Globally local - locally global

Work and Content in the Intranet: Interview with Natalia Shvetsova

My last interview of the year was with Natalia Shvetsova, author of the Russian blog "Intranet Blog". Natalia is a network partner in the Global Intranet Strategies Survey.

She oriented the interview around managing content on intranets, and added some very good points at the end of the article summarizing the interview.

You can read the interview here, translated by Google. Do not hesitate to get in touch with myself or Natalia if you have any questions or comments.

Intranet 360 Checklist

All things intranet can and should be addressed from 360 degrees. That means, covering the full circle.

Target 360

For example, when you do evaluations or needs analysis for the intranet, you need to include:

• Staff of course. However, the end-users are sometimes the only ones targeted because many intranet managers have become focused on user-centered approaches (which is good!) but have forgotten other angles.
• The main intranet players need to be consulted. Site owners, application owners and major content contributors have a lot to say.
• When it comes to management, functional and  business managers are usually considered “stakeholders” and are usually included.

The forgotten ones:

However, senior management, in my experience, are often forgotten. We want them to sponsor the intranet but forget to ask them how they want to use it to achieve their goals.

Demographics 360

When you organize workshops to explore new directions for the intranet, or when you choose people to participate in a user’s panel, you need to include a range of ages and seniority. The views will be complementary. They will learn from each other.

• Combine people in their 20's 30-40’s and 50’s .
• Include new staff and people with many years of seniority.
• Make sure all parts of the organization are represented: from bottom to top, across the divisions or regions. If you can’t do this physically, then get virtual.

Of course, the  people you choose need to be motivated to participate in your initiative.  I recently ran a workshop with very senior people and very new staff and the results were surprising and extremely positive. There was a high degree of listening, from both ends. And a lot of discovery.

Deliberately-mixed cocktails can be quite potent!

Business 360

Most organizations can group their job types into 3 large families:

• Support functions (HR, IT, communication, finance, etc.)
• Product or service development (R&D, engineers, etc.)
• Customer-facing (marketing, sales, customer support)

The first are usually involved in the intranet. The second are to some extent. Depending on the type of organization this segment wiil be more or less involved. (Sometimes they are the “rogues” who do their own thing because they know how to!)

The forgotten ones:

The customer-facing people are frequently forgotten. Why are often neglected when it comes to the intranet? I believe it is because we still have the out-of-date view that intranets are for internal purposes.  This is a limited view and needs to change. Business needs should be a major strategy driver for what we do on intranets.

Try the following exercise to test how well your intranet serves the customer-facing teams:

• Make a list of all your “customer touch points”. A “touch point” is any time or place customers have contact with anyone in your enterprise.
• Then go and talk to someone who works at each one of the “touch points”.
• Find out how they work and how the intranet could better support them.

Providing services and content to support the customer "touch points" will attract management attention. Be sure to find the corresponding business indicators for the "touch point" before you implement your service.  You can use that as a baseline once your service is in place and start to show how the intranet brings business value to the organization.

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.

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.

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

30-30-30-10 Watch the trends

Open thread topics over the weekend got a couple of very relevant comments, the first from Zeb.

Zeb wants to know about tracking trends:

".... what tools, services, etc are available for companies to track trends such as mentions about their company, their competitors, what's popular and what people are looking for on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo & Twitter."

Zeb is right in focusing on how companies can track trends.

Intranet managers need to be externally focused -  with at least 30 percent of their energy (why 30? less than half, but still significant!) in order to stay fresh, motivated and up to date on what's going on in the world. Trends on the web are impacting the intranet more than ever in the past.

I'd say the smart intranet manager should be focused on:

• 30 percent web trends
• 30 percent user needs
• 30 percent business
• 10 percent organizational needs

Of course, the "user needs" and the "business needs' converge (hopefully); otherwise there's a serious problem in the organization.

The "organizational needs" are probably Corp Comm-driven, and, in most - but hopefully not all cases - very top-down.

In spite of all this so called "synergy", the way the intranet responds to these different needs is quite notable.

