Politics will kill your intranet. Without a well defined governance model and should your intranet survive the naturally occurring politics of competing priorities amongst various stakeholder – communications, IT, human resources, various business units, etc. – then the value the intranet or portal delivers will be severely hampered.

Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with intranet management and perhaps these issues more than any other have driven the requirement for defining governance models.

One approach to governance is the committee approach whereby a committee of stakeholders representing a cross-section of the business set the strategy for the intranet or portal’s development. This next generation model of intranet governance is collaborative, with committees most commonly representing the major functional stakeholders in Communications, Human Resources, Operations, IT and business units. This model is most successful when the committee is championed by one or two key executives, often the CIO, the head of Communications, or HR. Instead of no owner, or one single owner, a collaborative team governs the intranet through the application of policies, standards and templates. This committee is typically responsible for the direction, vision, prioritization of projects, conflict resolution and final key decisions as it relates to the intranet.

“One of the great successes of an intranet is to make a diverse set of resources — technology, content, and personnel — operate as one seamless and cohesive unit,” writes intranet consultant Paul Chin in his recent article Multi-Tier Intranet Ownership (Intranet Journal). “But this result doesn't happen without a certain level of cooperation among all those involved, those who have the foresight to see that the strength of another intranet sub-site can translate to the strength of their own section, and to a larger extent, to the strength of the entire system.”

In my recent Communitelligence seminar with Liam Clover from IBM (Intranet World Tour: IBM leads the World), we discussed governance models and IBM’s model for success that ultimately rests with a central steering committee called the On Demand Workplace (ODW) Steering Committee. The ODW Steering Committee includes representation from the CIO, Corporate Communications, Learning (very large budget), and HR. The other positions on the committee are non-permanent and amongst others including IBM Global Services, Software, etc. Those sitting on the Steering Committee are all SVPs and have the clout within the organization to make tough decisions with respect to budget and resources, policies and standards, and the future of the intranet.

As some of us with battle scars know all to well, sometimes tough decisions need to be made. However, wherever possible, consensus is strongly recommended. “The biggest ownership mistake involving large multi-disciplinary intranets is to appoint a single department such as IT or Communications as the sole governing body of the system,” says Chin. “An intranet has so many facets that it's next to impossible to run properly with a single owner, whether it be a person or a department.”

And while the IBM Steering Committee fosters collaboration and cooperation across the company there is an ultimate owner: the CIO. One detractor of the collaborative model is the committee approach to decision-making, which can be far slower and more bureaucratic than under the centralized (one owner) or decentralized (no owners) governance models. Hence the need to have an ultimate chairman who can make tough decisions when there is no consensus and decisions are tied-down in committee.

The steering committee also serves as a vehicle for conflict resolution that provides a forum for minimizing the politics of ownership. Finally, the collaborative model ensures different stakeholders think about the greater needs of the organization rather than just their specific functional silo and leads to the development of over-arching standards and policies. The necessity of “seeing the forest through the trees”  cannot be over emphasized.

If your intranet represents a large employee population (more than 500) and your company has well-defined business units or silos, then the committee or collaborative governance model is a must. In those organizations, the absence of collaborative governance often leads to either anarchy or a decision-making vacuum that can severely hinder the value of the intranet for many years.

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(PARIS) Only one in five organizations have senior executives that think the intranet is mission-critical, according to Jane McConnell’s annual Global Intranet Trends Report. While this is embarrassingly low, and quite frankly shameful, this is up 5% from last year. Frankly, however, it’s far too little and most likely too late for far too many organizations.

At this rate a majority of corporations will treat their intranet with the importance it deserves sometime in the next decade. The remainder will follow in their footsteps sometime over the next millennia. I am wholely embarrassed for these executives who probably would rate their customer-facing website as mission-critical, but openly neglect and screw-over those employees whose job it is to serve those customers!

Some other disturbing trends:

• Only 20% of study participants ‘absolutely’ agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate collaboration
• Only 22% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate productivity
• 60% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to distribute information
• “Help generate business opportunities” is not seen yet as an important purpose of the intranet

I guess the intranet is nothing more than a newsletter with a phone directory for most. It is sad, but true. Of course, this won’t change unless you (both intranet managers and consultants) learn to put on your sales hats and begin promoting the potential of the intranet by actively showcasing leading examples (many of which have been highlighted here on IntranetBlog.com (see the Intranet Case Studies) because these narrow-minded, old-school, windbag executives won’t learn any other way. So it is incumbent on you to ‘sell’ the intranet.

