Are you reading the hype? Blogs are hot on the Internet, and inside on the intranet.
While there’s a lot of good reading out there, there’s also a lot of.... ummm, what’s a word to describe the opposite of good?
While the good stuff is being read, the opposite is inspiring t-shirts like the following produced by T-ShirtHumor.com:
"She wanted to stop reading it - but she had nothing better to do! Produced by average people who seem to think their lives are interesting. Filmed in thrilling HTML-O-Scope with exciting new fonts!"
While booming on the Internet, blogging on the corporate intranet is only in its infancy. But corporations are taking note.
Companies like InfoWorld and Disney are doing it and there are software companies that are selling blogging software specifically for the intranet including Technorati and Six Apart.
“Blogs ultimately will become a standard feature of many intranets,” says Shel Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, who writes his own blog A Shel of My Former Self. “If you undertake blogs on your intranet, rest assured you’re not the first. You can pat yourself on the back for being an early adopter, but others have blazed this trail before you.”
In fact, the trend has caught the attention of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) – the largest trade association in the world for corporate communicators representing nearly 15,000 members worldwide. This year’s International Conference in Washington, DC (June 26 – 29, 2005) will not only feature keynote addresses by political dynamic duo James Carville and Mary Matalin but also feature a special session on corporate blogging. A triumvirate of pro bloggers will discuss “best practice applications for blogs featuring Debbie Weil as moderator and bloggers from...
Corporate intranet blogs represent one of the hottest communications opportunities in employee communications since the advent of the intranet itself.
“An increasing number of organizations are exploring the use of blogs to communicate project updates,” says James Robertson, managing director of Australia-based Step Two Designs, one of the continent’s leading intranet consultants. “The idea being to setup a blog right at the outset of a new project, and then have all the team members contribute as they work. This meets two needs: a simple repository for internal team reference, and an effective (and honest) communications channel to those in the organization who are most interested.”
Using a blog as an internal collaboration tool is a key part of Step Two’s own internal operations, with each of its small staff authoring their own blog to discuss clients, project updates, brainstorm and “general industry gossip.”
A company blog from the President or CEO could go along way to better connecting employees with the executive floor.
“The idea is to communicate "awareness" rather than information, so that team members know what's happening, and who to go to for in-depth details,” adds Robertson who also authors is own public-facing blog called Column Two. “This works tremendously well, and is easy to do. It means, for example, that if a consultant is traveling for a few days, they can easily catch up on what's been happening in their absence.”
While it goes without saying that blogging is not for everyone, and certainly not every employee, it is working for others. Particularly for a hands-on CEO who is seeking to improve the state of employee communications and job satisfaction.
A company blog from the President or CEO could go along way to better connect employees with the executive floor. The correlation between employee satisfaction and the health of an organization’s employee communications is undeniable: each depends on the health of the other. This of course is nothing new to company CEOs at Sears, Cisco, Raytheon and many others who have written an intranet column on a regular basis for years.
To ensure, however, that your blog is read instead of inspiring facetious, cheeky t-shirts, here are a couple of pointers:
Keep it conversational and light
Know your audience and write to them
Blogs are highly time-sensitive so currency is critical
Anecdotes are encouraged and expected
Use links to refer to relevant information
Be succinct and break-up the text - which encourages ‘scanning’
Sure, a blog does require a commitment of time, and those of you managing your corporate intranet (or some component thereof) can be tapped for time... but it just might be that extra ammunition you seek in your communications arsenal.
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Toby Ward writes a daily intranet blog at www.IntranetBlog.com and is the President of Prescient Digital Media which specializes in Internet and intranet strategy, technology and total site management.
Don’t believe the hype – there is no silver bullet for effective knowledge management.
Were you to believe the constant bombardment of sales brochures, pitches, presentations, articles and related ‘spin’ it would be easy to conclude that knowledge management (KM) is some form of technology – a combination of various hardware and software components. This is what the technology vendors would have corporate managers believe.
In truth, successful KM depends more on people and process than technology.
KM Defined
Based on common definitions that can vary slightly from one to the next, simply put, KM is how corporate knowledge – both tacit and explicit – is stored, retrieved and reused for achieving corporate objectives. Notice there is no direct reference to technology.
