I am really sorry to be jumping on a bandwagon but if ever there was a case study brewing for calamitous communications, planning, delivery and execution then the events 27th March (and what now appears to be the upcoming weeks) will go down as one of the biggest and blackest days in the Communications industry history.
A 'T5 moment' will enter the lC lexicon.
There but for the Grace of God go we all.... or maybe not.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Planning ahead - Writing your way to redundancy
The written word is powerful. We all know that. It can be incredibly positive and motivating or, with one misplaced word, a slight ambiguity or the use of an over blown phrase can work in exactly the opposite way and kill all the hard work and good intentions.
I was trying to explain to a CEO that the ‘ planning ahead;’ phrase above, (one that he used more than once in his weekly newsletter), and while understanding entirely what he meant could be sharpened considerably just by using the first word and cutting out ahead. It took a while to sink in. In fact we revised his copy so it said exactly the same but was a third the length.
The problem is that everybody thinks they can write. Just as everyone is an expert in design. The challenge is that communication isn’t just about words. It is about impact, emotion and clarity and that is a skill and a hard skill to master while you are busy juggling all the other aspects of your job.
The CE0 in question read his version, read ours and then smiled. ‘I get it’ he said and you know what, he really did. That is why he is a CEO and a brilliant one at that. Everyday you learn something from somebody else. What I leaned was that the best leaders know when to let somebody else lead.
I was trying to explain to a CEO that the ‘ planning ahead;’ phrase above, (one that he used more than once in his weekly newsletter), and while understanding entirely what he meant could be sharpened considerably just by using the first word and cutting out ahead. It took a while to sink in. In fact we revised his copy so it said exactly the same but was a third the length.
The problem is that everybody thinks they can write. Just as everyone is an expert in design. The challenge is that communication isn’t just about words. It is about impact, emotion and clarity and that is a skill and a hard skill to master while you are busy juggling all the other aspects of your job.
The CE0 in question read his version, read ours and then smiled. ‘I get it’ he said and you know what, he really did. That is why he is a CEO and a brilliant one at that. Everyday you learn something from somebody else. What I leaned was that the best leaders know when to let somebody else lead.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tweets and Twitters
You may have noticed, sneaking up in the right hand column, that I am now a twitterer - I think that is what you call it. It is an interesting cute name but actually an awesome tool, in the right hands and used the right way.
Its been gaining steady interest in the US since early last year but, always on the 'bleeding edge' of technology, as Jo Savage at Barnsley BDA calls it, and being on the ball as the UK IC industry generally is ( I am joking of course) its now starting to find its way over here.
Of course you don’t just use technology for its own sake sake but now that it has been field tested I am always one for jumping on a band wagon. Providing it still has wheel, so here goes.
Essentially twitter is like a text message crossed with a blog You can post up to 140 characters and receive updates as text messages on your phone or RSS reader. Lets say you post a rather incredible blog and it then goes off into the ether. Twitter automatically sends a little message to your mates, colleagues - the ones you really want to read it anyway.
I’ve got mine hooked up on to my IPhone, using a web app called Hahlo 2.1 ( which fits perfectly with the Iphone design and function vibe ) although you can get other great looking apps and apps for Messenger too - and it works a treat and looks just right. It allows me to use my blog site to post mini blogs on the fly.-' Tweets', how cute is that.
A longer article is on its way but I can see dozens of uses for the technology in corporate environments, the largest of which could be to try to curtail the avalanche of e-mails and using it prioritise messages.
Watch this space or follow my Tweets on social media applications for IC and KM
.
Some links you may find interesting that helped me
Twitter on the Web
Twhirl, a desktop client built with Adobe AIR - very sexy
Twitterberry (Twitter for BlackBerries)
Twitter Display for your Blog
Twitterfeed (posts your latest blog on Twitter)
Play Nice!
Friday, March 21, 2008
How to be listened to
There are no big secrets to becoming a person who can communicate effectively - and remarkably enough it is the effective communicators who get the rewards in their career. More importantly are the positive effects we receive as it spills over into work and social relationships. More often than those that master that skill get the work/life balance right too.
.
The ‘La’s’ as I call it is a one of the workshops I use as part of a Internal Communication Bootcamp. The following has been written by over 500 people who have taken part in them and is a work in progress so i can’t take any credit for it. I’m just the facilitator. But it increasingly makes sense to me. If you want to add then please feel free to post. I’m not one for tree hugging but this is about as close as it gets to a mantra.
