Globally local - locally global

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.

"Brazil is hot on intranets" say Viberti and Saldanha

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

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

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

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

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

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

End-user intranet benchmarking site put on the list

Andrew Wright's site on end-user intranet benchmarking (Worldwide Intranet Challenge) was accidentally left off my list of Intranet blogs.
Sorry Andrew and thanks for pointing it out! It's now been corrected!

Welcome to Giacomo Mason - Intranet Management, Italy

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

http://www.intranetmanagement.it

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

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

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

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

Who's playing in the Intranet online space?

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

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

Intranet Managers

In alphabetical order...

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

Intranet or intranet-related consultancy blogs

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

Intranet Groups Online

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

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

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

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

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

The missing intranet book has been written

James Robertson, founder of Step Two Designs, has written the missing intranet book.
"What every intranet team should know" is a practical, reassuring handbook that will make every new intranet manager feel they now know what they have to do. At last, it's all in one place!

Experienced intranet managers will find it to be a fast, efficient review of everything they know they should know but sometimes neglect. A "checklist" book that is clearly worth it's price at US$ 89!

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.

Highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey Reports - just published

  Intranet = the way of working now or very soon

• The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organisations in the survey population. Half say that today employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours, with the figure reaching 3 out of 4 if it “went down” for 24 hours.
• Yet only 1 out of 5 of the organisations say their senior management considers the intranet to be business critical. However this is up nearly 5 points from 2006! So things are improving.

Users come first - at last!

• Focus on users is at the top of the list of investments.
• Usability is a key strategy driver and user-centred design & usability, cited by 3 out of 5 organisations, will be the top investment area for the next 2 years.

Search is suffering

• Nowadays when “search rules” on the internet, it is disappointing that nearly 3 out of 5 organisations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
• However, most  do not make the necessary effort to optimise search. Well over half have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimising search. Very few have taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search logs.

2.0 is making headway

• 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organisations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
• Organisations where the intranet already is or will soon become “the way of working” are more involved in 2.0 than the others. 4 out of 5 compared to 3 out of 5 in the full survey population).   
• 1 out of 3 of these organisations are bringing the topic to the forefront, as shown by the fact that they are starting or have established an official 2.0 strategy. 

Fears for an "underground" intranet unfounded

• Wikis and blogs do not constitute an “underground intranet” as many people feared would happen.
• Over half of the 2.0 population plan to or have already integrated them into the intranet navigation, also making them searchable with the intranet search tool.

Major obstacles still lie with senior management

The top 3 obstacles according to 2 out of 5 organisations considered to be “a serious obstacle that holds us back” are:

1. Intranet not seen as a priority
2. Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet
3. Lack of ownership at a senior level

About the 2007 Global Intranet Survey

178 companies and organisations around the world participated in the second annual Global Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey. They include 45 % headquartered in Europe, 43 % in North America, 10 % in Asia-Pacific and 2 % in other parts of the world. 72 % are in the private sector, 20 % in the public sector, 4 % are associations, and 4 % are extraterritorial world bodies  and NGOs.

Over half the organisations have more than 15,000 employees, including 13 % with over 100,000 employees. All areas of activity are represented from services to goods, basic materials, technology and many others.

Reports available
You can read about the Global Intranet Trends and the Global Intranet Analysis Reports on my web site at netjmc.com/survey. They are available for purchase online. You can read details, download the tables of contents and sample pages for both reports and link to the purchase platform from the NetJMC web site - survey section.
You can download a 1-page description of the reports here: Download Global-Intranet-Reports.pdf (pdf document)

Useful links Thursday 21 June

On this longest day of the year (where I live) and the day of the French annual Fete de la musique (where people enjoy music and dance in the streets), I'd like to recommend the following links:

Motorola and Intranet 2.0
Thanks to Toby Ward for the pointer. I agree. 2.0 started before O'Reilly started it. But then, someone needed to take it mass media and they did! Tim Berners-Lee said that the 2.0 was what the web was always supposed to be.

And more about Motorola - CTO Padmasree Warrior - blogger
Good interview by Roland Piquepaille.