Effective knowledge management requires three key components:
Participatory individuals – employees who are willing, able and active sharers of tacit knowledge.
Process and rules – defined rules and standards (e.g. corporate taxonomy) for categorizing and storing information and knowledge.
Technology – physical infrastructure including software that enables the above and allows for effective knowledge retrieval.
“To many organizations, implementing a knowledge management strategy can initially appear to be a daunting and overwhelming task,” writes Antony Satyadas, in “Growing with Knowledge Management” for Line 56.“Many questions must be addressed before users feel comfortable investing in a KM solution, including: Where do I begin? What technology do I need? How do I ensure the process is managed correctly? How do I measure the effectiveness of my knowledge management solution?”
Planning
Of course, any initiative needs a plan and defined goals and measurable expectations (outcomes) before any technologies should be evaluated, purchased or implemented. The priorities and expectations of internal managers, executives, and information workers need to be understood, documented and accounted and applied to best practices before any technology is considered. Once specific goals, standards, and roles are identified and documented, then technology and evaluation criteria can begin prior to solution evaluation and selection (see Pssst, wanna buy a CMS?).
Education and change management are also requisites to any KM plan. “It is important to remember that more than 50 percent of a KM solution is about change management and ensuring that your organization's culture and behavior patterns are appropriately accounted for in the strategy,” says Satvadas, who carries the title of Knowledge Discovery Leader at Lotus.
Technology
I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard or read the phrase “effective knowledge management system.” I’ll bet you $1,000 that if you asked 10,000 communications, human resource or IT professionals you might find 10 or 20 that could accurately define “effective knowledge management system.”
The truth is there is no one technology or system. In fact, effective KM often requires multiple technologies working in tandem under a set of standards that could include one, many or all of the following:
Email
Search engine
Corporate portal
Document management
Content management
Directory
Instant messaging
Personalization
Profiling
E-Learning
Web conferencing
Blog
Wiki
Etc.
After several months of planning and investigation, one client ofmine (Prescient Digital Media), a major energy utility, selected a portal product that included a content management platform with personalization, discussion forums, search and other utilities to work hand-in-hand with a new document management solution to reduce the average time employees spent on searching for information (based on an employee study, the average time spent searching for information on the corporate information was 18-20 minutes per day per employee) to less than 10 minutes, and to reduce the maximum number of clicks to reaching retrieval online corporate information to three or less (95% of the time).
Measurable goals are requisite to any solid KM plan.
Return On Investment
Much to the potential joy of your CIO and CFO, the benefits of effective KM are indeed measurable in terms of dollars and cents. Measurable benefits (hard and soft) can include:
Increased customer satisfaction (which directly correlates with sales revenue)
Reduced IT help desk costs
Reduced software maintenance costs
Increased employee productivity (reduced searching time, etc.)
Reduced meeting costs
Reduced paper costs
Reduced paper and software distribution costs
Halliburton is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries and winner of the 2003 Extended Enterprise Innovator Award for developing an extensive collaborative portal that relies on integrated ERP functions to serve customers, suppliers and employees.
In its first year, the portal influenced $120 million in sales, according to customer surveys; improved corporate efficiencies to the tune of about $500,000 by enabling better access to technical documents; and led to reduced payment cycles (Source: Beth Schultz, Network World, February 17, 2003).
Bottom Line
Effective KM requires a lot of work, intelligent thinking, rules and standards, advanced planning, and a supportive culture (including supportive executives) not too the appropriate tools and technology. There is no silver bullet. The bullet is made of wood and requires a lot of carving, moulding, care and hard work before it can be fired with a successful hit.
The honeymoon is waning for darling tech and search giant Google. While its technology and services continue to amaze and delight users the world-over, the untold price of using certain Google services is beginning to leak into the unsuspecting public.
News.com (news division of CNET) writer Elinor Mills wrote a stinging column about Google’s information practices and the implications on individual privacy. Using Google as a research tool, Mills highlighted Google’s power and practices (not fully understood) using Google’s own CEO as an example. Mills was able to find out detailed personal information on Google CEO Eric Schmidt including particulars such as:
annual income
stock sales
personal hobbies
personal political allegiances
etc.
