Globally local - locally global

The middle layer is disappearing

Lost in the middle or is the middle lost?

I wrote an article for the publication "Intranets Today" exactly 2 years ago entitled "Lost in the Middle".
Today I would give it a stronger title: "The Middle is Lost".

Seriously, I've been struck in recent months by the number of organizations I have seen that have decided to eliminate what I call the "middle layer". Decentralisation strategies in organisations result in giving more power to the out-lying parts of the organisation. Strategic guidelines come from the central head-quarters. So the centre and the entities end up being reinforced, and the middle layer severely weakened, even removed in some cases. The current economic context is pushing organizations to become leaner and meaner. Where better to cut than the middle?

This has big impact on intranet landscapes because many global intranet landscapes have relatively heavy "middle layers". So many times I've seen the divisional or regional intranets masquerade as head-quarter intranets. Sometimes, the middle layer intranet managers even attempt to prevent direct communication between the central intranet manager and the local intranet managers in their regions or divisions. I've personally experienced this when doing intranet audits. 

Removing the distance to be both "globally local and locally global"

Interestingly, when the middle layer is removed in intranets, things seem to work just as well as before. The challenges become how to provide guidance from a distance and in fact how to remove the distance:

• What is the right balance between "rules" and "guidelines", between "mandatory" and "highly recommended" when defining governance policies?
• How can you build trust, among intranet managers and with users?
• What tools and methods will help communication in a geographically dispersed group of content providers?
• How can you ensure that people in the centre listen and understand those in the entities and vice versa?

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I have provided a full reprint of the original article below as it was first appeared in June 2007 in Intranets Today. (Intranets is a subscription-based magazine, but authors can re-publish a few months after the initial publication.)

Lost in the Middle

The hard truth is that the majority of these intranets should not exist

The role of divisional and regional intranets can be both ambiguous and misleading. They are neither global nor local. Global intranet managers may feel they reproduce global content, thereby keeping users from the authoritative global site; local managers may feel they are unnecessary because they can best provide their local users with what they need. Thus, the divisional and regional intranet mangers are caught in the middle, running intranets with little guidance, other than their managers saying “we need to have an intranet.” The hard truth is that the majority of these intranets should not exist.
A global intranet has a clear mission: communicate about global strategy and values; provide strategic news; give access to organization-wide tools like employee directories and reference and policy documentation; and provide collaboration tools. A local intranet is closely integrated into day-to-day life. It provides local news; offers tools for reserving meeting rooms and ordering office supplies; has self-service centers for HR and administrative processes; publishes the canteen menu as well as local information such as traffic and weather conditions

Intermediary intranets, on the other hand, exist for less clear reasons. Some are created to deal with temporary objectives. For example, an organization undertaking acquisitions often positions acquired companies at a divisional level. An intranet is then created to communicate and facilitate the merger process but runs out of steam when the integration is completed

Companies doing business globally may create another type of intermediary intranet—regional ones that play a coordination role between global and local for marketing, training, administrative, and other needs. One would think this raison d'etre is more sustainable because the need appears permanent. However, regional intranets also find themselves "lost in the middle" as organizations implement global processes, rolling up regional content and services to the global level.

Two questions: What is unique about them? Who do they serve?
Two simple questions will help clarify if an intermediary-level intranet should exist. First, does it offer unique content and services that cannot (and should not) be found on other intranets in the organization? Second, does it serve only users who work within the same division or region, or do people elsewhere in the organization also need to use it? Examples of unique content and services include: information related to the specific business activities of the division, collaborative spaces used by managers to share regional or business-specific knowledge, and regional reporting tools. However even this uniqueness does not necessarily justify the existence of regional and divisional intranets. It simply means that certain services and content are best provided from the intermediary level. The appropriate place for users to find them may be elsewhere

If users across the organization need access to the knowledge in the expertise centers, they must be able to find it without knowing which region is the source. Marketing and customer-oriented information may be local or regional by definition, but others throughout the organization can learn from sharing experiences, lessons learned, and best practices. It makes sense to place these types of content at the global level where they can be found by subject and keyword. As business becomes more knowledge-based and organizations more global, there are few if any reasons for maintaining intermediary intranet sites

Forget history. Move on to real value and visibility.
Many of these intranets exist for historical reasons and, if the enterprise intranet strategy was to be redone, would probably never be created. When an organization does decide to simplify and optimize the intranet structure, the validity of these sites will be questioned. Managers working at the regional or divisional levels may well want to have an intranet. Unfortunately, the "I have an intranet site, therefore I exist" feeling is still alive and well. One solution is to give high visibility to content producers and less to intranet site owners. Build your intranet strategy, governance, and communication around the concept "I exist because I provide high quality content and services to everyone that needs it." Everyone will be a winner, especially the content contributors who will be more visible and valued, and the users who will be able to find what they need faster.