Nor surprisingly the top 3 “serious obstacles” according 40% of respondent organisations:

1. Intranet not seen as a priority
2. Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet
3. Lack of ownership at a senior level

My rant notwithstanding, and not to undermine the quality of this superlative report, Jane’s report is a very good read chalked full of excellent statistics and findings. Here are some more findings from Jane (see Highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey Reports - just published) of the study of 178 company intranets (medium to large organizations with 5,000 to 100,000 employees:

• The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organisations in the survey population. Half say that today employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours, with the figure reaching 3 out of 4 if it “went down” for 24 hours.
• 3 out of 5 organisations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
• Well over half respondents have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimising search. Very few have taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search logs.
• Intranet 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organisations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
• Organisations where the intranet already is or will soon become “the way of working” are more involved in 2.0 than the others. 4 out of 5 compared to 3 out of 5 in the full survey population).   
• 1 out of 3 of these organisations have established an official 2.0 strategy. 

The Global Intranet Trends Report is a very worthwhile report and should be used as a frequent reference for building your intranet business case. You can purchase it for $525 – or even better, purchase the enhanced he Global Intranet Analysis Report at $1175.

A new poll from a vendor shows that nearly 50% of UK organisations could be leaving themselves open to litigation through managing their corporate policies primarily on the intranet (see Businesses warned over use of intranet).

I could not find the actual poll results and the company that conducted the poll, NETconsent, does not make it readily available on its website. This sounds like another marketing exercise masquerading as scientific research... but regardless the information is worthwhile.

The marketing states that the “poll reveals that many organisations have a passive and potentially dangerous attitude towards managing their policies. Intranet implementations that grow organically can prove challenging to manage and might no longer meet the increasing compliance requirements for such processes.”

NETconsent highlights the following “dangers of managing policies over the Intranet”:

• No proof – Simply making a policy available for reading on the intranet is not sufficient. In the instance of a legal challenge companies need to demonstrate that an employee has agreed to the policy in question, if not also read and understood it.

• Out of date / inaccurate – Policies need updating on a regular basis. If policies are not kept up to date with company and legislative changes, employees may be reading and agreeing to inaccurate information, leaving the company open to risk.

• Understanding – Without measures to ensure that policies are read and understood, organisations do not know whether their policies are viable and effective.

• Relevance – Many policies will only be relevant to a set group of people. Managing policies through the intranet may make it confusing for employees to identify which policies are relevant to them. Ideally policies should only be targeted at the relevant employees.

• Access – In many organisations not all employees have access to the intranet or use it on a daily basis. This may result in employees being unaware of policy changes or unable to access policy documents.

I believe the use of “danger” to be rather strong here, but I’ll let each reader judge for themselves vis a vis the present intranet environment and culture at their respective organization.

“The research indicates just how many businesses rely on the Intranet to communicate policies,” says Dominic Saunders, NETconsent’s Operations Director. “While it is encouraging that companies are using policies to educate their employees and protect themselves, managing them over the intranet might not be enough.”

“Without evidence of the signed document, employers are leaving themselves open to risk. In the event of a breach of policy, organisations need to be able to demonstrate not only that they have a policy in place but that the employee concerned has seen and agreed to the document.”

How can you tell both lawyers and marketers are involved in this announcement? Fear and legalease can together form a very powerful marketing punch.

I’ve not heard of a company that was sued because each and every employee did not sign-off on an intranet policy. If it’s stated and available through a link on every single page (via CSS template) then that should suffice. I’m not saying that such a lawsuit is not possible, it obviously is possible, but I’ve not seen or heard of one as of yet.  

NETconsent is of course raising the possibility of potential lawsuits under some circumstances in order to sell companies their product – which by no coincidence helps “mitigate risks” by maintaining “full and accurate records of written policies.” Fair enough.

NETconsent Ltd. “is the world-leading vendor of effective policy management software solutions and corporate communications.”

NETconsent’s “Tips for better Policy Management” include:

• Ease of use – The more policies that are managed through the intranet the more updates and changes will be required. To minimise the time spent on managing policies by staff it should be easy to create, update, distribute and monitor responses of new and revised policies.

• Updates – Keep all policies updated and current in line with corporate culture, working practices, legal precedents and legislation changes.

• Record agreements – Maintain records of employee agreement to relevant active policies, whilst retaining a full archive of agreements to previous policy versions.

• Access for all – Ensure that all employees, including those that work from home or remotely, have access to central policy repository.

• Control – Make sure that access of ‘author rights’ to policies is tightly controlled and only nominated persons can make changes to policies and policy records.

• Understanding – Randomly test employees’ understanding of policies to determine whether further education or policy reviews may be required.

• Check – Carry out checks to ensure that any required policy agreements can be accessed for evidence at short notice.

About the poll

“The results were taken from a telephone poll of 100 UK HR and IT managers, working in a range of sectors including technology, government and professional services, across a variety of company sizes.