Lots of consultants push the "persona" approach: what does this type of user need?

"Let's define typical user profiles and identify their needs."

That's very good stuff, but hard to achieve in a meaningful way in a global organization with multiple business units, a variety of professional profiles and presence in a hundred countries (and cultures) or more.

Other more technology-oriented partners (agencies, solution providers) will push the "personalization" approach: let people decide what they need.

So, back to the smart intranet manager:

1. Watch the web trends

2. Listen to your end-users

3. Talk to your business managers and identify their pain points.

4. Talk to your senior management: you'll be surprised, I hope!

And back to Zeb, who originated the question, I've sent it on to someone who knows web technology and who will hopefully give us some leads....stay tuned.

How to kill an intranet

  Four easy steps if you'd like to bring sudden death to your intranet. (This is a real story!)

1. Remove or redeploy the intranet team, and put external communications in charge.
2. Stop training authors.
3. Turn the home page into a flashy news tool with lots of fancy widgets.
4. Remove all user feedback mechanisms from the home page.

This is real - I did not invent it!
All I can say is RIP (rest in peace) as in the old westerns.
Maybe John Wayne will come riding back into town and save everything! Or maybe management will come to their senses.

Thank you, my anonymous friend, for this real life example, and let's hope very few others follow this path.

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?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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.

What happened to SharePoint?

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

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

Their suggestions for issues concerning SharePoint:

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

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

2. Governance

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

3. Numbers & stories around SharePoint

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

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

Intranet ownership "mental models"

In preparing for the survey this year, I asked the members of NetJMC&Co on Linkedin the question "Who owns the intranet in your organization (which function or department)?"

The answers varied. They usually - but not always - included Communication and/or IT.
However, what I found most interesting was the way people answered the question. It is clear that there are different "mental models" around the concept of ownership. I say "mental models" because I am attaching a lot of importance to how the responses were phrased, the words that were used.
Here are the "mental models" I identified:

1. Single-owner - usually Communication or IT, but sometimes HR or Marketing. No reference to stakeholders in these responses.

2. Co-owned - almost always Communication and IT. Ditto re stakeholders: no mention of them.

3. Triangle - 2 owners with one major stakeholder (e.g. Communication, IT, with HR as "the major stakeholder"). The reference to "a major stakeholder" suggests to me that this stakeholder is as important as the owners, in the minds of the intranet teams

4. Single or co-owned, but strong importance given to multiple stakeholders (the businesses, for example). This feels quite different from the previous response because there's a sense of "we the team are working for many other managers".

5. Informal committee, informal joint ownership - agreement-based, consensus-driven, no strong sense of ownership or territory

I've worked with a lot of organizations over the years, and can practically picture some of my clients for each of the models above. In my experience, each "mental model" implies very different ways of working and therefore results. Some examples coming from my own professional experience:

• Model 1 is more and more rare. It tends to be found in organizations with intranets that are still in Stage 1. This is because the intranet is still perceived to "belong" to a single department.
• Model 2 suggests a spirit of partnership. Communication and IT are beginning to realize they need each other.
• Model 3 is one I've found in organizations where business and local entities play little or no role in the intranet. This model tends to exist in intranets driven primarily from headquarters, and the power balance between Communication, IT and HR lies behind the triangle model.
• Model 4 tends to bring fast-moving results because there is a strong sense of delivering to internal customers, who in turn put pressure on the intranet team and compete for attention and resources.
• Model 5 in a large organisation results in slow progress, sometimes actually coming to standstills on major decisions.

My quick analysis of the 5 models is not based on research, but on what I've seen and experienced over the years. I'd like to know what you think.

Do you agree that there are different "mental models"? Do you agree with my "interpretations"?

Do you fit into one of these "mental models"? If not, how do you perceive the ownership of the intranet in your organization?

In times of crisis, is the intranet an afterthought?

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

Our biggest pressure point

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

Top management claims...

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

What about the future?

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

Loss of experience, less time for everyone

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

My comments:

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

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?

The intranet - what is the elevator pitch?

