Tag: intranetmanagement

Resurrection of Alchemists

Love this piece by Braco Dimitrijevic from 2006 (currently showing at the Tate Modern – London) which expresses the dangers of crushing the innovation and creativity of ‘artist’s (we can replace artists with knowledge workers in the corporate environment).

The great gold rush to a social organisation should be tempered with a vision of what the future could look like. If everyone within an organisation becomes ‘social’ are we running a risk of conversation and sharing overload or do we just need to adjust the way we work to learn how to consume what’s relevant? Ideas welcome.

Changing the skill set to meet the digital game changers

Excellent article – be interested to know if anyone feels the ‘intranet’ skill sets need to change to adapt to the ‘game changers’?

http://www.csc.com/insights/insights/78770-the_next_generation_of_digital_game_changers?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 This is an exciting development for intranet teams, with changes to the scope and role of the intranet meaning an opportunity to redefine what they do and how they work. Intranet teams have traditionally been rigidly built around the organizational structure and technology, with the intranet team often emerging as an afterthought. The dawn of the social and digital workplace represents the possibility for some radical re-shaping of intranet teams in order to prepare for these shifts as well as open up new career opportunities in the area of social and collaboration.

Where content has been a central focus, this evolution will mean putting relationships at the centre of what intranets can achieve.  As this starts to happen, the intranet team’s role in the organization moves beyond design and communication towards that of a facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing.

In addition, as organizations emerge from the recession, a new paradigm is becoming apparent as technology provision is no longer limited to the traditional IT department and argument over whether the colour looks right, or what graphic goes where. The availability of tools, many open source or “freemium”, outside the firewall and employees’ desire to use them in place of outmoded enterprise systems is compounding this trend.

While IT and intranet teams control, the new generation of workers are looking to innovate, share, collaborate, learn and engage not inside the physical boundaries of an office nor the virtual boundaries of a network but a social or digital workplace that spans the globe.

The behaviours, attitudes and expectations of employees are undergoing a seismic shift.  A new generation are entering the workplace, at ease with technology and redesigning our perceptions of private and public in the digital environment . This new generation, with a reputation for limited digital patience, attention seeking and being at ease with showcasing and communicating via digital platforms, will put pressure on traditional intranets to evolve in my dynamic and interactive ways.

These changes in the workplace do not mean that the fundamental skills we have looked at for intranet management are no longer needed, but they do mean that intranet teams need to respond by developing new key characteristics:

·         Becoming more agile and fluid – able to adapt quickly to new technologies and ways of working. This may mean learning new skills quickly, or bringing in these skills from other parts of the organization, or outside.

·         Becoming more user-centric – focused on fostering communities, and facilitating interaction and knowledge sharing. Nurturing the capabilities to make best use of the digital platforms available.

·         A broader scope – the intranet team may no longer be called the “intranet” team – an opportunity to re-write the definition of what the team does. For example, “Digital Communications Team” or “Web and Workplace Centre of Excellence”.

·         Leading by example – as the intranet team increasingly takes on the role of facilitator/ enabler, it is key that they demonstrate new ways of working in the social or digital workplace in their own behaviours. This is further emphasized by the fact that as the workforce becomes more technologically savvy (anyone can set up a blog, start microblogging, or find what they need on the web) everyone is becoming an “expert”.

  • Being the innovators  – as traditional boundaries and ways of working are challenged the intranet team need to become ever more creative in understanding the opportunities for the organizations online channels to develop and merge in new ways. To do so it is essential that the intranet team understand emerging technologies on the web and the user behaviours associated with them. 

A more visual digital world

Is it me or are larger graphics making a comeback and is Pinterest leading the way?

Pinterest is a step in an ever growing visual direction. There is definitely a need to step away from heavy text laden social and knowledge platforms in the age of smartphones and tablets. People want to be captivated by images and I think Pinterest fills the niche.

Even top news sites like the BBC have moved towards a more graphical display to signpost content.  Strangely enough Facebook have started to limit image size (more memory size than pixel size – is this a sign that Facebook is no longer ahead of the curve!).

At the moment I am working with some young artists and they love what Pinterest offers. Whether large organisations can derive benefit from it is another matter.

Much of my work is with organisations internal applications and there is a shift toward imagery across some areas such as intranet homepages. When intranets and external websites first entered the arena we saw large graphics used to make impacts on news items or links to key content. As more and more content piled onto sites the  trend then went to reduction of graphics and more links. Maybe we are all looking for a simpler doorway to content and relationships. Rather than bombard users with links, text and documents  the trend may be back to’ less is more’ but more relevant content with large, bold graphics as a signpost for them?