Can you locate all the countries in the world on a map?

My New Year's resolution on January 1st 2008 - which, at the time, I shared with very few people - was that in 2009 I would learn the names, locations and a few key facts about all the countries in the world.

I've done Europe (current and prospective) and have nearly finished Africa. I feel that as a consultant specialised in global, complex intranets, I should know precisely where the different entities of my clients are located.

I also believe that as a citizen of the world, living in a highly privileged part of the world, I should at least be able to read world news and know not only where the country is but a few key facts about the country. I want to be able to hear the news item and to be able to instantly place it in context.

Can you can take an outline map of Africa or Latin America or South Asia and write in the names of the countries? That's the very first step - the tip of the iceberg - what I'm trying to achieve. I've been working on it, and had a good feeling when I was in Geneva a few days ago with my new client, UNAIDS. When we listed the countries where we needed to make contacts to investigate their information needs, I could visualise each and every one of them on a globe.

It's a starting point for greater real global awareness on my part and on that of people around me. I've actually gotten a number of people in my "entourage" to try to do the same thing. We're all using the online Geographic Quizz game - which I discovered a month ago - to measure our progress.

How many of our world leaders would score 100% on the quizz for each continent? Give it a try and let me know how you score.

Global "Company Net Steering Committee" - way to avoid wasting resources

I've recently come across several cases where companies could have saved money and time if they had a global "Company Net Steering Committee" in place.

By "global" I mean one that has representatives from all parts and key functions of the organisation. By "company net" I mean with a scope encompassing intranet, internet and all online initiatives.

Several global companies have noticed that some solution providers are approaching their different entities around the world trying to sell their solutions on a country basis. In a couple of these cases, a sale is made to the country in spite of the fact that the global group had already purchased the technology.

The problem was twofold:
1. The group did not know that the country had a need
2. The country did not know that the group had already acquired the solution.

Another example is a case where a team from corporate IT had developed an interesting idea and carried it to the point of a proof of concept. When they presented it to a larger forum of intranet managers, they put up a slide intending to be reassuring. The slide explained that their new concept did not affect the intranet, nor the portal, nor the current collaborative solution. However, it did touch on these things. They had intended to define their scope so that the intranet managers would realise that the new "thing" was different and was not intended to overlap with their areas of responsibility, the intranets.

The problem here is that it should have not just overlapped, but also been co-ordinated with the intranet and integrated into the intranet. It should not have been handled as a separate project.

Here, similar to the first case - a twofold reason:
1. Corporate IT team was not fully aware of the intranet scope
2. The intranet managers were not aware of on-going IT initiatives.

Both examples would probably have been handled better if a global Company Net steering group existed. Even a lower level Company Net co-ordination team whose role is to simply update each other on on-going work, needs and ideas could have foreseen the potential conflicts and waste of time and money.

In both cases, all parties had good intentions, believed they were doing what was best for users, and certainly did not intend to waste resources or create user confusion.

User-centric UA and entry page strategies for better findability

A user-friendly, optimised search engine is only one part of the findability "tool set" for an intranet. There is a whole other side that is too often forgotten.
Three additional dimensions contribute to the total findability experience:

• the "User Architecture" or UA
• the customisation and personalisation approaches
• the confidentiality policy

and of course the governance that accompanies all three aspects.

This article deals with the first: The UA, which is my term for how the user perceives the structure of the intranet.
The UA components are (A) the top level categories (level 1 navigation), (B) the entry page design and (C) the global gateway.

A. User Architecture
There are 4 principles around which a user-centric UA can be defined:

1. Define top level categories ( level 1 navigation) in user terms, not in terms of the source of the content. This results in categories defined according to subject or purpose (user populations who have similar needs).
2. Ensure that clear mission statements exist for each : for example, this space provides these things for these people. Or even better, this space lets these people do A, B or C by providing them with X, Y Z.
3. Implement a double-ownership approach, with roles in charge of the spaces and thereby representing user needs, and other roles in charge of content, thereby ensure information and services of high quality and relevance.
4. Distinguish between content created "for us by us" and "for others by us". Departments and functions tend to want to put both in the same space on the intranet, and this is not logical for users.

