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I always use analogies to simplified and understand the world of online. Its helps me make sense of things. At my job interview back in 2000 I used analogies for cooking and football to explain my methods.
When I first started developing websites I used the analogy of a supermarket, linking comparisons with usability, unique visitors, length of visits etc – you should have heard it, a master class if I say so myself.
The intranet world has moved on and my analogy now for intranets is a school. At a school we have formal classes, play time, assembly, registration and after school activities. The structure of an intranet is the same. We have formal document areas (class time); assembly (internal communications); registration (all the HR elements within the site); and communities (the various after school activities). Play time is where we introduce the collaborative elements of an intranet. It’s unstructured but it’s where the intranet can provide most value. Looking at our role within intranets we could see ourselves as playground assistant – monitoring what occurs in the playground, ensuring nothing dangerous is happening, and then learning, reporting and structuring around what we learn from these social collaborative gathering. By the way the intranet canteen menu is dinner time.
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Tag: socialenterprise
You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You.
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Just finishing off an article for our monthly intranet newsletter. Its part of our adoption approach to ensure we have an active, engaged group of intranet stakeholders – those that run and drive the strategy and activity within our knowledge communities on our intranet. Apart from the monthly e-newsletter we also produce a blog, a feature area on our intranet and, where resource permits both physical and virtual meetings with key stakeholders. Our strategy is to inform, guide and motivate through a mixture of internal news, technical updates and an drop of external best practice. Like most organisations we have a mixture of eager participants and those that go through the motion. We produce a ‘recommended’ profile of someone who would make a good stakeholder to lead an online community area. In some cases this is considered, in many cases ignored. So goes the fate of an online community. But as they say in Texas..You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You. |
Troops on the ground with passion
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On 1st October my firm completed a rebranding programme. The visible effects on the intranet were colour scheme and the switch from illustrations to photo imagery. A number of weeks prior to the switch we looked at the most efficient way this could be done. Schemes were devised and then dropped (i.e. an agent to find/replace jpegs, gifs etc – not all image files could be dropped such as photos of events and individuals). Eventually we fell back on the fail-safe position of manual updates. Leading up to the brand change we spent many nights removing illustrations. On the night of the rebrand we then loaded photos to a number of key pages. We’ve learnt some lessons, particularly becoming stricter on who, how and where photos can be used. A number of intranet stakeholders worked with great passion to ensure their areas complied to the new branding.
It did get me thinking, even after all these years of improved content management systems, some tasks still need the troops on the ground deleting, copying, replacing and uploading. Just confirms to me that one of the main mantras for running an intranet is that its ‘run by people, for people, who need connecting to people’. Technology is useful but passion is key |
Hassle free sharing
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Always been a fan of Twitter since I first came acros it 2 years back. Why? Because it fits into our way of life. The spare moment on the bus or tube, the mobile to hand allows us to share quite easily. Never been a fan of audioboo. It just doesn’t fit into our pattern of behaviour. I’ll tweet on a bus but wouldn’t start ‘booing’ (is that what its called). The way we share needs to fit into our behavior pattern. Yammer is so easy, email is easy. Too many of our internal systems make us work to collaborate. If I have to do that the battle is already lost. ps – Posterous is soooo easy I love it |
Its all about people
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It’s almost a year since we started an intrenal blog about the work of our team. When we first did it was a way of sharing with a wider audience the discussions and thoughts we have internally, in our team meetings and across the intranet community. Although I write most of the posts, they actually reflect the discussions, ideas and thoughts that we have had right across the Intranet community. Sharing our thoughts on social media, online communities, content, training, intranets and everything related to it. If you’re new to our blog (or have just been a long-time reader) I thought it would be interesting to reflect on what’s been, and after the proliferation of word-clouds for Obama’s Inauguration Speech, I created the same for the Intranet blog. Four words were prominent: people social communities governance. We write about online communities and how they behave. We write social media and its potential in knowledge sharing. We write about the protocols that govern the behaviour. That’s what we know and what we do. But in doing so it’s important to remember that what we’re really writing about is people and how they interact in a social environment. It’s why we think that we need to focus on how we build and manage online communities. In a good online community, the technology should be invisible, it’s about the people and the way we work together in a social environment than makes the difference.
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Hurdles to collaboration
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At a recent forum with key knowledge/collaboration stakeholders within my organisation we talked abou the barriers/hurdles to sharing. Some of the hurdles were Culture KS not seen as a priority Lack of awareness of the potential role of KS Not aligned to processes Not essential for daily work Silos and rigid reporting lines To many firm bottlenecks and roadblocks that prevent holistic approaches to knowledge sharing No time invested in creating a passion for knowledge sharing No time spent in creating a “2.0” mindset Trust Technology Lack of or insufficient search solution for knowledge Little use of Wikis to empower employees to be active communicators on Insite – not just “listeners No engagement tools to rank and rate – “like minded” tools No opportunity to find ‘people who know people’ No emotional intelligence – tools to help me know myself and others Social media is all about participation – all content is collaborative. I have to search to collaborate Training Equip the workforce No slot on induction No reward for KS No code for KS (Timecard) Strategy Lack of ownership at a senior level Do we know where the knowledge sits? Do we have the big-picture thinkers? Little KM leadership |
This ‘knowledge’ stuff
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The term ‘knowledge sharing’ has been used more in the past few months than I have known during my tenure at my current organisation, however, if you asked people what exactly knowlege sharing is you will get many diffing answers. Here’s my stab at it. To me knowledge certainly has little to do with technology – it is mainly the IT stuff that puts knowledge sharing into practice. In my world there are 4 steps: Innovation (knowledge creation and impact throughout its whole lifecycle) Knowledge sharing Collaboration Reuse And itsrepresented in 3 spaces Physical space Social space (relationships, communities and social networks) Virtual space and mind space If someone is working on a database, they get knowledge from another place and apply it to the task at hand. They will gain knowledge from the application itself and could then share this knowledge and innovation with other people they know. However, 99% stop at this stage. Our role, and I believe the role of the Knowledge stakeholders throughout the organisation is to take the shared knowledge and see how it can be used to collaborate and build meaningful relationships. The need to establish systems, processes and a culture that helps continually build on intellectual capital. Its less prescriptive than old knowledge management approaches. We shouldn’t just aim to get more documents published or get explicit knowledge generated and submitted to the repository; it???s broader than that. Users have to be impacted by this and we have to create networks and relationships that are extensive, intense and extend throughout the firm as well. Why do we need to so this? Because the old style intranet of document and missives died some time ago. |
Mark Tilbury - digital workplace specialist 