Google’s response? An outright ban of News.com; a refusal to talk to the media outlet for one year. Even more peculiar has been Google’s refusal to say much on the ban or the initial story.
What is Google afraid of?
Perhaps this story can be likened to the child who got caught with his proverbial hand in the cookie jar.
Elinor Mills' article suggests that using Google’s assorted tools and services may in fact breach the average user’s privacy threshold – without the user knowing it. For example, Google collects and stores (and who knows what else) huge volumes of user data not available to the public, including logs of individual’s respective search queries. To put this into perspective, using only what is available to the public, Mills was able to find the following which was published in the July 15 article, Google balances privacy, reach:
He and his wife Wendy live in the affluent town of Atherton, Calif., where, at a $10,000-a-plate political fund-raiser five years ago, presidential candidate Al Gore and his wife Tipper danced as Elton John belted out "Bennie and the Jets."
No wonder Google is miffed. But did Mills really do anything wrong? I’m tempted to say ‘no’ but alas I don’t know all the particulars.
One would think that if Mills had somehow broken the law then Google would flex its impressive financial muscle and sue Mills et al. Did Mills overstep an ethical boundary? I’m also tempted to say ‘no’ but this can only be a subjective opinion as ‘beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.’
But let’s just look at what Google does know about you. Here’s what CNET News.com published as a sidebar story in the Mills article under the title “What Google Knows About You”:
• Gmail -- The e-mail service offers two gigabytes of free storage and scans the content of messages to serve up context-related ads.
• Cookies -- Google uses cookies, which are commonly used to link individual users with activities.
• Desktop Search -- Google's Desktop Search lets users easily search files stored on their computer.
• Web Accelerator -- The application speeds Web surfing by storing cached copies of Web pages you've visited; those page requests can include personal information.
Now many organizations are starting to use the Google search engine on their own websites AND on their corporate intranets. Does Google track internal corporate information retrieved from the corporate intranet as well? I don’t know...
I have to admit I’m not much of a privacy wonk but I just went to my cookies folder and deleted all Google cookies. Some of my awe and over-zealous appreciation for Google was just replaced with a little bit of fear.
I had the pleasure, at the invitation of John Amyotte, Microsoft's Solutions Specialist for Portals, to see Microsoft's very own main intranet portal, microsoftweb. As can be expected, MS is "eating their own dog food" and using their own portal product SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services to power their internal business hub.
microsoftweb is very well executed and organized and features significant improvements over previous iterations. What stood-out most is the use of personalization and profiling that makes the retrieval and presentation of information far more relevant to the individual user.
A link on the home page called My Site (the portal recognizes the user based on their Windows login - of course, MS uses single sign-in) links to John's personal website that his both a 'public' view (what those in the company see) and a 'personal' view (links and information that only he sees. The presentation and the type of information presented is customized by the individual user including news, stock ticker, presentations, etc.
microsoftweb also features a single search engine -- used for both finding people and their contact information (directory information) and general intranet pages and documents (enterprise search). When doing a search the results are divided into two columns: the first column highlights search results that are relevant intranet pages and documents; the second column produces results that are all MS employees and links to their respective sites and information that are relevant to the search query (a thumbnail photo of each person is also presented).
Most impressive about microsoftweb and the Sharepoint offering is the collaboration tools inherent to the product. Among other things Sharepoint offers a template for team meetings that store relevant documents, list team members, account for member attendance, trigger reminder emails for meetings, etc.
There are currently 31 million Sharepoint users the world-over. Moreover, Microsoft isn't resting on their laurels: Gates & company are investing the bulk of a $700 million project and a dedicated team of some 300 people to beefing-up Sharepoint and fully integrating a new and improved content management system (Content Management Server as it is known today).
What is
intuitive to one person is not necessarily intuitive to another. Better put,
where I might look for information amongst navigation menu headings on a site
is not necessarily where another would look.
