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.

"Plug and grow" your intranet

 I fear that many organizations believe that you can "plug and grow" your intranets.

It's not easy to read, but that's what is written in the red label: "plug and grow". It is also specified "No gardening experience needed."

Put someone in charge. Anyone. Experience does not matter.

Now you have an "Intranet Manager", capital I, capital M.

I saw this amazing machine while Christmas shopping and could not resist sharing it with you all!

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.

Catherine Grenfell on successful intranet managers

I talked to Catherine Grenfell of Step Two Designs a while ago about an article she published on the Step Two Designs web site: What do successful intranet managers have in common?

It's clear that Catherine has a lot of experience working with intranet managers and her insights are both useful and inspiring.

Some key points:

• When dealing with the legacy of intranet initiatives that have failed, Catherine says: "You can't undo the past; you can influence the future."
• Establishing communication channels and setting expectation when everyone wants everything requires good negotiation skills.
• Unlike other managers in the organization, intranet managers deal with staff at all levels. They need to have an elevator pitch about the intranet.
• Intranet managers need to learn to "let go" of content. They need to empower others.

You can listen to our conversation here:

Part 1 (5 minutes)

Grenfell-JMC-Part1

Part 2 (3 minutes)

Grenfell-JMC-Part2

Part 3 (6 minutes)

Grenfell-JMC-Part3

You can reach Catherine at catherine@steptwo.com.au if you'd like to talk more about her thoughts, or you can communicate with her here.

Intranet Portal Awards 2009 (Brazil) announced

I participated for the first time in the Brazilian Intranet Portal Award 2009 event this week - virtually!

If you don't speak Portuguese (as I don't) you can use a translator tool to get an idea about what went on for the two days of the conference. Try this link.

There were 12 awards announced and approximately 200 people each day.

The Twitter tag is #pip09 .

2009 Intranet Innovation Awards announced and published

The 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards winners have been announced and you can now purchase the report with lots of details and screen captures. (US$ 189. More information on the Step Two Designs web site.) I've read it and find it to be one of the most useful collection of intranet case studies I've seen.
James Robertson is also publishing a 10-part series of articles on his blog Column Two, describing each winner this year: one platinum and nine gold. And the articles are gold themselves!
Gold winner: IDEO (USA)
Gold winner: IBM (USA)
Gold winner: Sabre (USA)

Fear not! There are other countries in the gold winners, and articles will be soon published on winners from Russia, Denmark, UK, New Zealand and Australia (platinum).
You can read more about the awards here, and consider entering one of your own intranet initiatives for next year.
Remember that what is unique about these awards, and what makes them credible is that they concern "intranet innovations" - specific features or applications you've developed in the intranet, and do not attempt to award "the best intranets" - which is mission impossible in my opinion.
This award program lets you see intranet innovations that have brought user and business benefits to the organizations.

(Disclaimer: I am one of the participating judges for the awards.)

7 principles for decentralized publishing

During the first Globally Local open thread of a couple of weeks ago, Chamika asked:

"A topic I've been trying to research is how to set up workflow for intranet content using Sharepoint. There are several resources that explain the technical aspects of workflow set up, but rarely have I come across any articles about mapping out workflow from a centralized publishing model to a distributed publishing model. Another way it's being perceived in my organization is the approvals process for intranet content. Any best practices and lessons learned would be great."

I have identified (thanks to some challenging work with my clients!) 7 fundamental principles that I feel are very important and that each of my clients has implemented - their own way - in their organizations.

1. Define responsibility for content at the lowest level possible in the organization, but at a level of accountability.

Define the level according to the "natural business role". Publishing on the intranet must be part of normal business procedures. Whoever is responsible for the accuracy of a specific content should also be responsible for that content on the intranet.

Keep this level as low as possible, but make sure it does not go lower than the business responsibility.

2. Do not mix "content owner" with "content publisher".

The content publisher may be a person whose responsibility is to use the CMS or publishing tool and put the content online. This is not the same thing as being responsible for the accuracy and up-to-dateness of the content. This is a technical responsibility, which is very important, but different. It requires knowing how to use the publishing tool, and, depending on the sophistication of the tool, making the content easy to read online.

3. Make the name of the "content owner" visible on the content itself.

Ensure that the person with business responsibility for the content is visibly identified on the content itself. Visibility goes a long way towards making people aware of their responsibilities.

4. Have the business units and functions specify their own types of content and levels of approval.

If you are a large, global organization, you will have many different types of content with varying degrees of ownership depending on the source: business unit, country, function, etc. Ask the different business units and functions to define their own guidelines for what type of content require approval by what level or role.

Propose a content-approval grid with (1) the types of content with which you are familiar and (2) the potential levels of approval based on your organizational structure. Ask business and functional managers to indicate what level of approval is required. Push them a bit to ensure they are not placing the approval level too high.

Find examples outside of the intranet to help them analyze the true level of responsibility. For example, if certain people are allowed to communicate externally, they can certainly approve content for internal publication. If a level of management produces internal reports on a topic, they can certainly approve publication for this information on the intranet.

