Intranet mantra: Connect, Communicate, Collaborate

If questions such as “Why do you need an intranet” stops you cold, maybe you should find a good mantra that simply describes the purpose of the tool so that any stakeholder can understand it. A killer mantra I recently picked up in a presentation by Mette Aarup of the pharmaceutical company Nycomed describes the goal of their intranet in 3 words: Connect, Communicate, Collaborate

• 1. Connect

In a global organisation with many cultures and language groups, getting in touch with the right person has many barriers. Just knowing who I need to talk to can be difficult. A good intranet should help me get on by providing information on where in the organisation people are placed and whether there are several persons with similar backgrounds and skills. If it is impossible to get in contact with a particular person being able to see this persons closest colleagues is a good alternative.

Even if we know who we should talk to it is always easier to communicate with someone we know a bit about. Many find it embarrassing to call somebody if they don’t know the gender of or whether he or she speaks enough English.  Prior work and project experience is also good background information to have.

Information on time zones, office hours and the persons calendar is practical for anyone trying to communicate internationally. But maybe you don’t need any of this if you can just make it possible to see whether people are online or not when you look them up.

• 2. Communicate

While it feels cumbersome and unnatural to people to set up a video conference in a special conference facility and coordinate with someone on the other side of the world to do the same, it is easy to use online meeting facilities and chat functionality available via the intranet. This dialogue can then easily be stored and searched for later use. From then on, collaborating online is a natural next step.

• 3. Collaborate

Even if people use other online channels than your intranet for collaboration after they have used the intranet to connect you as an intranet manager should claim credit for the success. But at this point it should also be fairly easy to provide a good and useful framework for collaboration where people are already connecting and communicating.

Do you have an intranet mantra or slogan, that you use over and over again? If so, please share it below.

Full disclosure: Nycomed is a member of the J. Boye Community of Practice.

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.