For
example, there’s a lot of companies that use catchy phrases to describe their
human resources intranet or section such as:
My Work
@Work
You and (insert company name)
Quite
frankly, I think these labels are crap. It’s akin to shaker sweaters, stirrup
pants, Atkins diets and other passing fads and pop influences. My preference?
Just call it “Human Resources” or “HR”. But that’s just my opinion...
Are those
other labels wrong? Not necessarily. “@Work” may resonate as more intuitive at
one company that has a completely different culture and type of employee then
another organization. In other words, I would prefer to see “HR” but another
employee may prefer “@Work.” Based upon my exposure and work with dozens of
corporate intranet clients the number one employee complaint of the intranet
remains the same: “I can’t find anything!”
Australian-based
Iain Barker,
a user experience specialist with Step Two Designs, says that users follow
preferred paths guided by intuitive
information scents. “Most research into the way users navigate a site reveals
that people follow one path and then, when that doesn't provide the information
they require, they retrace their steps using the back button, until they find
another suitable path to follow,” says Barker. “Users can find this process
frustrating and after following a couple of unsuccessful attempts, give up on a
site.”
Information
scent
Information
scent describes how users choose categories or options when they seek
information on a site.
Information
scent therefore is the intuitive linkage and relation of related content.
Strong information scents offers content with context – meaning and definition
(literally or by association). Weak information scents confuse and lose users
with little or no context.
“When
presented with a list of options users will choose the option that gives them
the clearest indication (or strongest scent) that it will step them closer to
the information they require,” says Barker. “Navigation headings offer
surprisingly weak information scent. Navigation headings are typically limited
to one or two words, which often isn't enough to clearly distinguish one
heading from another and give a clear indication of the content offered in that
section of the site.”
While
many people will opt to navigate the sites architecture and various categories,
others will use search or the site map. A strong site map is recommended. Some
sites however will use the site map approach to the home page. A good consumer
site example is Walmart’s
corporate site which groups like information by links right on in the main
content window:
Robertson
offers three tips to making a stronger information scent:
Identify the pages where
users require more information to aid their decision.
Typically this is the
homepage and section pages.
Devote part of the content
area on each of these pages to giving more context to the navigation
options the user has.
Some
users will always default to the search engine (maybe 15-30% for intranets
depending the organization and the strength of the information architecture),
some the site map (10 – 20%), however most will navigate the sections and
categories of your information architecture. To keep them happy, best have a
strong information scent.
I just finished heather Burns cover story in this month's Corporate Writer & Editor called "Design Wars". Ahhhh, there's nothing like designing an enterprise intranet by committee to get those combative juices flowing!
As you probably know by now, we're all design experts. Everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to influence the end design.
DESIGNING BY COMMITTEE DOES NOT WORK. But of course you already knew this... :)
Here are a couple of pointers when undertaking design:
1- Limit the committee - your steering committee or intranet council (visit our Articles section for more on Politics of Intranet Ownership and Collaborative Governance Models) should be involved in business requirements, policies and standards (including creative standards and guidelines), resources, strategy and planning. Limit design approval to a core group of 2 or 3 people if possible.
2- Planning drives design - Build your business case and requirements based on best practices, business needs and employee needs and then build a blueprint that includes creative design standards and guidelines. Once approved, then undertake your information architecture and wireframes before you pick up your crayons and Photoshop. Don't touch the design until you have completed the creative guidelines and the hollow conceptual wireframes.
3- Outsource the creative - Unless you have a crack designer on staff, outsource the design to a professional or at least a design student. You do not have to pay a lot but putting the design in the hands of a pro will dampen the political pressure and ensure quality.
4- Build in time for revisions - Two or three rounds of changes and revisions is standard. Four to six rounds of revisions is not unheard of so schedule the necessary time.
5- Consensus, compromise and cooperation - As Nixon said, "You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time." Be prepared to be flexible during the approval process because even a core group of 2 or 3 will have disagreements over the smallest things such as a font size, the color of a button, the size of a photo, etc. Emphasize compromise as the key to success and happiness.
My favourite intranet designs? Cisco, Xerox, Sodexho (not a good .com design though), Fidelity Investments Canada, Electrolux, and the Integer Group. Give us a ring if you'd like to see some of these intranets.