How to be listened to.
Learn: We spend most of our time in delivering projects and remaining time in learning new technology skills. Apart from this, we should invest our time to learn how to build long-term relationships, how to be congruent, and how to develop one’s strengths.
Laugh: It is important to know how to avoid making mistakes, but is more important to know how to handle mistakes and move on by laughing at yourself. And when you can laugh at yourself, other people are more comfortable with you.
Look: The most obvious step to differentiate yourself is to look beyond expected. Looking for associations that have never existed before, looking for relationships that will yield maximum benefits to both parties, looking for simplicity, and looking for clarity are some of the ways to do something remarkable to receive the attention that you desire.
Lasting Impression: People you meet along the way constantly reshape your life and every engagement offers you the opportunity to make the lasting impression. We can leave a lasting impression by caring for other’s problem as if it is ours, solving the right problems, by getting things done, by going beyond the call of duty, and by being resourceful.
Love: To be successful, love what you do and do what is required. Nothing can substitute passion—not hard work, not intelligence.
Leverage: When you apply the concept of leverage in your life, you will accomplish more in 24 hours than you can on your own. The focus should not be on saving money, it should be on saving time. Money can be earned back, but you can not get back time!
Likeability: If we are likeable, people will often bend rules and make exceptions for us. To increase the likeability index, we need to make others feel good about themselves, be genuinely interested in other people, add measurable value in somebody’s life.
Listen: We all know the importance of listening well. Feedback is the breakfast of champions and if there is no listening, there is no feedback. If you want to be a champion, start listening and practice this ability consistently.
Lead: Leadership is not tied to a position. To lead, look for gaps in your organization and start filling those gaps
.
The ‘La’s’ as I call it is a one of the workshops I use as part of a Internal Communication Bootcamp. The following has been written by over 500 people who have taken part in them and is a work in progress so i can’t take any credit for it. I’m just the facilitator. But it increasingly makes sense to me. If you want to add then please feel free to post. I’m not one for tree hugging but this is about as close as it gets to a mantra.
How to be listened to.
Learn: We spend most of our time in delivering projects and remaining time in learning new technology skills. Apart from this, we should invest our time to learn how to build long-term relationships, how to be congruent, and how to develop one’s strengths.
Laugh: It is important to know how to avoid making mistakes, but is more important to know how to handle mistakes and move on by laughing at yourself. And when you can laugh at yourself, other people are more comfortable with you.
Look: The most obvious step to differentiate yourself is to look beyond expected. Looking for associations that have never existed before, looking for relationships that will yield maximum benefits to both parties, looking for simplicity, and looking for clarity are some of the ways to do something remarkable to receive the attention that you desire.
Lasting Impression: People you meet along the way constantly reshape your life and every engagement offers you the opportunity to make the lasting impression. We can leave a lasting impression by caring for other’s problem as if it is ours, solving the right problems, by getting things done, by going beyond the call of duty, and by being resourceful.
Love: To be successful, love what you do and do what is required. Nothing can substitute passion—not hard work, not intelligence.
Leverage: When you apply the concept of leverage in your life, you will accomplish more in 24 hours than you can on your own. The focus should not be on saving money, it should be on saving time. Money can be earned back, but you can not get back time!
Likeability: If we are likeable, people will often bend rules and make exceptions for us. To increase the likeability index, we need to make others feel good about themselves, be genuinely interested in other people, add measurable value in somebody’s life.
Listen: We all know the importance of listening well. Feedback is the breakfast of champions and if there is no listening, there is no feedback. If you want to be a champion, start listening and practice this ability consistently.
Lead: Leadership is not tied to a position. To lead, look for gaps in your organization and start filling those gaps
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A great town hall meeting??
Face to Face communications The Town Hall Motivator
Love this video. Bit of background Sam Kell the owner of The Chicago Tribune has been criticised in certain quarters for his colourful use of language. This is his response to the staff, Interesting, what do you think?
Paste this link into your browser and stand back,. I don’t think he has a script writer but does he need one? Could he get way with this in the UK? Probably. Maybe.
Click on this link
Sam Kell at the Chicago Tribune
What do you think about the use of profanity in internal communications? Post below.
Love this video. Bit of background Sam Kell the owner of The Chicago Tribune has been criticised in certain quarters for his colourful use of language. This is his response to the staff, Interesting, what do you think?