I must confess I always thought something like audioboo would take off as people became fed up with text and documents. Maybe Pinterest is the visual answer as we enter a more colourful and visually pleasing digital world.

The digital workplace is more than technology

I’m a keen reader of the Chieftech blog and saw this interesting take on the digital workplace

http://chieftech.com.au/what-is-the-digital-workplace-mostly-harmless#comment

The ‘digital workplace’ (or whatever people call it) is far more than grouping some technology as a response. For me it’s an enabling cultural change to the way we work, manage, lead and combine work with the changing needs of our life.

If you shepherd some technology products under a banner for employees who still spend hours travelling to an office to plug into a network extension and spend one day ‘working at home’ where they complete their standard weekly powerpoint presentations, then this fails to understand what can be achived.

The digital workplace is a mindset and technolgy toolkit that enables organisations and employees to truely shape the environment where they can innovate, create and begin to gain some work / life balance that reflects the growing change of the society we live in. It will provide us the ability to be flexible and agile, enabling us to combine work with true quality of life – raising our children (rather than atching 30 minutes before bedtime) and caring for elderly relatives, having freedom to think and create in an environment create by the you rather than sat at a white desk, in a white office. 

Organisations that have the tools but still expect powerpoints, use the term ‘working at home’ and continue with the statics processes around people development and innovation (just look at the standard yearly appraisal systems) will be on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Leaders need to understand where best employees can innovate and create, employees need to develop disciplines and behaviours that understands that the physical office is perhaps the worst place to get their work complete and Intranet Managers, or whoever is respoonsible for stewardship of this toolkit need tolearn more nuturing and relationship skills rather than managing a database behind a firewall.

It’s a ‘must happen’ for organisations (particularly in the West) that will enable us to complete in a new economy. The alternative of more of the ‘corporate shoulder pads’ of the 1980s is something that will ensure organisations fail to atract the best talent and the best responses to changing markets.

Social Business not just another KM 2.0

Love this article from Social Business News. 

http://www.socialbusinessnews.com/is-social-business-just-knowledge-management-2-0/

I am a strong believer that ‘social’ we be far different to KM. From a visionary perspetive you could argue it begins to give employees a voice that has been eroded since the 1970s – maybe not so much in how an organisation is run but certainly in how it delivers a service, innovates and connects.

It certainly questions how KM has been run in many organisations. If a virual deployment of Yammer can do more to connect and share that a KM program we have to look at how that business has been running.

It shifts the skills that are required to provide stewardship of this process (not capture or manage) as eluded to in some early posts on ‘digital divide’

http://digitaldivide.posterous.com/changing-skills

http://digitaldivide.posterous.com/the-value-is-in-the-playground

It raises questions around roles of Information Management, Taxonomies, documents etc. The incoming generation want to connect around people and relationships and avoid the clutter of documentation. This won’t work immediately for many organisations, particularly in highly regulated environments but the cultural use of technology has always driven the compliance agenda and no doubt social will eventually do the same.

Moving towards a social enterprise will enable wider skill sets to be used to create these conversations and relationships. No longer would we need management of information and documents but facilitation of groups, people and relationships around some core principles and conversation topics.

It certainly is an exciting time as the social enterprise changes the way we work, lead and deliver value to organisations and our own work / life balance.

Day 2 at Gartner

 Day 2 of the Gartner summit was time to look into the future. Attended sessions on  how we can monitor social tools, looking at the next generation of real-time mobile connected workers and the success and failures of cloud-based computing. Some good networking with organisations that are facing similar issues to us (always good to confirm we are not alone). Some key themes throughout the day focused on ensuring we determine requirements and define purpose. In the best traditional of tag clouds here are some instance words / terms / phases I picked up from the 2 days of Gartner summit.

There are ‘birthright workplace tools’

Time and place are no longer boundaries to collaboration (except with my laptop!)

We must put the user experience in context

Our job is about engaging eyeballs

Intranets and portals are becoming more e to e (employee to employee)

The governance role is to find the balance between control and flexibility 

Leaving the summit I left with a real sense of worth with my role. There has been lots of talk recently about the future of online teams (‘death of the intranet manager’; ‘out of the box’ websites etc) but I left with a real sense that the role I and industry peers play will be around for the next few years. It’s not about the technology but a collection of methodologies and approaches that enhances the end-user experience.