I started an interesting discussion with my suggestion that the word "intranet" should be changed to something more relevant such as "web workplace" (which came from a brainstorming session inside NetJMC & Co on Linkedin).

The discussion has evolved in three places: this web, Column Two, and NetJMC & Co.

I've followed it closely in all 3 channels and have come to understand that intranet managers in companies where the intranet is already at Stage 3 do not feel a need to change the vocabulary.
This is for one of 2 reasons:

• They already have strong brands for their intranets that connote "online workplace"

or

• Their users are focused on services offered by the intranet and relate to those services more than the platform itself where those services reside (= the intranet).
  In these cases, the intranet has become invisible and is simply a transparent platform for essential services.

Organisations where the intranet is not yet positioned as essential work tools DO feel the need for a new term. "Web workplace" resonates with them. They believe it will help them trigger senior management interest because the term carries the purpose of what they are trying to achieve.

• "Thanks for opening up the discussion about what terms could replace the outdated intranet. "
• "To me, telling someone that I manage strategic direction and content management for our web workplace for employees provides a much clearer understanding of my role than referring to the intranet."

It is easy to say that words do not make a difference: it's what we do that counts. That's true when we are in the "friendly territory” of intranet-land where Intranet managers talk to each other and to business people who have "understood".

When we move to potentially "hostile territory" (just joking, but only a little) we need to change our language. I have a client I'm helping prepare for a 15 minute presentation to the top management board of his company. (90,000 employees). He has a short slot on their heavily-charged agenda (at a moment where the economic climate is tough) to request a multi-million euro budget to build an enterprise portal over the next 3 years.

What should he call the “thing” he is talking about? The intranet? The "enterprise portal"? The “web workplace”? How does he explain what he is talking about? Which term speaks for itself?

Words make a difference. They trigger reactions. They represent values. They are the “elevator pitch” which is what most intranet managers have a lot of trouble doing.

What term to you think works best from a "senior management perception" viewpoint?

Where should collaboration sit?

Here are some issues I'm working on currently:

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

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

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

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

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

Intranet purpose: 3 angles

I got a question a few days ago from an intranet manager who asked me:

"I'm working with my team on developing a shared understanding of the purpose of our intranet and wondered if you had a view you'd be willing to share?"

Here's my approach:
When you define the purpose of an intranet, there are several angles to examine. Each angle requires making a choice. However, they are not mutually exclusive choices. They are choices about what you decide to emphasize.

Angle One
Is the primary purpose to communicate, collaborate or work?

Granted, people need to do all three and these functions should all be part of the purpose of the intranet.
The real questions are more detailed:

• Are we trying especially to improve communication? If so, are we talking about bottom-up, horizontal or top-down. Which flow is the weakest in our organization and how can we improve it?
• Does our business need better collaboration, across different silos for example? Are we working on projects that need more efficient ways of supporting virtual teams, or teams that include our employees and external partners? How can the intranet help?
• Do we have business processes that should be supported by the intranet? Through a portal? Through integration of core process applications?
• Do we have secondary processes that we could integrate into the intranet? This could save time for employees and process owners.

Simply put, where do we want to put the emphasis?

Angle Two
Look at the intranet and its services from three perspectives: the employee, the business and the enterprise.

Are you serving all three well?

• For example, is there anything going on in the economic environment that means you should give extra support to business managers?
• Is your enterprise undergoing a down-sizing or transformation program that requires special support to employees?
• And so on.

Needs change over time. Needs can also be very temporary but nonetheless critical for the company.

Simply put, take your head out of the intranet, and think about your company, your business and the people. What do they need?

Angle Three
Do you want to position your intranet as a layer or as an integrator?

• Do you envisage a flat, thin layer over a lot of specialized sites, each one independently serving its users?
• Do you envisage a customized, single entry point into all the company's information, applications and resources. I say "attempting" because doing this successfully is hard and rare.