B. Entry page
Consider the entry page to be a key findability driver with 3 roles:

• Guide the person to understand the structure and navigation of the intranet
• Indicate the range of content and services available
• Be global and relevant at the same time

In order to fulfil the three roles, select your entry page design by understanding three fundamental patterns. These can be blended to some extent, but overall the design must lean one way or the other:

a. Newsy
b. Navigational-based
c. Highly customised (portal style)

The slide below relates types of entry page models with different intranet landscape patterns. (I have described these patterns in previous articles: How intranet and portals landscapes evolve and Global intranets: different challenges, different paths.)

A simple entry page decision spider can be a useful tool when making these decisions, in particular when working together with colleagues in different parts of the organisation. It helps focus the discussion.

C. Global gateway page
Global gateways are more common on internet web sites than on intranets. I have personally rarely seen them done well for internal intranet landscapes. I have seen many intranet site maps (usually automatically generated and either too high level or too detailed to be useful for users). However, a site map is not a gateway page. The gateway references all parts of the whole landscape, not all parts of a single site.

The idea is to have a single page, always available from the top banner, that provides links to all parts of the organisation's intranet landscape. The links may be organised by site, topic, target user population, geography or other criteria. The gateway page is especially useful in an intranet landscape that has lots of diverse sites rather than one where there is already a user logic or portal spirit.

A list of the "dynamic places and services" of the intranet is also helpful. It lists discussion groups, project rooms, notification services, blogs, wikis and so on within the overall intranet landscape. Depending on volume, it can be incorporated into the global gateway or be a second level global page.

Of course, the more granular the gateway is, the more difficult it is to keep it up to date. With the right degree of detail it can be a useful navigational tool for users.

Comments?

It would be interesting to hear from intranet managers to see if people have experience with global gateway pages for their intranet landscapes, and also how their entry page design fits or differs from the patterns I've described.

Language reality checkpoints - moving targets

Language strategies are moving targets, evolving along with your enterprise strategy and business and operational changes. You need to start by asking the right questions, then once you know what you’d like to achieve, see how technology can help you, how much it will cost and what organizational changes are needed. This article proposes some “reality checkpoints” you will find helpful when analyzing your needs.

Reality 1: International enterprises have three types of languages: corporate, working and local.
Corporate languages are the official ones, the ones used for press releases for example. Some companies have up to 4 or 5 corporate languages. The working language is the one used horizontally across the enterprise, for example the one used by senior and middle managers for reporting, and by R&D engineers, experts and other managers for collaboration. Local languages are those used by employees in their “home environment” among colleagues in the same physical location.

Reality 2: One country does not equal one local language.
Some countries have more than one language, and many “share” the same language, even if there are significant differences. It’s useful to draw a language map of your enterprise, basing it on “comfortable” or “generic” languages. For example Dutch people are usually very comfortable in English, as are many Scandinavians and eastern Europeans. People in France, Canada, Morocco and other countries mutually use and understand what is in reality a hybrid, generic French.

Reality 3: Different languages are used for different purposes.
Look at the different types of content you have in your intranet: news, strategic messages, HR policies, product and sales information to name a few. Then look at the different users of this information: client-facing employees, internal communities across the company, employees in manufacturing facilities and so on. Build a matrix comparing type of content and usage with type of language (corporate, working or local), then add the dimension of “as is today” and “target” for what you would like to achieve.

Reality 4: Not all content merits the same quality of translation.
Criteria to take into account are: How critical is the content? Is it time-sensitive? Who needs it? Will it change soon? The more critical it is and/or the longer it is valid and/or the more people who need it, the more you can justify doing a high quality translation. If it is of interest to a small group, and/or may change soon and/or is not business critical, it is acceptable to use approximate translations, or let employers use automated translation tools on the intranet to get the general meaning.

You now have a starting point for determining what should be translated into which languages and with what degree of quality.

Reality 5: Localization and translation are different.
Distinguish between adapting content and changing the language. A message from the CEO will not be localized. It will flow from Corporate Communications to employees through carefully controlled translations. However, a new travel policy may be defined and published by HQ, then sent to the business groups who may contextualize it to make it relevant to their organizations, job titles, and so on. It may then be sent to country HR teams who will adapt it based on local travel contexts (distances, air and rail infrastructures) and translate it into the local language. The key here is to make sure your process specifies who is responsible for contextualization and/or translation at each point.

