Just been watching Paul Miller’s Intranet Garden Video blog January 2010 where he quotes Jeff Jarvis considering the idea that intranet managers are “new e-economy ” workers within the enterprise and deliver disproportionate value to their employers.
Couldn’t agree more (I would say that wouldn’t that) but the danger for me is Intranet Managers start to be seen as the ‘time and motion’ managers similar to the 50’s and 60’s (see “I’m All Right, Jack” – 1959 award winning social comedy). Many of the elements of Frederick Taylor’s work can be seen in way Intranet Managers approach design and usability (not sure what the equivalent would be for the science of shovelling) and will the workplace web in 5 years been seen as virtual ‘Taylorism.’ I start to see danger signs as an increasingly number of services move online with little support or compassion for the behaviour change.Tag: socialenterprise
Creating the right situation for Knowledge to flourish
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A fundamental mistake we often make when judging other people is assuming that their behaviour mainly reflects their personality. Unfortunately this ignores another major influence on how people behave staring us right in the face: the situation. Our personalities certainly have an influence on what situations we get into and how we deal with them, but situational factors — even relatively subtle ones — can completely obliterate the effects of personality. Don’t take my word for it, though, consider a modern take on an ancient bible story from social psychologists Darley & Batson (1973)http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/27/1/100/ What these figures show is the large effect that subtle aspects of the situation have on the way people behave. How does this effect Knowledge Sharing (KS). We can’t just assume people do or do not want to share. In many cases it’s the situation which provides the hurdle. One of the positive aspects of a current KS community project is that actions are being taken to create a situation which encourages and supports KS. Finnace codes are being added to include KS while key influencers are being recruited within the community so the wider community can see KS coming from the leadership. The old adage that a person can be judged on their actions isn’t the whole truth. Often people’s behaviour, and our own, may say very little about our personalities and much more about the complexities of the situation in which we find ourselves. These small changes help create the right situation for KS to flourish. . |
To love or to loathe?
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Had a meeting today with one of our Knowledge stakeholders, responsible, among many other things, for their community area on our intranet. She appeared down and upset. Upon asking why she told me the community’s annual conference was held last week. At the conference, a senior director in the community used his speaking slot to verbally attack an area of the community site. He used ‘Amazon’ as an example of what was needed (along with their budget I hope!). Without seeking any guidance or counsel from the community stakeholders he broadcast what he wanted. Recent research of the community (an online poll which nearly 50% of the community responded) didn’t support this view. The comments made also highlighted a known area of weakness which was to be addressed by the community stakeholder when resource allows.
Do we love or loath this man? Personally I love him! Why? At a high profile meeting, in front of the whole community, he mentioned the community intranet site. Although he didn’t do any research or collected evidence he also spoke about a known weakness of the site. I could also applaud him for using Amazon as an example and not the BBC but that’s another matter.
Why love him? His has given us the visibility, platform and audience to address this issue now. He also provides us a path into senior members of the community to gain resource to address the issue. He’s talked the talk in front of his community. Now he needs to walk the walk. The community stakeholder, although upset, has arranged a session for us all to look at the way forward on this. Involving the attacker means he now has input, responsibility and a personal interest in getting something done.
Do you agree we should love him?
