devices 
• How customised are home pages and intranets in general? Is customisation increasing or decreasing?

Collaboration

• How does the online workplace support virtual teams and communities of practice? 
• What solutions are being offered to "mixed teams": employees and external partners? 
• Is real-time conferencing moving to the intranet and web-based solutions? 

Social media 

• To what extent is social media being used internally? What purposes do blogs serve? Wikis? Discussion forums? 
•  Are Twitter-like services being used internally? How? 
• Are enterprises beginning to play with "collective thinking" technologies? Prediction markets for example.
• How do enterprises let employees interact with traditional content: tagging, ranking, commenting?
• What concerns do organizations have with social media?
• How do these concerns evolve after an enterprise has implemented social media? 

Search

•  Is search still a big pain point? 
• What resources are being dedicated to optimising it? 
• What strategies are being put into place?

Ownership, governance, strategy

• Who owns the intranet? What ownership models are in place? 
• What types of strategies are driving the intranet? Are they documented? 
•  What decision-making models are used for development and enhancements of the intranet? 
• Are intranet-related roles integrated into job descriptions? 
•  How high up (or far down!) is the intranet manager in the organisation? 
•  How is the intranet team structured? Are intranet and internet teams being integrated?

Measuring value

•  What indicators are being used to measure the value the intranet brings to an organisation: adoption, usage, satisfaction, workforce coverage, reduction of risk, business value? 
•  How do senior management perceive the intranet? 
• What are the biggest remaining obstacles to overcome?

There are 4 open questions where intranet managers will be giving their views:

1. How will the role of the intranet manager evolve over the next 3 to 4 years?
2. How do you, or don't you, brand your intranet? Is it a utility? Or is it a special place with a special name?
3. How is user-generated information being integrated with information coming from traditional publishing tools?
4. And, last but not least, SharePoint: an invitation to share your experiences, pains and joys.

Get in touch if you'd like to have more information about how you can participate in the survey this year.

Intranets are falling behind what people really need

Link to a video on YouTube done when I spoke at the IntraTeam Event this March in Copenhagen, organized by IntraTeam in Copenhagen.

Next year's IntraTeam Event will be March 2 to 4, 2010.  Thanks Kurt for making this video available.

2009 Intranet Survey Pilot undergoing testing

Update on this year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey:
We launched the pilot version just a few minutes ago. 18 intranet managers from different organizations around the world have volunteered to test it for us over the next 7 days.
After we incorporate their feedback, the final version will go live. This will be just after mid-June. If you're interested in joining, get in touch.

One thing for sure, this year's survey will be the best tested ever! This active pre-survey participation from so many "real" intranet managers is fantastic, and I'm glad they are appropriating the survey and getting actively involved.

The pre-survey Quick Poll already brought in feedback from 165 intranet managers worldwide, so looks like we're going to have a good year. By the way, this will make the 4th annual edition of the survey. We started in 2006. Things in the intranet world have changed pretty dramatically in that short time, but that's a good subject for another day!

How far down the ladder is the intranet manager?

As you saw from my previous post, raising senior management awareness of the role of the intranet is a key priority for lots of enterprises.
In preparation for this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey, I did some preliminary pre-survey research with the members of the NetJMC & Co Linkedin group of intranet managers and asked them where they were placed in their organizations.

How far from the top of your organization is the first fulltime intranet person or team? In other words, how many levels under the CEO or top position?

"3 levels down from the CEO" was the most frequent response.
In my calculations to get this figure, I considered the CEO to be level 0, then counted down using the information in the answers. A number of people shared the reporting line in detail.
A couple people responded saying 2 levels down, saying that their manager reports directly to the CEO. Several more ranged from 4 to 6 levels down, but the majority were at 3.

Of course the interpretation of this depends on how hierarchical or flat the organization is. Three levels under the CEO may be quite high, or not very high at all!