Personalisation versus Segmentation
Another good article by James Robertson.

Intranet Innovation Awards - a refreshing new approach

The well-known intranet consultancy Step Two, based physically in Australia but active around the world,  is organising the Intranet Innovation Awards. (NetStrategy/JMC is participating as a member of the international panel of supporting organisations.) Note that James Robertson who writes the intranet industry reference blog Column Two, is managing director of Step Two, and the key thinker behind the Intranet Innovation Awards.

The awards will be given to recognise "new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets". Step Two specifics that "The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community."

This new competition is unique in that it does not deal with intranets as a whole, but rather specific functions, services, concepts within an intranet that bring value to the organisation or to the users.

The reason I am very pleased to support this award is that  I have always felt that prizes awarded to individual intranets as a whole are highly misleading.  The ones I am familiar with are usually the result of political decisions. 'Let's give it to X this year. Last year it was Y." Etc.

How can one intranet be outstandingly better than another? True, many intranets are better than many others, but designating the top 1 or 5 or  10 intranets in any given category is a dubious venture.

Intranets should support user, organisational and business needs. It is impossible in my opinion to determine that one is doing it notably better than another unless you include analysis on

• what the needs are,
• how the intranet supports them,
• and whether or not the intranet makes a difference to the people and the organisations.

Mission impossible unless you have access to extensive internal information from the organisations.

Benchmarking is a risky activity. The word is used too loosely. Consultants and agencies like it because it is a good source of business. However, unless you are able to find an organisation similar to yours in terms of user profiles, business challenges, organisational issues and  sector / industry and regulatory  requirements, you cannot draw meaningful conclusions from comparing the intranets.

What companies who embark upon what they call "benchmarking" really want to do, is get good ideas from other intranets and see if they make sense for their own intranets. That is something that can come from simple exchange of ideas and clear thinking about what can work for you.
Hopefully - if enough organisations participate, this will be something the Intranet Innovation Awards will help you do.

I encourage you to take a look at the information pages on Step Two's web site, where you will find more information and the entry form. The deadline is 15 May.

Technorati Tags: intranet

Correction: Enterprise Portals Report V2 already out

The second edition of Enterprise Portals Report, by Janus Boye, BoyeIT, published by CMS Watch (Tony Byrne) is already out, contrary to my previous posting. See the press release and description on CMS Watch.

Time flies - 15 years of the web by the BBC

I still remember the famous coffee pot in Cambridge that I saw over the first webam in the world - shown to me from the office of an engineer at a high tech company (long gone now) in Sophia Antipolis.

And that was where I caught the web bug! A "coup de foudre" as the French say!

The BBC has a short review of the key events on the internet (including a photo of the famous coffee pot) with brief explanations for those who are too young to remember or those old enough to remember but not hooked in enough to notice at the time!

A second article on the BBC site examines the question "Where does the web go from here?"

Intranet resources

In response to the request by one of my readers, I have selected a few web sites and blogs that meet 2 criteria: (1) primarily dedicated to intranets and (2) active over the last few months. (Thanks James for your suggestions.)

New Web site
Intranet resources page with many useful links, not all specific to intranets but all relevant to intranets. Set up as part of the web site that supports The Intranet Review Toolkit, written by James Robertson of Step Two Designs (Australia) with a grant from IA Institute and made available under a creative commons licence. The Intranet Review Toolkit.org site is a source of information including links to other sites in each chapter.

Longtime favorite web site
Intranet Focus by Martin White, based in the UK, with interesting briefing papers (see links on home page).

Blogs
Column Two from StepTwo by James Robertson, based in Australia, News & Opinion on All Things KM & CM; Extremely active blog. Great way to follow what's happening in the intranet-KM-CM universe.

Intranet Blog, written by Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media, based in Canada, on musings, case studies, best practices. Good case studies.

http://contextia.blogspot.com by Nick Besseling, based in New Zealand. A blog on "web content, information architecture, accessibility, usability, intranets, and general online communication, development and management issues."

http://www.intranetjournal.com/, Definitely worth following if you are looking for technical and tool stuff.

http://www.theworkplaceblog.com/, excellent blog by Shiv Singh, Ray Velez and the Enterprise Solutions Team at Avenue A | Razorfish. Good case studies.