If you are in the first case, you need to:

• Understand what is common to all, and ensure that it is found only on the intranet-portal, leaving the specialized content for the independent sites. Otherwise, these sites will become the entry points for their users who will thereby not see the common, shared information and messages. Or they will see out-of-date common content because the site manager will not have realized there has been an update.
• Specify the purpose and scope for each piece: the layer and the underlying sites. They will most likely - all taken together - cover all the points in Angles 1 and 2.

If you are in the second case, your challenge will be twofold:

• Identify meaningful and workable profile criteria for personalization
• Ensure that the user experience is meaningful, starting with the home page

The biggest challenge here is accepting that in most large enterprises, from 10 to 15% of the content and services are common and the rest is specific. This is a switch from the way most headquarters-based intranet teams see things.
- - - - -

Readers: please join the conversation. How have you gone about defining the purpose of your intranet or portal?

Future intranet manager

A group of approximately 15 intranet managers in global companies came together in Paris last week for the first JMC Intranet Manager Breakfast in 2009.

This presentation was used to kick off the discussion - which was quite lively! The participants themselves shared views on a number of closely related topics that are described briefly on the last few slides in the deck.

Enjoy, and please comment. (If you want a copy of the presentation in pdf, drop me a note, introduce yourself, and I'll send it to you.)

Future Intranet Manager - what role?

View more presentations from Jane Mcconnell. (tags: virtual-work portal)

Making your intranet essential - workshop 23 Feb, Geneva

I'll be running a workshop in Geneva Monday 23 February called "Making your intranet essential". Figures and data from the last 3 years of the Global Intranet Strategies survey highlight differences between intranets that are "nice to have" but not yet fully integrated into how the organization works, and intranets that have become indispensable.
We'll be looking at these differences and addressing some fundamental questions:

• What is a "mature intranet"? What role should it play in an organization?
• How can you raise senior management awareness of how intranet can help the enterprise "work smarter"?
• Can social media be introduced in cases where the current "classic" intranet is not yet up to speed? In other words, can a weak "intranet 1.0" be strengthened by injecting "2.0 elements" or is this distracting?
• How can content publishers be best supported?
• How does the role of the intranet manager evolve as the intranet becomes more critical to business?

If you're in the Geneva region, and interested, get in touch with the J.Boye group who is organizing this workshop.
If you have comments on the topic, I hope you'll share them here.
(And don't forget the new Linkedin group for intranet managers "NetJMC & Co" where topics like this can be discussed online with over 180 other intranet managers from around the world in a "closed group" with no vendors nor agencies. The group is new, and the discussions are just starting.)

Senior management wakeup triggers

I received an email recently from someone wanted to know "How can I make my senior management more aware of what our intranet can provide?"

Here is what I included on the "short list" I sent him:`(from high impact down)

1. Find out what your competitors are doing with their intranets and tell them. Hopefully they are more advanced than your organization. If not, forget this one!

2. Try to identify some risk management issues that the intranet can help alleviate. Risk managers are very helpful allies.

3. Of course, look for financial gains and savings (faster client response, streamlined self-service processes for employees, etc.). Express these gains in business terms.

4. Nowadays, management is sensitive to the need to increase employee engagement.

5. Depending on the industry you are in and the retirement rate in your current workforce, they may be influenced by the argument of making the intranet more attractive to new employees. I know if I were looking for a job, I would want to the see intranet and the digital work environment before joining an organization.

What would be on your short lists?

Essential and operational intranets - thoughts from J.Boye CoP

Sitting high up and looking down on the world is a nice way to get some perspective on intranet issues that too often tend to pull us down! Yesterday was a day well spent with the new London-based Community of Practice created by J.Boye.

My keynote on social media behind the firewall triggered a lot of discussion as did the firsthand intranet case studies provided by Allen Huish of BA and Simon Ashley and Janie Perrins of the Environment Agency (our host and the scene for my foggy photo down onto one of the best views in London - normally!).