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Leave it to the gatekeeper
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Just reading a piece by Linda Stone, who coined the term “continuous partial attention” to describe the state of today’s knowledge workers, regarding “email apnea”: the unconscious suspension of regular and steady breathing when you tackle your email. There are even claims that the relentless cascade of information lowers people’s intelligence. We pay a high price as we struggle to deal with information of limited value. A study by Microsoft found that once their work had been interrupted by email notification, people took, on average, 24 minutes to return to the suspended task. The answer to this? In an ongoing knowledge sharing project for our largest community, a key element is to define and enhance the role of the Knowledge gatekeeper – the head of this ‘sharing/networking/communicating’ community. Its almost Zen-like. We have to let go of the need to know everything completely. Trust your community, and particularly the gatekeeper of a community to filter and flow the right things to you when you need to know them. It really is turning back the clock. We should no-longer feel we need to know and connect to everyone but have faith (a key word) that the community gatekeeper will guide the relevant content as and when its needed. |
Getting the community ready
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This weekend sees the final content loading for one of our new online knowledge communities. Next week the site goes for stakeholder sign-off and then a week of user testing. Training is being organised for the 12 appointed content publishers. Subject to no major issues being reported the area should launch on 7th December. Nearly 20% of the community has been involved in its development, therefore we already have a core group of stakeholders eager to seed the site within the infrastructure of the community. Once the site is bedded into the stream we then look at the physical and social aspects of their knowledge networking and sharing. |
Thinking of the people
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HR and people related content on intranets generally feature highly in the most popular pages. Our HR pages are no exception, with over 20,000 visits per month to ???people??? related areas. However, over the past 24 months the attention given to maintaining these areas has not reflected this popularity. The area has suffered from old, duplicate and incomplete content. This area is now being addressed. A project, sponsored by our HR department are now looking at ensuring content will be published within a governed, user centric structure. The approach has two stages. First the ???ticking plaster??? ??? urgently addressing the issues with the current site. Stage two sees the complete redevelopment of HR related areas, bringing content under one structure, improved search, enhanced navigation, new taxonomy/tags and a greater focus on how the user engages with the content. Working with the Intranet team the project milestones will include stakeholder workshops, user research, design briefs, user testing and a full adoption programme to ensure a site that is sustainable moving forward. |
Training to engage
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Just read the Guardian article about the digital divide (actually brought the paper rather than read it online –
For me, the same applies within the workplace. We all talk about engagement and collaboration (well I always do) but we provide little to none training in collaboration or how to use the tools to collaborate.
No-where is there budget or resource to include all our staff within the digital framework. In my disucssion with various online stakeholders many agree that its the basis digital skills that are a hurdle to collaboration within the organisation, and greater resource on training or inclusion in this area will reap greater rewards. Problem is, as the article mentions, is that no resource of funds are available to provide this. No department has the remit, nor I suspect the desire, to deal with the issue. Why don’t I do it? You’re right (now I’ll talking to myself) – its something on the list and one day I’ll get a sponsor. Maybe not today but one day.
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Intranets Live
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Really enjoyed by session co-hosting Intranets Live yesterday. I thought the quality of presenters were excellent. Some notes I made during the broadcast are below: Laurel Castiglione (PGE) talked about the first 100 days as an intranet manager. My thoughts were:
Roie Edery (IPC) talked about Yammer. My musings on Yammer were:
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Communities – the soul of our intranet
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Our intranet is focused around the services we offer our clients. Each service has a community presence on the intranet – some thriving, some not – allowing document management, communications and aspects of collaboration. Most of our musings on to intranet stakeholders focus about communities. We have a belief that people share knowledge to a far greater extent within communities – groups they know, understand, relate and engage with (rather than capture/management systems that failed in the late 90s), hence much of our work is about building online communities as the foundations of knowledge sharing. My background was in psychology and organisational development so I use work such as McMillan & Chavis (1986) with a hint of psyco babble to form a strategy for community building. We generally take the following 5 step approach when looking at building the community: 1 – Sponsorship. Ensure you have the right level of sponsorship that has the mussel and weight within the community and the organisation 2 – Governance. Ensure there is a strategy, process for escalation, management structure, workflow, risk assessment and a good business case before any build takes place 3 – Content. Look at the content available or required to be created 4 – Technology. Source the correct technology for the content requirements 5 – Training – provide publishers the tools and knowledge to sustain their community 6 – Adoption – once built and launched work with the community to ensure the sustainability of the site Within these processes come tasks such as stakeholder collaboration, user surveys, design briefs, user testing etc. One of the benefits of building a virtual presence is that the aspects of sharing knowledge in the physical space becomes more realistic to users within the community. |
Back to basics
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Just read the IBF e-newsletter regarding the hottest topics in the intranet world. Usability, maturity and ‘inside out’ all hit the right note, however, for me I think the last few months internally have been ‘going back to basics’ (d’oh! how I dislike sounding like ex-Prime Minsters) but its been a case of working with our communities to iron out issues such as good navigation, search, and listening to the user to enhance the user experience. I guess these traits will never change on the operational side of an intranet. I think from day one of my browser career the internal online offering was always about good search and a decent employee directory. 12 years on I’m not sure much has changed for the vast majority of users. |
Mark Tilbury - digital workplace specialist 