Reality 6: Hot news defies the most well thought-out strategies!
Is it better to get it out in English first, then, publish the corporate language translations as they are done? Or is it better to wait until the item is translated into the relevant languages, then publish worldwide simultaneously? The jury is still out on this one, and companies make different decisions usually depending on the nature and urgency of the announcement.

My overall advice is to set up a cross-company working group to look at these issues within your own enterprise, and to come up with several working hypotheses that you can then analyze from both technology, financial and organizational viewpoints. Be aware that you will probably need to adjust your strategy as your business and operational contexts evolve.

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This post is adapted from an article first published in Intranets Today where I write the column International Intranets. Paid subscription required to access articles ($170 for one year).

IBF 24 - a first in the global intranet space

I'd like to point out an innovative event that will take place for 24 hours starting the 18th of June: IBF 24.
Organised by the Intranet Benchmark Forum, it is the first time to my knowledge that such an exercise has been attempted in the global intranet space.
I'll be interviewing Paul Miller, CEO of IBF shortly and publishing the dialogue here. In the meantime, check out the link above, consider signing up and stay tuned for more.

The State of Affairs in Global Intranets - sneak preview

Thursday evening (French time) I'll be presenting through LiveMeeting to a group of global intranet managers in Philadelphia where IBF Global is holding an IBF Global Member Meeting.

I've done many presentations on the data I collected in the second part of 2007 during the Global Intranet Strategies Survey, and this time I took a special look at how the very large companies are doing as a specific segment. The people coming to the session in Philadelphia are practically all from organisations with over 100, 000 employees.

One company that purchased the Global Intranet Analysis report had requested that I run a couple questions through the "very large" filter to tell them the percentage of organisations with portals, and those using true portal software. The figure was surprisingly low. (FYI: When you purchase a copy of the Analysis Report or the Trends Report, you can ask me pecific questions by email that are not covered in the reports and, when possible, I look up the answers and send them back to you.)

Anyway, my data shows that very large global organisations have some issues like all other companies (challenges with search, for example), but have some remarkable differences.

An example is the first slide here that shows that the strategy drivers are stronger. The numbers in red indicate the number of percentage points higher the "very high" responses are for the companies over 100,000 employees compared to the full survey population.

The second chart here shows that the very large organisations also measure more than the others.

Extreme personalisation - yes, but how far and how soon?

I wrote a note following the JMC Breakfast at UNESCO with Florence Devouard and Stephen Roberts (UNESCO):
Questions from intranet managers where I published 6 questions raised by the intranet managers during the breakfast.
I invited responses from readers, and heard from one - thanks Samuel for your contributions (bottom of page).

I will respond to these questions one per post and include Samuel's response to each question. I've separated them out into 6 posts because each one is a subject on its own. Please join the discussion and tell us what you think.

Subject 2: Extreme personalisation
Another way of phrasing it: How far should and will personalisation go?

Question from an intranet manager: "Will the shared intranet disappear in favor of a highly personalised (by the individual) approach?"

Samuel's response:
Well, I think the Intranet will merge into the Internet (Wikinomics, Wisdom of the Crowds, etc). But the Intranet functionality will not disappear. Companies will be more loose and open, and so will Intranets, I think. Intranet will be less topdown (publish platform), more bottom up (readwriteweb, open, collaboration, etc). So, in the next it will be just the right mix. We’re a company because doing things together, centrally is better, but we’re individuals to that need some freedom to be creative/innovative.

My response:
Ultimately yes, the shared intranet as we know it today will disappear. In fact, it must disappear!
However I believe the highly personalised approach will have a proportion of common content for all.
The big questions are: What is the right proportion? Who decides?

The answer is different for every organisation, and even within a single organisation there will be many different and even contradictory "right answers"! That's why implementing an enterprise portal with personalisation features is such a challenge from the content viewpoint.

Two suggestions from projects I've done with clients:

Identify tab-owners
You need to have "tab owners". Their responsibilities are complementary to content-owners, and the two must not be confused even if the same person wears both hats in some cases. The tab owner is responsible to users for ensuring that everything that belongs under a tab is there, regardless of what source or content provider it comes from.
This is the big change management issue with portals because they are no longer structured according to sources of information but in terms of user perceptions and needs. This causes two issues that have to be resolved: (1) Content producers fear they will lose visibility. (2) Tab owners cannot always be defined from a logical organisational viewpoint. For example the "employee services" tab will have content from many sources in the enterprise and it is not obvious to identify who should be in charge!