I will nuance this question in the survey itself by asking participants to tell us how many levels exist in their organization, then at what level the first fulltime intranet person or team is placed.

Question to the readers of this blog, especially those who work in large organizations:
Do you actually know how many hierarchical levels exist in your enterprise? Is this a question that is relatively easy to answer?

Pre-survey Quick Poll results: Is the intranet becoming a workplace?

The 5-minute Quick Poll for 2009 gave intranet managers the opportunity to vote on the topics they would most like to see explored in the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies Survey. Managers from 165 different organizations around the world indicated which subjects on a list of 20 were "highly relevant", "moderately relevant" or "less relevant at this time".

The top 5 priorities all lean towards work and business this year...

1. "Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance" is the topic that leads by far this year. It came in at 71 percent of the organizations rating it as "highly relevant", a 10 point lead over the other topics.
2. "Positioning and role of the intranet in the online workplace" is a strategic issue, and not at all obvious for most organizations. It's not surprising this came number 2 on the top priorities. 
3. "Senior management awareness, participation & support" is still an on-going issue, and is in position 3 on the list of "highly relevant" topics. 
4. "Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential" is in 4th position. This topic has been part of the survey for the last 3 years and analysis based comparing obstacles faced by organizations with intranets in Stages 1, 2 and 3 has provided a number of leads as to what to deal with and when as the intranet advances through the different stages. 
5. "Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators" is in position 5 on the list. Interestingly, it did not even make the top 10 topics.

The two charts below show the topics ranked in decreasing order of relevance.(I've listed the full topic description as it appeared on the Quick Poll at the end of this post.)

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Flashback to one year ago...

Last June, 114 organizations participated in the 2008 Quick Poll which preceded the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey.
The two main different items in the top 5 topics a year ago are items 1 and 4 below:

1. Search & findability: user features, resources, satisfaction
2. Roles of the intranet/portal as perceived by employees & management 
3. Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential. 
4. Web 2.0 tools & features: usages, issues 
5. Single point of entry: integration of applications, other enterprise information resources. 
6. (same rating as point 5) Finding people: directories, expertise locators

What's next?

Many thanks to all of you who participated in the Quick Poll. The survey itself will open in June.
I also thank the 50 organizations (out of the total 165)  who responded to the open question where we asked for other ideas, comments and suggestions for topics. I'll share this feedback in a separate post. Stay tuned.

This year's survey results are going to be full of surprises, in my opinion!

As always, I'd love to hear from you if you have comments about the charts and data in this post. 

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P.S.  Full description of topics as they appeared on the Quick Poll

Remember, these are topics, not the questions themselves!

• Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance
• Positioning & role of the intranet/portal in the online workspace: entry point, separate system, purpose
• Senior management awareness, participation, support
• Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential
• Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators
• Home or entry page: type of content, customization
• Integration of applications: core business, secondary process support, enterprise systems
• Strategic steering group: role, members
• Information sources for employee data: which ones, how used, how kept up to date
• Social media: types, usages, benefits, concerns, governance
• Place of the intranet/portal team in the organization (function/department, level 49 %)
• Availability of the intranet to all employees: when, where, how (smartphone, home access, solutions for non office-based workforce)   
• Customisation & personalisation: how much, criteria, individual control   
• User-generated information: integration with information from traditional editorial process   
• Moderation and management of content in collaborative and social media spaces   
• Social networks, personal pages, social tagging   
• Solutions/tools for virtual teams made up of employees and external partners   
• Relation/impact of external social networking tools (e.g. Facebook) on the internal online workplace   
• Current economic crisis: impact on intranet, focus areas in 2009 and 2010   
• Sustainable development (“Green program”): impact or relation with intranet/portal   

Intranet basics from a user viewpoint

Ciba Solutions runs an unusual survey for end-users of intranets. It runs non-stop, and organizations are encouraged to share the link with their employees and to monitor the feedback in real time on the internet. The survey is always available online, letting intranet managers decide when the most useful time might be for using it.