Paste this link into your browser and stand back,. I don’t think he has a script writer but does he need one? Could he get way with this in the UK? Probably. Maybe.
Click on this link
Sam Kell at the Chicago Tribune
What do you think about the use of profanity in internal communications? Post below.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Facing the face to face communication challenge.
Employee engagement Part 2
Extract from Defrag your business
Change management's biggest challenge is inertia. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t blindingly obvious here. I can’t count the number of times I have wanted to run from a meeting room screaming “why don’t they get it?’ But we always have to remember it is a fair and human position. They haven’t heard or really probably listened to your story yet. Or, more likely we just haven’t told it well enough. We are all guilty of making assumptions, it is just part of the human condition for the majority of us and is heavily weighted by the simple fact that bad news has far more speed and penetration in transmission than good news. And it will come from lots of different directions. One of Steven Wright’s, my favourite comedian, questions is ‘What is the speed of dark?’ I can tell him that its it is twice the speed of light.
The key skill in any face to face communications in my opinion is in employing techniques to challenge, as gently as possible, the assumptions people have made.
This is hugely important in coaching the news deliverers, the steps in the cascade and vital in any internal communication or change mangement process.
Over the years my colleagues and I developed what we call our ‘Ass’ breaking questions. What do I mean?
Well, before we start though bear in mind that:
Some people make assumptions.
Some people speak without thinking.
Some people are full of BS.
Some people are nothing but talk.
Some people use invalidated, vague, baseless arguments to prove their points.
We have to use techniques to challenge them - to identify the hidden assumptions and avoid mindless acceptance.
You do this for two reasons:
1. YOU gain clarity on their motives, intentions and beliefs.
And probably more importantly
2. THEY gain an opportunity to restate, reform and rethink their ideas. In other words you give them an opportnity to find a dignified way out.
Here are seven examples of common situations and dialogues where you can use them, some are painfully obvious:
THEM: “I can’t do that!”
YOU: “Why not?” or “Says who?”
THEM: “I never thought I’d say this, but…”
YOU: “Why did you never think you’d say that?”
THEM: “Well, they say that…”
YOU: “Who’s ‘they’?”
THEM: “So, is this your full time job?”
YOU: “Yes. Why do you ask?”
THEM: “I’ve been calling you all week and I’d really like to get together to talk about a business opportunity!”
YOU: “What is your positive motivation for wanting to meet with me?”
THEM: “I heard/read it was terrible…”
YOU: “Who’d you hear that from?” or “Where’d you read that?”
THEM: “I dunno, this seems pretty expensive?”
YOU: “Compared to what?”
Here are a few others you may want to think about using; Some require a little more skill in presenting as you can imagine.
1. Is that always the case?
2. How do you measure that?
3. How did you arrive at that?
4. So?
5. Why do you believe that?
6. What do you plan to do with this feedback
7. Why?
8. What’s (really) bothering you?
9. What’s your point?
10. When did you decide this?
11. What would happen if you didn’t?
12. What’s your proof?
13. How do you know that’s true?
14. Where’s the evidence?
15. Are you sure that’s true?
16. What stops you??
17. Can you prove it?
18. Why did I receive this email?
19. Why do you think that happened?
20. Why is that so important to you?
21. Why was I put on this list?
All these questions, if the delivery is right:
Catches their attention.
Causes them to stop and think.
Causes them to clarify their remarks.
Causes the REAL motives and beliefs to surface.
Causes you to better understand where they’re coming from.
The delivery is all important. Framing these in anything that remotely suggests an aggressive or condescending manner will have the opposite effect.
The point is that we should always
Challenge irrational thoughts.
Challenge programmed knowledge.
Challenge people's positions.
It helps both parties. Vocalising an argument is the best way any individual can fully come to grips with almost any situation and reach that state of acceptance, the warm fuzzy feeling, which needs to precede their buy in to your idea.
Let me ask you, if you have any other 'Ass breakers' then please post them here. I’m running out of questions with one of my current clients. For them the sky is pink and the sea is made of custard and that is view the CEO and it filters across the whole of the organisation. If he is reading this listening he knows who he is. Sometimes, even with all these little skills and tricks and experience you just have to shake your head and walk into the sunset.