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Are there any geeks out there that can recite most of the scenes from Life of Brian? No I didn’t think so...

Most of us North Americans will always liken British humor to Monty Python (or FaultyTowers). Of course Yes Minister and The Office certainly have their fans, but Python continues to be the standard bearer of British humor from our western colonial perches.

Preceding my keynote address (Building sustainable leadership support) at this year’s IBF LIVE 2006 were a couple of actors who did a four minute ditty on intranets in that classic Monty Python-esque chat amongst chaps. There were only polite snickers from the all-European audience, but I thought it was funny... but what do I know? I’m just a slow-witted Canadian (with an American-Irish lineage and influence).

Here’s an outtake (which I imagine is John Cleese and Graham Chapman so I’m going to call them as such):

John C: I didn’t even know you had an intranet?!?

Graham C: Oh god yeah, our intranet is HUUUGE! Yes, in fact, we like to call it an intranet portal.

John C: Ahhh yeah.... right. *deadpan* What’s that then?

Graham C: *pause* What is it?!

John C: Yeah.

Graham C: Well it’s quite complex to explain really... it’s like an intranet, but it’s got more... sort of... you know, stuff.

Graham C: Right. You mean it’s a BIG intranet?!?!

John C: *proudly* Oh you could say that! Yeah, Yeah. And you?

Graham C: Oh yes, yes, we’ve got an intranet as well.

John C: Big?!

Graham C: Enormous!

John C: I should say huge actually... ours is actually GIGANTIC!

Graham C: Well, ours is humongous, really. *deadpan* You can’t really buy a bigger one.

And so on...

--

If you’d like to hear this bit and the entire first hour including my entire keynote address (where I also lamely poke fun at Canadians, Americans (my kin! please don’t flame me!), George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Microsoft and techies).

The entire MP3 which includes:

• Two chaps comparing their intranets (00:00 – 4 minutes)
• Conference day overview by IBF LIVE Chair Paul Miller
• Conference notes by Paul Levy
• Keynote speaker introduction by Paul Miller
• Keynote speech by Toby Ward (begins at about 13:30)

Download the entire MP3 here: http://www.mediamemory.co.uk/IBF06Part3TonyWard.mp3  

Like a child, an intranet is a lot of work – and if done properly, the rewards are enormous.

Also, like a child, the intranet however can try your patience like no other business system. Successful intranets require more than just hard work – they require a lot of nurturing, patience, and understanding. This is what I would call smart parenting or smart governance.

Patience is key however because the rewards often take years to bear true fruit. Successful intranets like some profiled here on Intranet Blog take many, many years. The intranet is a complex, and often very emotional, business system. It is not just a website or another communications tool. It’s a representative ecosystem of the entire business.

Your employees, however, are not children. Treat employees like children, and you better dam well expect questionable behavior.

A client organization of many thousands of employees came to me with a problem – one of the businesses was forcing employees to accept an online compliance agreement for using their computer – every day. Let me repeat: forcing employees every day to accept an online compliance agreement for using their computer for work. Wow. I’d love to meet the guy who came up with this idea. Now, I don’t mean to sound sexist, but I’m convinced that only a guy could come up with this – and likely someone with a military or football background.

I dare anyone to prove to me how this benefits anyone – especially the company. Please convince me that as we stand on the precipice of the greatest labor shortage in the history of modern business how such a forced daily compliance routine will engender employee satisfaction and employee retention. Come on, convince me. I’m looking for a good argument.

Just about every company has an employee conduct policy that new employees are expected to sign. But let me ask you, does your organization have a daily employee compliance procedure for…

• Making a phone call
• Using the bathroom
• Eating in the cafeteria

Yeah, exactly. So why the hell would apply such a tyrannical rule to using a computer? Treat an employee like a child and the predictable will ensue:

• Decreased productivity
• Decreased employee satisfaction
• Decreased employee retention
• Decreased customer satisfaction
• Decreased earnings

Employees as adults

Of all the dozens of intranets I have worked with – and hundreds I’ve seen and used – almost all companies have corporate polices on Internet and intranet usage. However, I have yet to come across a company that has ever forced any employee to agree to any form of compliance or agreement on a daily basis. Sometimes, very rarely, compliance is a one-time agreement online where the user selects ‘yes’ or ‘no’. More common is a set of policies attached to the employee conduct agreement that is either agreed to by the employee upon hire or on a semi-annual basis.

Additionally, in an overwhelming majority of large established companies, employees are bound by a policy or disclaimer that is published on the intranet home page and/or available within the footer of all intranet pages.