What's interesting about this survey is that it lets you compare your end-user feedback to a larger pool of intranet users. (Organizations are not identified in the reports. ) Data stays in the pool for 15 months, after which it is considered no longer relevant and is removed.

The questions are very generic, dealing with issues such as finding information, contact details about other employees, product information, "how to" info for new-comers. It also asks common questions such as page loading time, access through mobile devices. It asks respondents to rate the importance of a list of items in "contributing to a valuable intranet".

The first 30 organizations who participate will get a free "comparison" report showing how their intranet compares to others. Otherwise, the report will cost $290. You can also get a 4-page individual analysis for $200. According to the home page dated 12 May, 13 organizations have used this survey so far.

I asked Andrew Wright of Ciba Solutions what observations he's been able to make so far based on his first analysis of approximately 500 users from 6 different organizations:
His response was: (I quote)

• The questions related to the interactivity of the intranet (ie. The Web 2.0/Collaboration related questions, blogs, wikis, etc) have received low scores from all organisations indicating to me that Web 2.0 is yet to catch on with typical end users.
• Using the intranet as a staff directory still appears to be its main use, though news is coming a close second.
• Using the intranet to actually ‘do work stuff’ is pretty low.
• End users are generally finding the intranet to be ‘very useful’.
• The biggest area for improvement making information easier to find (search & navigation).

I'm very curious to see how this survey service evolves, and whether or not intranet managers find it a useful tool for getting user feedback. Some may feel it is not specific enough to their own cases. My take on this survey is that it is not intended to measure whether or not your intranet is fulfilling a specific strategy or purpose. What's interesting is that the questions are so basic they can be considered "what every intranet should do". It's sometimes easy to get caught up in offering new services to users, and forgetting to improve some of the basics.

Andrew's comments above fall into line with some of the high level conclusions drawn by our Global Intranet Strategies Survey which is conducted with intranet managers and is now entering the 4th year.
We've seen that:

• Intranets used as work tools is a fast growing trend, but not yet the case for the majority of participating organizations. (Organizations with intranets in Stage 3 have reached this point - but that's just over 20 % of the 2008 survey participants)
• At least half the organizations have major issues with search. (50 % dissatisfied.)
• Even 40 % of the organizations with intranets in Stage 1 (still far from being a work tool) say that if their intranet went down for 1 or 2 hours, employees would be disrupted in their work. This must mean they are considered "very useful". (This compares to 90 % in Stage 3).

Ref: Highlights from the 2008 survey, including descriptions of the 3 stages.

Intranets & business impact

I have uploaded the presentation in the long version that I had planned to give at the J.Boye Philadelphia 09 conference. I was unable to travel and delivered a shorter version remotely.
Here is the original slidedeck. Ask me any questions you have and I'll be glad to answer them here or by email if you prefer.

Intranets & Business Impact by JMC

View more presentations from Jane Mcconnell.

Is the intranet ecosystem in synch with intranet managers?

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As you may know, I ran brainstorming sessions in NetJMC&Co and Intranet Professionals (Linkedin groups) to find out what topics intranet managers want me to explore in this year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey.
Based on this qualitative input, I'm now running a quantitative checkpoint with a 5-minute Quick Poll to help me prioritise the topics.

In the Quick Poll, I ask intranet managers to rate the relevance of 20 topic areas to their current intranet issues and challenges. I did the same last year, and the data was very helpful for prioritising questions for last year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey.

I've taken an early look at the first results and already seen a few significant changes in priorities since last year's poll. I'll publish the results here in mid-May. (The survey itself will open in June and close early September).

If you're an intranet manager and have not yet been in touch, and would like to participate in the intranet manager poll, get in touch. (organizational email address please; no gmails, hotmails). This does not commit you to participating in the full survey in June. If you want to sign up for the full survey, you'll find more information here.