Don't assume that most people want personalisation
Intranet teams tend to forget that "normal people" do not interact with portal interfaces as easily as IT and technology-oriented people do. It is partly a question of awareness and encouragement. However, it is also a question of lack of user friendliness of tools.
Here are some quotations from survey participants in the Global Intranet Strategies survey (reproduced in the Global Intranet Analysis Report, available for purchase):

"Personalisation depends on the intended use of the intranet. If the governance is tight and content is mainly 'pushed' then this is a corporate decision to fit with the prevailing culture. It may also be driven by the way in which the technology works. Again, other business cultures may suit a more 'trusting' model in allowing greater freedoms to their employees. With this can also come additional support costs, policing, and chunk of risk."

"We first implemented high degrees of end-user customisation, meaning employees could create and edit portal pages. However, this quickly became cumbersome, and the cost of the time spent by employees trying to figure out how to maintain their pages outweighed the benefit of the pages themselves. Instead, we now rely heavily on end-user personalisation, referred to as profiling in your survey. Under this model, the system recognises the employee by their data from HR and other systems, delivering personalised content based on region, country, location, building, function and employee status (production worker / knowledge worker, manager, etc)."

"It's difficult to do it right. A functional, regional approach is difficult to get right and seems to be difficult to understand by users (navigation problems)."

"In the process of implementing we have found that expectations vary widely. Many people think they want to personalize the site, but do nothing with it once it is offered."

"In general, most users do not use personalization features when they are offered. The cost generally outweighs the benefits. Instead of moving from the extreme of no customization to complete personalization, we will likely move to the middle path of role-based customization."
"The limited experience we have had (with our local portal) is that customization is difficult to take to a granular level and that, with few exceptions, non-IT users rarely take the time to personalize their portal. I'm convinced this will change with the implementation of more intuitive portal tools."

Globalisation behind the firewall

John Yunker, Global by Design, invited me to do a guest article for his blog: Globalisation behind the firewall.

Citing myself from the article:

"Global intranet teams are essential if an organization wishes to ensure that an intranet meets user and business needs around the world. However, global teams exist in only 31% of the organizations with another 12% “planned.” Steering committees with decision-making power should have representation from all parts of the organization. In fact they exist in 46% of the cases with another 10% “planned.”

The survey shows that certain major obstacles are significantly decreased in the cases where these global bodies exist. Examples are out of date information, unclear navigation and difficulties getting content producers to contribute. All these issues exist to a greater extent in companies where there are no global teams or global decision-making bodies". More.

John has done a lot of work in the area of web globalisation. Among other works,  he produces the Web Globlization Report Card. The 2007 edition is available for online purchase ($1,450) and I strongly recommend it. You'll find all the facts, figures and ammunition you need to make your corporate web sites more globally relevant. The 2008 edition is being prepared as we speak, and John offers a reduction to purchasers of both reports.

The business value of news: connecting people to people.

Paul Miller has written a post on the IBF blog "Why Intranet news is under threat" that triggered some thoughts from my end.

News on an intranet is very tricky.  If done well, it will bring people together, trigger communication and innovation.

Here are three suggestions:

1. Balance between official and spontaneous
Balance the news between official corporate polished stories (which are important for building a sense of what the organisation is all about - officially!) and spontaneous news items from all corners of the organisation (which reflect information and activities from around the organisational world).
This requires an easy one-click publishing system of some sort (note I did not say "blog"!) so that people can communicate easily. These items should be published in a space clearly labelled and differentiated from the official internal news items.
Do not think that if you solicit news from entities around the world, from which you select some to be rewritten then published, that you are providing the type of news I'm talking about. I mean straight from the people.

2. Favor local over global
If you have portal technology with different news feeds, give the most space to local news, then professional, community, divisional, regional or whatever middle-level layers you have, and the least space to corporate.
Put local in the most prominent space on the home page, and corporate in a visible but not central place.
This guideline will most likely offend many corporate communicators.  If it bothers yours, let me know and I'll give you some explanatory ammunition to clarify!

3. Demonstrate the business value of news
Expand the concept of news beyond the "official corporate internal press releases".
Define different types of news and include updates on what people and teams are doing around the organisation.  Example categories: project news, hot topics in our business community, what's new with our customers, and so on. Include a link to a name and email for readers who want to know more.
If your intranet includes community and team spaces, enable people to publish news from these sources with one click.

A well thought-out news strategy can be a key way to connect people to people in your organisation and to give them a new way to communicate and collaborate.