Some thought-provoking take-ways from the day-long session: essential & operational

• The intranet is like an ATM machine (cash distributor): it lets you do what you want, when and where.
• If you want to make your intranet essential, find the one thing that everyone in your organization must do, and put it on the intranet.
• Measure, measure, measure. (This was emphasised in convincing ways in both case studies, although my personal experience is that this depends quite a lot on the company culture.)
• Track all operational goals (ref: BA case.)
• Be sure you really know your users. (ref Environment Agency case: they not only did personas - for which they won the 2007 Intranet Innovation Awards -  but also make the personas live on as the intranet team continues their research and gets to know the personas better and better).
• Understanding your user goals is good. But be sure to balance it with what fits your organizational strategy.

For more information about the J.Boye CoPs, contact J.Boye directly. I'm looking forward to my involvement in the Geneva-based CoP which will take place on February 24th. I'll be doing a workshop for J.Boye the preceding day on "Making your intranet essential".
(Note: J.Boye members get a discount on purchasing the Global Intranet Trends Report for 2009. Get in touch directly with J.Boye for the coupon code.)

Intranet versus Other

I just got a question from a reader:

....My internal communications manager is pulling together a report on the intranet and had the following question:" In general, what ratio would information be stored on the intranet versus other options such as mail/folders/blogs/wikis etc. ?"....

My response is that the question cannot be answered as it is phrased. But here is my answer anyway...!

1. Blogs and wikis - an integral part of an intranet.
Blogs and wikis should not be a parallel, "underground" intranet. They serve very specific purposes within an intranet and require life-cycle management policies:

• Wikis are often used for co-creation of content. At a certain point, content may become finalized and then would logically enter the "official" or "reference" area of the intranet and not be tucked away in a wiki.
• Blogs must have a purpose. Depending on the purpose they will eventually be removed (event blog) or archived (project blog). An expert blog might remain on line forever!

So the question is unanswerable because they are an integral part of the intranet.

2. Email - a very risky situation.
"Storing information" in emails is a destructive way to work. Information stored in emails is not findable, nor sharable, nor safe.

To answer the question, I'd say too much is stored there, and organizations in this case are running major risks from a legal, financial and commercial viewpoints.

3. Shared folders, a reaction more than a choice
This usually happens when the intranet is too rigid for local needs. It is a dangerous practice because, as in the previous point, this makes the information unfindable and impossible to share outside the local network.
Even when people say the information is only "for us", it is rarely true.

I once visited a country division of a global company. They showed me their shared folders which contained about 90 % of their information, and then their intranet with the remaining 10 %. I asked how this had come about. The answers was very simple: "The intranet navigation and categories are unworkable for us."

Enough said!

Realistic Intranet Strategies: Wrap up

This is the last in a series of posts based on "How to get from Stage 1 to Stage 3". (description of stages).
They are written in answer to a question I was asked recently: "How do I start if I don't have senior management support?"
I decided to wrap up this series in a single post. Let me know if there are points or steps you'd like to discuss in more detail.

Previous related posts concerned (0) management awareness and (1) role and scope.

2. Think simple.
Intranet teams sometimes get caught up in designing services that are complex when there are some basic features they could implement more simply, things that would help make information flow more easily. A good example is blogs, especially multi-author blogs for projects and events.
Some participants in the Global Intranet Strategies survey talked about using both blogs and wikis as a reaction to content management and publishing systems that are too rigid and complex.

3. Clean up.
Critical but hard to do. There's nothing like finding out-of-date content to make users doubt the intranet. Work with the content contributors of course, but be firm, and don't hesitate to close down sites that are no longer being updated. You might be surprised to see that no one notices.
"Cleaning up" is one of the top 3 priorities for 2009 according to survey respondents currently in Stage 1.

4. Get management involved if you don't have it yet.
You'll be needing management support for the following steps. As the intranet becomes more essential to people, it starts to stir up competition, resistance and even simple inertia (which is harder to deal with than resistance). You'll need a high level "referee" soon. Now is the time to create a high-level steering committee, and be sure you have business representation. Do not leave it in the hands of communication, IT and HR.