Fidelity Investments Canada has a link at the bottom of all pages to “Important Legal Information” which links to their page outlining the employee’s obligations regarding acceptable use, confidentiality and distribution. The same link and policy is promoted on all pages of the Fidelity Investments global intranet portal, Fidelity Central.

One of the big banks (a client) has an online code of conduct test that employees have to take every two years. It incorporates an "Information Technology Use" section included. Employees have this in their personnel file to prove knowledge of and agreement to the code of conduct. These policies detail the company’s right to monitor emails/internet usage, downloading inappropriate info, etc.

HSBC has a one paragraph disclaimer at the bottom of the intranet home page. There are also links to established policies on “acceptable use” which all employees must sign-off on.

Wachovia has a link at the bottom of most of their main intranet site pages called “Usage Policy”.

Capital One has a link entitled “Disclaimer”; Bank of Ireland has a link called “Group Intranet Guidelines.”

What if employees surf porn?

Let them surf porn, and eat cake. I expect that some employees will do naughty things – online and offline – regardless of company policies and compliance. Personally, I’d rather empower employees to make the right decisions – just like we do with their day-to-day jobs. I’d also like to give employees access to whatever they like.

If employees surf porn during the day, then I’ll make a decision on their employment based on that behavior. I’d prefer to find out based on their behavior rather than rule over them with a big stick. This is also a natural retention tool – it separates the wheat from chafe.

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An intranet redesign is like a political campaign – you might win, you might lose. And like a political campaign, an intranet redesign requires the support and vote of those that count – particularly senior management.

It is possible to do a redesign without the support of senior management and eek out a minority victory, but your power and potential success will be severely limited without the support of those key taxpayers – the people that pony up the cash.

If your intranet isn’t owned by a senior executive then you need a champion. However, unlike a political campaign working for a democratic purpose, a corporation is not a democracy. Senior executives are all powerful. They have the political clout and they control the purse strings.

Enlisting an executive champion

In organizations with successful intranets, the intranet champion is a c-level executive. In other words, a senior executive that reports directly to the CEO. This could be the CIO, the CFO, the COO or perhaps the SVP for communications or human resources.

Determining which executive makes the best champion in your organization depends on the executive and their power and influence within the ranks. Firstly, your executive champion should understand the value of the intranet and the potential it can deliver. Secondly, your executive champion needs to be involved. Not on a day-to-day basis, but when a decision needs to be made or funding is required. As far as a time commitment, your champion need only attend an occasional meeting (perhaps twice per year).

Usually, in most cases, executives don’t know much about intranets. In fact, most think of the intranet as a cost center. You need to educate them.

Education comes in the form of:

• Best practices and case studies (see Know the leaders and the competition)
• Employee research
• Business case with ROI

Developing a complete business case with all of the above will convince just about any executive of the need for a high value intranet.

Continued with Intranet redesign: rolling content inventory and Intranet redesign: building a business case.

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

The greatest barrier to intranet success is politics. Technology, budget, skillset are all secondary barriers. The intranet is a political football.

Why is the intranet so political?

Well, most intranets are still viewed as cost centers and they don’t grab the attention and focus of senior management. As such, the current state and evolution of the intranet is left to middle managers mostly in communications, IT and HR who have limited power and decision-making ability, and a limited budget. However, the intranet represents the entire organization, not just a department, business unit or silo. Therefore, communications, IT, HR and all the other business units and corporate departments are left to cooperate and collaborate on a single channel representing all.

This cooperation and collaboration is of course usually in the absence of little or no direction from senior management. So, the kids are left to themselves to play nicely. Uh-oh.

Of course all know by now that….

• Communications sees the world quite differently than IT
• IT views the intranet far differently than HR
• HR are not technologists and are focused on people
• Business units have a laser like focus on their own markets and profit & loss
• Finance cares about the bottom-line which is not a driver of intranets
• Etc., etc.

And so the predictable happens: CONFLICT.

• Conflict over vision
• Conflict over ownership
• Conflict over application priority
• Conflict over content
• Etc., etc.

With predictable conflict, little consensus and no direction from senior management, the intranet stalls. Often, it stalls for years.

An additional problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Initially, when intranets first came online in the early to mid-1990s, they were nothing more than a web brochure (a.k.a. ‘brochureware’) that sat on a small server under the desk of a Web developer who served as designer, writer and Webmaster.

Over time the intranet grows into disparate fiefdoms of many dozens or hundreds or thousands of independent intranets with incredibly confusing and differing navigation schemes, layouts, designs, etc.

Eventually someone catches on and says, “Hey – this is crazy! We have to consolidate these sites!” With the rational consolidation of intranet sites and services under a central site or portal, disparate departments and stakeholders such as corporate communications, human resources, IT and varying business units now must cooperate under a lone umbrella with a single intranet home page. Along with