In preparation for my intranet presentation at the Online Information conference in London, I've been talking to several intranet professionals about their current significant challenges. Despite various advances over the last years, it seems everybody agrees that there is still a long way to go for intranets if they are to fulfill their real potential.
When I first started working on the presentation a few months ago, I realized (with some guidance from intranet guru Martin White) that often little can be learned from “leading” intranets, even assuming that the characteristics of a "leading intranet" can be defined. Without the necessary prerequisites, e.g. management support, it is impossible to progress towards innovation.
BT in the UK, whose intranet is managed by Mark Morrell, is in my view an example of a very advanced intranet, perhaps even among the "leading" intranets in the world. Follow his public diary, you'll find that the BT intranet also has a long way to go, e.g. in the area of intranet application usability, where their systems were still very difficult to use.
The significant intranet challenges that I will focus on in my session titled "Why Great Intranets Still Have A Long Way To Go" are:
- lack of support (in all ways) from senior managers - making it difficult to realize the intranet potential
- usability - which makes adoption very difficult
- collaboration - many are still struggling to find the right ways to use the intranet to work together
- governance - an area where many intranets either have no real owner or are owned by a single unit, typically communication, HR or IT
- vendors, including software companies, agencies and analysts - confusing intranet professionals with all their different offerings and recommendations
I've heard about different approaches to tackling the above, in particular from conversations with several members in our community of practice and will share my thoughts on the topic at the presentation. I'll include how UNHCR were successful in getting executive management support by using a sponsor that opened doors. I'll also talk about how WWF have found a good approach to collaboration by using Google Docs. I'll post the final slides here shortly after the conference.
I would be very interested in hearing how you solved the 5 challenges
If you’d like to learn from other organisations where the intranet is truly business critical, I’d encourage you to join our international intranet conference in Copenhagen on March 22 2011.
I think you are correct. One that I’d add, or possibly relate to “lack of support” is:
* lack of compelling content or content not written for the web.
Firstly, I have to say that I disagree that with the statement that ‘little can be learned from leading intranets’. While it is true that an intranet is unlikely to meet all user requirements and expectations, there are certainly some generic and desirable intranet qualities that some organisations have addressed much more effectively than others. And we should be able to learn from these.
Take collaboration for example. I know of several organisations that have discussion forums that are actively being used by the end users, have collaborative work spaces that are also being used, have incorporated blogs and blog spaces into their intranet which are kept up-to-date and read by end users. I know that the end users consider these to be valuable and useful tools.
If I am running an intranet that is not getting any traction in the collaboration space, I would be very interested in speaking to those organisations that have ‘been there and done that’ and have succeeded in this area. I think this applies to any industry – not just intranets. Everyone wants to learn from the best.
In terms of addressing the challenges you mention, I think senior management support can be obtained by demonstrating real benefits that the intranet adds to the business. Particularly in the areas of process/task completion, employee engagement, change management, collaboration, knowledge management, continuous improvement, looking after the environment and improved access to applications & data. Once you have this support, it make is easier to obtain the resources needed to address other challenges.
Wish I could be in London this week!
I think what Martin means (and I agree) is that you cannot look at great intranets and assume you can “cut and paste” what they did into yours. Every intranet is unique.
However I certainly agree with Andrew that much can be learned by exploring how other organizations have met intranet challenges that you are facing. I know for certain that most organizations face similar challenges. Understanding the obstacles, looking at what other people have done is immensely helpful. The key is to understand their parameters and yours, their intranet demographics and yours, and then see what ideas and tips might be relevant for you.
Janus and colleagues – very nice new design!
Jane is very good at reading between my lines. My comment to Janus was in the context of CoP discussions where there is a tendency for less-experienced intranet managers to assume that if they adopt the approaches taken by organisations who seem to have “found the answer” without taking the trouble to understand the similiarities and differences between not only their intranet and the exemplar, but also between the business requirements and organisational culture, then there will almost certainly be trouble ahead.
I’d just like to comment on the first ‘challenge’ lack of support from senior managers.
I think that there is a very good reason why many intranets don’t get supported, it’s because generally they don’t offer value for money. If I was a senior manager I would have to think very hard whether the finite amount of money I had would be best spent by being sunk into the bottomless well of an intranet or on something that might provide a more certain return.
It is time for intranet workers to stop whingeing about how they never get the resource they need and recognize the fact that it is up to them to prove the value of their intranet to senior management by improving what they offer.
How can they do this? That’s the $60,000 question. However whatever approach we take it must be different to what we’ve tried before.
As they say ‘If you keep doing the same things, don’t be surprised when you keep getting the same results’
Patrick
If your organisation does not have a collaborative culture then trying to build collaborative tools within a corporate intranet is not much use unless you address the culture within the organisation.
Intranets need to be different not because organisations are different but because organisational culture differs from one company to the next (and even between different organisational units in the case of larger companies).
Organisations can only learn from another organisation’s intranet if they first learn how that intranet relates to the ‘personality’ of the organisation. This is why cut and paste functionality from one intranet manager to another most ends in #FAIL.
Organisational culture is mostly overlooked in such conversations but it’s pretty much the guiding factor in determining how a company should make the most of an investement in such technologies
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