Note: Steps 5, 6 and 7 can be initiated simultaneously. They are all strategic issues, take time and will be "work in progress" over multiple months (or years for point 6.)
Point 7 sounds easy, but moving from testing to implementation to optimization takes time.

5. Build ownership and process.
Ownership and roles need to be defined. If they are not clarified and integrating into work processes and job descriptions, the intranet will continue to be a "when I have time" leisure activity. Stage 2 organizations say this is a top priority for 2009.

6. Make the intranet the front door.
The trend is clearly towards the single entry point. Applications, collaborative spaces, reporting systems and other employee and business services are being integrated into the intranet fairly fast. Stage 2 organizations made a big leap this year for this point. Stage 3 is still far ahead. This is one key to moving to Stage 3.

7. Develop collaborative spaces & tools.
You have two approaches here: (A) a "service offer" where people and teams can set up their collaborative spaces in a few clicks, or (B) a process where people request a space, get it approved, then get it set up. The one you choose will depend on your corporate culture and the way your IT department works. Both have advantage and risks:

• "A" ensures speed, but risks over-lapping spaces triggering user confusion. Spaces may be created without a minimum of planning, then deserted.
• "B" ensures scope and purpose as well as ownership. The risks are slowness, over regulation and stifling enthusiasm and creativity.

8. Start work on customization.
This has been left to the last because it is still a major focus area for Stage 3 organizations. The slide illustrates that although Stage 3 leads, they are not yet far along this path.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Realistic Intranet Strategies series

Based on my experience and studying 3 years of data from the Global Intranet Strategies Surveys (2006 - 2008), I've pulled out 8 action areas and placed them in an approximate chronological order. They are spread over 3 posts: this one and the 2 preceding ones: (0) management awareness and (1) role and scope.

More information about the Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report can be found at netjmc.com/survey. It is available for purchase by non-participants, and offered free of charge to organizations who participate.

Realistic Intranet Strategies 1: Role and scope

Introduction:
This is part of a series of posts, starting with Realistic Intranet Strategies 0: Senior management awareness. It assumes your goal is to transform your intranet into an essential workplace. In other words, you are aiming to be in Stage 3. (description)

The first step is to describe the role and scope of the intranet. This is hard to do even in the ideal situation where you have full management support and a mandate to optimize, re-energize or reposition the intranet.

You must position it in relation to other systems, tools and spaces. You need to be able to answer the question: How does the intranet fit or relate to...

• Other intranets or portals that exist in your organization (HR, enterprise, country, division, etc.)
• Document management system(s)
• ERP system
• Collaboration spaces and tools
• Social media such as blogs and wikis if they exist on their own
• Email
• Employee directory (or directories)

The answers will vary: "be the entry point into..." or "exist separately from..." or "eventually replace...".

The answers should have a notion of phasing, in particular when the goal is to integrate an existing service or application. The first phase may be "link to" with future plans to "integrate the data". Or, "link to" may be all you intend to do.

With senior management support...
One reason this positioning is difficult is that you will be dealing with different owners of these applications and services in different parts of your organization. If your intranet or portal is intended to be the entry point or to integrate the others, having a clear, communicated mandate from top management, will make life easier.

Without senior management support...
Carrying this out is nearly impossible when you do not have senior management support. If this is your case, I recommend that you take a step back and think about what your intranet or portal has or does that is unique. What are the things that no other intranet or portal or application or service in your organization can do.

The ease of uniqueness
You will probably fall into the "specific" category or the "convergence" category.

The first is the easiest. You have a specific group of users you serve. They may be within a local entity, such as all the employees in South Africa. Or your users may be geographically dispersed but have the same professional needs, such as all the purchase managers in the group.

In specific cases like these, you should not have too much difficulty defining the role and scope of your intranet or portal. In theory, you will not have "competition" from others.

The "threat" of convergence
The second case, that of "convergence", is much harder. This is where your intranet is or should be the main entry point for employees across the organization, but is not necessarily intended to be the place where people do their work. The workplace is more likely to be a "specific" intranet or space as described in the paragraph above.

The challenge you have here is to figure out what special value you can bring to users. What can you offer users that they cannot find elsewhere?