Something to support the physical

One of our business units used video to deliver strategic messages throughout the year. The feedback we received from the unit (approx 250 people) was that it was a ‘nice’ way to deliver a message, but in terms of registering what was said it had very, very little impact (reports received back from employee focus group). I was also part of a discussion today regarding the launch of a knowledge programme with a large business unit (approx 800 people). We talked over a mixture of delivery methods to determine how to launch a new initiative in knowledge sharing. The general consensus of opinion from various areas of the business unit was that methods such as ‘video’ look and feel fresh but do not register with the audience without some physical take away. A number of people quoted an example of an initiative that was launched last Easter which included an Easter Egg on each employees desk. The initiative is remembered far more than video messages given by a CEO. My early musings on this is that any virtual campaign needs to be supported (or vice versa) by a physical example that the audience can take away. Someone quoted an example of a match-day programme or magazine from a concert of football game. You need something you can hold/touch to remember the messages (or event) you attended. I’ve always maintained that we need to look at channels which satisfy our physical, virtual and social needs to make an impact.

We don’t do workflow

One of our knowledge stakeholders recently asked if we have a ‘workflow’ process document which is used across the intranet. The fact is we don’t – and deliberately so. Let me explain.

Content comes in different shapes and context. Some needs ‘locking-down’, other content is ‘open’, while elements develop as it is pushed, modified and enhanced. There is not a ‘one solution’ fits all process flow within each stream, nor within each site area within a community site. Some communities have areas which are controlled by a central team, and no-one else can update/add. They also have areas which are open and require no authorisation or approval to publish and enhance. Other communities are more centrally controlled with some locked-down areas.

What we do provide is a ‘governance structure’. Generally speaking teh governance structure provides visible ownwership for each area of a site. The owner is best placed to determine the requirements of content production for their area – from the user, risk and stream perspective. When we sit down with each ‘owner’ we then structure the content flow process and build as required. An overall ‘steering group’ would ideally determine the overall suitability of the workflow, however, experience suggests this is more a rubber stamping process.

Currently many sites are built around a traditional knowledge management approach – the sites are merely manipulation of information already created. This type of governance structure us suitable for this. When/if we look to introduce more ‘knowledge transfer/sharing’ elements it may be of value to look at adding various processes for each area.

The key thing in all of this, for me, is that whether we talk of process workflow, knowledge sharing, transfer, or management, it only has value if it can result in action: new knowledge generation; new ideas; thoughts. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where and how it may arise. This may not be an appropriate for some communities that require lock-down on many areas of content, yet maybe something that will develop once the site is launched, adopted and trust develops. But I think that action is more likely if we are open-minded about where it might arise. If we try and predict where it may be, and from which interactions it might come, I think it is most probable that no useful action and value will result in the long term.

Acquiring knowldge has no value – it’s what you do with it that provide the value.

Two tribes

Another response to chieftech excellent blog

Would disagree with the comment on the early intranet tribes. Would suggest the early tribes came from either IT or a knowledge/Information background. Looking at where the new tribes are I see two disinct patterns. One is the ‘talking at you tribe’ – general intranets that are full of corporate comms and provide very little opportunity to engage or debate with the workforce. The second tribe are the ‘talking with you tribe’ – looking to build a platform around creating communities, networking, collaboration etc. Sharepoint may be used by IT to regain control of from some of these tribes but eventually they will release this – as they have done in the past. Traditional IT is about control and management of systems. The intranet platform, or whatever it is next called is about spotting, nuturing and replicating value to the business = something IT is just not skilled of doing, nor in fact should they be. ‘Too busy to worry about the future’ – suggests to me the typical danger we face and maybe the cause of many of our problems. Online generally we are to busy looking for the next ‘big thing’. We look for constant change. If we introduced something, then spend time working on enhancing and improving, we may start to satisfy the basic needs of the user which I still think the majority of intranets have not met – a decent search and good people finder.

When two become one

Got a baby sitter on Saturday so my wife and I went to see ‘Up in the clouds’ – good film but that’s not the point of my post. In one scene  ‘preppy’ rookie employee was giving presentation that focused on the merger of the words ‘global’ and ‘local’ to form Glocal!! Stealing my thunder I think. For a while I’ve garnered a sense that we are looking back towards local solutions to combat the rise of ‘global this and that’. The same applies in the world of intranets. Some of our most popular communities are based around strong local connectors, doing local things that matter to the members. Regardles of the ‘global’ solutions offered (or forced upon them) from new technology, fancy new branding,  etc. The communities work because they know and understand what’s required. A know all usability people will say that any site should do the user research etc prior to launch but sometimes you can’t please everyone and comprises to fit within the company guidelines. Our local community sites have purposely kept themselvs under the radar to avoid having to conform to global requirements and have remain far healthier than gloabl communities that have grown big and perished.