Not to forget my own web site at netjmc.com and my French blog at Carnet intranet and my English blog here at Globally Local!

Let me know if you know of or write one I should add to the list.

IntranetReviewToolkit.org

Nice coincidence!
Part of the answer to my request on this blog for blogs and sites about intranets (previous post) came yesterday when my virtual colleague, James Robertson, StepTwo, (blogs at Column Two) announced the launch of IntranetReviewToolkit.org, a site to support and encourage collaborative development of the Toolkit.

Introduction to the site: "The Intranet Review Toolkit provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of corporate intranets. It contains a substantial set of heuristics, allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy. Supported by an IA Institute Progress Grant, the heuristics are based on identified best practices in intranet and website design, providing a sound basis for the review."

When I interviewed James about the long term strategy for the Toolkit he explained that "The plan is to steadily add collaboration tools to the site, as the body of knowledge grows. Hopefully in time, it will become a great community resource."

Let's hope this does actually happen.

It will be interesting to see if the work on the site becomes "appropriated" by the global community of people interested in intranets, and if the excellent work done by James and his colleagues goes beyond its first version, enriched by additions and feedback from intranet people around the world.

A degree in Intranets?

A young professional recently asked me the following question by email:

"I wonder if you may have some advice for a young professional interested in persuing the field of Intranet Consultancy. I recently graduated and received the chance to expand a small intranet to include document and data management. Although its a sub-section of the whole, I've become interested in the workings of Intranet communication.
Perhaps you know of a few good books and/or papers that would introduce me to the fields and specializations within the Intranet domain. Je lis francais, as well."

His question made me realise that most intranet specialists - myself included - have acquired their knowledge pretty much on the job. They come from varied backgrounds including expected ones such as library science, training & communication (my own case) and also unexpected backgrounds such as journalism and other even less obvious ones.

I will be gathering a list of resources - mainly blogs - to build a specific blogroll to add to this blog. There are not so many blogs primarily dedicated to intranets.  I'll publish a first list (including links to intranet-specific web sites) in a few days. If readers of this blog have suggestions, don't hesitate to email them to me.

Another question I'd like to discuss with my readers: What does is mean to be an intranet specialist and what qualities and skills are required?

When I set up my free-lance business 6 years ago as an intranet specialist, many people told me I would not make it as a generalist - that I would have to be specialised in something. In fact, I considered different options including IA, taxonomy, search, intranet project management, ... but nothing clicked.

I soon found myself specialised in strategy - with a strong bend for global, complex intranets. The fields I mentioned above are not specific to intranets; they can be applied to web sites as well. So, back to the question of "what exactly is an intranet specialist". Another way to look at it is what would you include in a training course for young intranet consultants?

IA (information architects) have succeeded quite well in creating the concept of a distinct discipline and the Content Management people are attempting to do the same, but will more difficulty.

How about the intranet specialists?
Ideas. Comments?

Levine and Takahashi on Collective Open Source Innovation

I've been in contact recently with Sheen S. Levine (Singapore Management University), which led me to visit his web site where I discovered a provocative presentation on "A framework for Collective Open Source Innovation" based on work he's done with Nobuyuki Takahashi, (Hokkaido University Japan). (pdf document at the bottom of the page.)

They look into what causes COSI-type (collective open source innovation) organisations to exist and why they last. Examples of COSI organisations are file-sharing systems and user discussions forums. This presentation has food for thought for enterprises looking for sustainable ways to share and generate knowledge.

Definitions for managers: I18n, L10n and G11n

The most puzzling abbreviations are I18n, L10n and G11n. I cannot imagine how people find it easy to use them when talking, but some seem to spin them off their tongues easily!
Each on is the first letter + number of letters between first and last + last letter of the words; Internationalisation, localisation and globalisation. At least the abbreviations avoid the dilemma of do we use the US or UK spelling of these words!

Technorati Tags: globalisation, globalization, localisation, localization