Avoid, as much as possible, elevating the approval level.

5. Avoid complex workflow. In fact, avoid CMS workflow completely!

With a few rare exceptions, assume the person publishing a piece of content is authorized to publish the content. Building workflow steps into a content management system simply adds to everyone's email overload.

I have rarely seen cases where the actual approval process takes place in the CMS workflow. It always happens either before (preferably) or after the actual publication.

6. Do not let content owners alone decide what end-users should or should not see. Involve user rep's!

Identify owners for user profiles (or "persona ambassadors"). Make sure that if you have defined profiles such as "marketing managers" or "employees based in France" or "customer service staff for product A" that you have also identified a person who is part of that profile and who can work with you to determine what members of that profile need to see and access to do their jobs. This person becomes the "user rep" for that profile. ("Rep" = representative)

One of the biggest pitfalls of customized intranets/portals is letting the content owners alone decide who should see what. They only have a partial view. The complementary view is from the users: "what do we need to see", and only a member of that user segment can answer that question.

7. Make sure you have no "black holes".

This is hard, but if you have top management support you can do it! :)

If you don't, you probably can't. :(

Require every part of your organization to have an intranet representative, a person who represents what the area publishes on the intranet and what the members of that area needs from the intranet.

If your top senior person makes this a requirement, you can be sure that users will be able to find what they need on the intranet. Otherwise, the intranet may be lop-sided (unbalanced) with some areas heavily present and others absent.

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Thanks for asking this question, Chamika, and I hope others will add to my list...

A valuable strategic asset

I'm looking for as many Intranet Awards as I can find.

If you have one in your country or an international one, or even an intra-enterprise one, please get in touch.

I want to publicise these awards, and understand what the criteria are for winning! I want to get the best ones on to the decision-makers' radar.
What makes an intranet business critical?
How can we make the intranet part of the strategic assets of an organization that should be considered when evaluating the value of an enterprise?

Here we go, chronologically...with the awards I know:

The oldest, to my knowledge, started in 2001 and is run by the usability guru team at Nielsen Norman:
Best Intranet Design. It awards the intranets which have outstanding design and usability. (I'm pleased to say that one of my global clients won this a few years ago!)

Another one started in 2007: Step Two Design's Intranet Innovation Awards. I especially like this one because it does not attempt to evaluate the "whole intranet" (which I personally find impossible to do in the case of global organizations), but rather looks at specific innovations within the intranet.
The goal is to "celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets and find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community."

(Disclaimer: I am one of the judges for Intranet Innovation Awards.)

I have recently become aware of the Intranet Portal Award in Brazil, starting in 2008, organized by the Intranet Portal Institute. Its goal is to recognise portals that "facilitate access to information and knowledge which has become a necessity for those who want to be competitive in a networked economy". I love this ambition for an intranet/portal award. Very business-focused!

I know there are other awards in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, but I don't have the specific information or links. Please send them to me. I'd like to interview you about the details.

If you organize or are aware of other intranet awards, please get in touch.

We all need to work together to bring intranets up to the decision-maker radar, which is where they belong by definition!

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.)

Social media on a global intranet - how do you choose?

An intranet manager asked me recently how to prioritise ideas about social media for the intranet. They are a global organization and are currently attempting to bring all the local intranets under the same umbrella.

They ran a workshop, and lots of ideas were proposed. People gave lots of examples and even ROI figures in many cases. (I need to say "alleged ROI figures" because some of them were familiar examples currently flung about on the internet with little or no detailed information.)

Their question to me: So now what do we do?

My response to them: Don't look at the others; look at yourself!

I suggested the following:

• List the 3 or 4 top goals of your organization (assuming your senior management have formulated and communicated them). If not, identify the top 3 or 4 goals of your intranet.
• Analyse each idea you've had so far, to see to what extent it supports the goals and what is involved in implementation.
• When analyzing, look at different aspects: 
  • How much value/what benefits can this bring to the organization? (A little, some, a lot).
  • Formulate what the value would be. Look at how it can enable people to do something new, something faster, or something more effectively than before.
  • Do this from the viewpoint of "the employee", "the business" and "the company as a whole".

• Identify what is required to implement it, and how fast you can do it?
  
  • (How much effort, what cost).
• Investigate whether or not you can build on something that exists already?
  
  • Do you have an internal champion for this idea?
  • Do you have an obvious place in the organization to do a pilot?
• Is this an idea that can work in other countries?
  
  • How would you involve them? At the beginning (highly recommended!) or later?
• What are the likely obstacles you will have to overcome to achieve our goal?
  
  • How can you manage these risks: what actions can you take to make success more likely?
• How will you know when you have achieved our goal?
  
  • What will have changed? What will be different?

I know there will be some of you out there who will say: Make the tools available and see what happens.

I disagree with this approach, to a large extent, mainly because there are so many tools, so many ideas, and such an obvious need to have a reason for what you do on the intranet.

Time is limited, resources are scarce, people are preoccupied with lots of other things these days.

I strongly recommend thinking about what you do and why, and finding the most "fertile" terrains for experimentation.

Let me know what you think, and what you've done!