However the user viewpoint is one thing. Users are not always high on the totem pole. The "other intranet" owner is another story. It is much harder to describe what you offer in a way that makes sense to the owners of the other intranets in the group. Like in the wild west internet, many intranet sites within an organization are competing to be THE entry point.

Unattainable?
Without visible, high level management support, your positioning as the "way of working" may be unattainable for the moment. There may be parts of the organization who resist directly or block indirectly through inertia. There may be other competing entry points that serve parts of the organization but not all of the organization.
Whatever your case, I recommend not pushing against the wall, but rather moving on to the next step. Tearing down the wall will come later!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Realistic Intranet Strategies series

Based on my experience and studying 3 years of data from the Global Intranet Strategies Surveys (2006 - 2008), I've pulled out 8 action areas and placed them in an approximate chronological order on a slide. I will comment one step per post, over the next few weeks.
More information about the Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report can be found at netjmc.com/survey. It is available for purchase by non-participants, and offered free of charge to organizations who participate.

Previous episodes:
Episode 0: Realistic Intranet Strategies 0: Senior management awareness
Next episode:
Episode 2: "Offer simple high value services".

Intranets Live - report from the South

I was not able to participate in Intranets Live from Denmark as planned because of a technical hitch at the UK end, but enjoyed reading Dorje McKinnon's report on the event. Almost made me feel like I was there.

Intranets in turbulent times

I just arrived in Aarhus for the JBoye conference where I am keynoting the intranet track. My official title for the keynote is "Getting to essential - still a long path". I've given it a subtitle: "Intranets in turbulent times".

With many organisations undergoing restructuring, changes in intranet sponsors, reduced budgets and resources, it will be necessary to find new ways to focus on making sure the intranet delivers what users really need.

We will need to move to a new way of working: focusing on what we can do with what we have, always keeping user needs foremost. Just the essential, just good enough, and as fast as possible.

This may all turn out to have a positive impact on intranets: lean and mean, rather than over-flowing and bogged down.

Intranet managers and money: Talk money in order to get money

Very interesting post by Stephan Schillerwein on the IBF blog following a IBF Global meeting: The recession-proof Intranet.
Stephan lists 3 things any intranet manager should be able to answer about his/her intranet.
I quote:

1. State the current investment level

2. List current Intranet services and deliverables including their benefits to the organisation

3. List additional beneficial intranet services that can be added at low cost to help the organisation improve or cut costs

My own experience is that most intranet managers cannot answer the 3 questions above.
This is confirmed by the 2008 Global Intranet Survey data (collected from June - September 2008, report not yet published.). When asked what knowledge areas are important for an intranet manager, the "money related" points were at the bottom of the list: "Finances, return on investment analysis" and "Business cases".

The full list as rated by the survey participants from high to low:

• User-centered approach, design
• Information architecture (structuring information)
• Organisational dynamics
• Business and business processes
• Tools: e.g. search, content management systems
• Technology trends
• Needs analysis techniques
• Business cases
• Finances, return on investment analysis

I've often felt over the past couple of years that the "user first" mentality, which was sorely lacking in the past, has now become too predominant. We risk losing the attention or, more likely, not capturing the attention in the first place of the top management and decision-makers in the organisation.

Their main concerns are business-related. If we cannot related the intranet directly to business (in the large sense of the activity performed by the organisation), we will never get into the conversation.

Granted, the intranet manager role itself is unclear in most organisations. They cannot be all things to all people. But they can make sure that they get someone on their team, or have access to someone in the organisation, who can help them answer the 3 questions above.

(Note: The survey asked 2 questions: the first about "skills" required for intranet managers, and the second about "knowledge areas". More about the first one later.)

Have you positioned your portal?

I'm currently working with 3 clients who are defining portal strategies - 2 are enterprise portals and 1 is a "business portal" or what we call a "professional portal".

I have a slide I've used with all 3. It's the first slide in my "portal tool kit" series of slides. It's simple but challenging.

Can you answer these questions for your portal?