Boo! Okay, really, that’s about as scary as I’m going to get here. After all I am talking about intranets... dull, boring, uneventful intranets. Hell, I may be passionate about them but I’m also a realist...
On the eve of Halloween, and having seen so many hundreds of intranets, I thought it would be fun to relate my top 5 scariest moments in my intranet years. Of course, intranets can’t really be scary in the literal sense so when I say ‘scary’ I’m really meaning ‘stupid’.
Warning: the following contains scenes with little or no graphic violence, some suggestive language and only hints of nudity and explicit conduct. Caution: Stupid managers and executives who can relate to these should hide under a blanket or shiver with embarrassment. (Some of these stories I’ve related over the years but are too amusing not to relate again...)
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· A CEO of a major financial services company with a horribly pathetic intranet with a a zero-dollar budget and was looking to cut funding further... “I think we’ve invested too much in technology already.” Blood from a stone anyone?
· An intranet manager who put an animated cartoon caricature of a jogging Bill Clinton on the intranet HR home page. Said the intranet manager when asked the value to the business of an animated U.S. President, “... he’s sooo cute!” I guess Dick Cheney wasn’t sexy enough...
· A Director of Human Resources: “I don’t understand why we need an intranet... I mean we have a pretty good phone system that cost us a lot!” Forget the phones; I think ‘telegrams’ are due for a comeback.
· Any company, at any time, that chooses an intranet consultant based on a blindly designed mock-up. Forget about a plan, employee productivity, or ROI, what kind of colors and stock images will you use?!?!?!
Any scary or stupid tales to relate? Let me know and I’ll give it ink!
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