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Just for fun, this year I'm running a parallel survey with the same list of topics, and asking consultants in the "intranet marketplace" to rate them in relevancy. I'll then compare the results with the intranet manager ratings. We'll see how our views converge, or not! The results of the both polls will be published simultaneously.

If you are a consultant, agency or vendor in the intranet space and have not yet been invited to participate, please get in touch, tell me who you are (use your organizational email address please; no gmails, hotmails, etc.) and I'll send you the appropriate link.
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The Quick Poll only takes 5 minutes. It opened Wednesday 29 April and will close Wednesday May 13. Last year, a total of 114 intranet managers participated in the Quick Poll. So far, since Wednesday, 118 intranet managers have participated in this year's poll.

Stay tuned....

How to measure the value of your intranet? IFVB by IBF

We are all looking for ways to measure the value of an intranet. Intranet managers often ask me how other organisations do it. The issue has been explored in the Global Intranet Strategies Survey since 2006, by asking some basic questions about indicators and techniques used.
We classified indicators into 4 categories:

• Soft - subjective and qualitative aspects such as increased employee satisfaction with the intranet
• Hard - objective measurements such as cost savings, decreased resources
• Quantified soft - combination of soft and hard, for example time saved converted into monetary value (dependent on agreement that the time saved does truly represent cost savings for the organisation)
• Derived - metrics using data from other enterprise or business systems such as sales reporting data studied before and after a sales portal is implemented on the intranet

One thing that is clear is that organisations with the more advanced intranets (in Stage 3 for example) measure more than the others:

• The Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report shows that from 70 to 80 percent of all 3 stages use "soft" indicators.
• Stage 3 leads in the use of "hard indicators" (55 percent, compared to just over 30 and 20 percent for Stages 2 and 1 respectively).
• Stage 3 also leads in "quantified" at just over 30 percent, followed by Stage 2 at just over 20 percent and Stage 1 just under 10 percent.
• "Derived" are the hardest to conduct, and all 3 stages are at a similar low level under 15 percent.

The IBF team have made a significant step forward in designing a systematic approach to the question of intranet value. The IFVB (Intranet Financial Value Benchmarking) is designed to help organisations identify both the cost of the intranet and the value it brings to the organisation. It highlights both exploited and unexploited values. It is based on a full view of looking at all the functional and business areas of the organisation and includes different types of indicators.
The model was developed with financial analysts and some of the IBF’s member organisations including BT whose intranet manager Mark Morrell will be participating in IntranetsLive next Tuesday May 5th. He will be talking about how BT used the IFVB to highlight both areas of current value and new areas of potential value to explore. The IFVB model uses time-saving and increased productivity figures ("quantified soft") as one of the major types of indicators, but places them in a context that also includes "hard" indicators as well as some "derived indicators".
We intranet people know intuitively that a well-designed intranet helps people save time, thereby work more productively. However, this belief will not necessarily be shared by high level budget holders who may not have personally experienced the satisfaction of finding the right person to answer your question in seconds, or the frustration of spending a hour searching for a document and never being sure to have found the right version. The global approach used by the IFVB model, organised by function and business activity, gives more strength to the time-saving figures by placing them in a business-oriented framework side by side with other figures including process streamlining, savings in travel costs and real estate through remote and mobile working, and more.

I highly recommend tuning into IntranetsLive next Tuesday, May 5th, to hear what BT has to say about IFVB. More information here. You can get a first time visitor's pass if you are not a member.

(IntranetsLive is the monthly online intranet event created by IBF and followed by intranet managers around the world. IFVB is a service that can be purchased by members and non-members of IBF)

Unfortunately, I won't be online next Tuesday, as I'll be in Philadelphia at the JBoye event, but would love to hear from any of you on how you have gone about evaluating the value of your intranet.
Have you ever done a study on ROI?
If so, what types of indicators did you use?
Any specific point you'd like to see developed in this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey around the ROI issue?