Copyright Rainmaker 2008
Extract from Defrag your business
Change management's biggest challenge is inertia. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t blindingly obvious here. I can’t count the number of times I have wanted to run from a meeting room screaming “why don’t they get it?’ But we always have to remember it is a fair and human position. They haven’t heard or really probably listened to your story yet. Or, more likely we just haven’t told it well enough. We are all guilty of making assumptions, it is just part of the human condition for the majority of us and is heavily weighted by the simple fact that bad news has far more speed and penetration in transmission than good news. And it will come from lots of different directions. One of Steven Wright’s, my favourite comedian, questions is ‘What is the speed of dark?’ I can tell him that its it is twice the speed of light.
The key skill in any face to face communications in my opinion is in employing techniques to challenge, as gently as possible, the assumptions people have made.
This is hugely important in coaching the news deliverers, the steps in the cascade and vital in any internal communication or change mangement process.
Over the years my colleagues and I developed what we call our ‘Ass’ breaking questions. What do I mean?
Well, before we start though bear in mind that:
Some people make assumptions.
Some people speak without thinking.
Some people are full of BS.
Some people are nothing but talk.
Some people use invalidated, vague, baseless arguments to prove their points.
We have to use techniques to challenge them - to identify the hidden assumptions and avoid mindless acceptance.
You do this for two reasons:
1. YOU gain clarity on their motives, intentions and beliefs.
And probably more importantly
2. THEY gain an opportunity to restate, reform and rethink their ideas. In other words you give them an opportnity to find a dignified way out.
Here are seven examples of common situations and dialogues where you can use them, some are painfully obvious:
THEM: “I can’t do that!”
YOU: “Why not?” or “Says who?”
THEM: “I never thought I’d say this, but…”
YOU: “Why did you never think you’d say that?”
THEM: “Well, they say that…”
YOU: “Who’s ‘they’?”
THEM: “So, is this your full time job?”
YOU: “Yes. Why do you ask?”
THEM: “I’ve been calling you all week and I’d really like to get together to talk about a business opportunity!”
YOU: “What is your positive motivation for wanting to meet with me?”
THEM: “I heard/read it was terrible…”
YOU: “Who’d you hear that from?” or “Where’d you read that?”
THEM: “I dunno, this seems pretty expensive?”
YOU: “Compared to what?”
Here are a few others you may want to think about using; Some require a little more skill in presenting as you can imagine.
1. Is that always the case?
2. How do you measure that?
3. How did you arrive at that?
4. So?
5. Why do you believe that?
6. What do you plan to do with this feedback
7. Why?
8. What’s (really) bothering you?
9. What’s your point?
10. When did you decide this?
11. What would happen if you didn’t?
12. What’s your proof?
13. How do you know that’s true?
14. Where’s the evidence?
15. Are you sure that’s true?
16. What stops you??
17. Can you prove it?
18. Why did I receive this email?
19. Why do you think that happened?
20. Why is that so important to you?
21. Why was I put on this list?
All these questions, if the delivery is right:
Catches their attention.
Causes them to stop and think.
Causes them to clarify their remarks.
Causes the REAL motives and beliefs to surface.
Causes you to better understand where they’re coming from.
The delivery is all important. Framing these in anything that remotely suggests an aggressive or condescending manner will have the opposite effect.
The point is that we should always
Challenge irrational thoughts.
Challenge programmed knowledge.
Challenge people's positions.
It helps both parties. Vocalising an argument is the best way any individual can fully come to grips with almost any situation and reach that state of acceptance, the warm fuzzy feeling, which needs to precede their buy in to your idea.
Let me ask you, if you have any other 'Ass breakers' then please post them here. I’m running out of questions with one of my current clients. For them the sky is pink and the sea is made of custard and that is view the CEO and it filters across the whole of the organisation. If he is reading this listening he knows who he is. Sometimes, even with all these little skills and tricks and experience you just have to shake your head and walk into the sunset.
Copyright Rainmaker 2008
Give them new eyes, not new landscapes
Employee engagement Part 1
Extract from ‘Defrag your business’.
I’ve been working on one truly inspirational and breathtaking web based project for over eight months now. It is just mind boggling and humbling to come in every day and see what the boys and girls have achieved. No-one can say that web technology hasn’t taken massive leaps forward over the last few years. Except, that is, if they look at one specific area. Intranets. Almost without exception they look exactly the same as they did five years ago. While the wide-scale adoption of social networking and the early stages of true Web-based applications are part of our daily out-of-office lives we haven’t seemed to connect to the benefits and opportunities they provide. Sure, they may have added a few tweaks and funky functions but actually fundamentally not much has changed.
I find this both bewildering and exciting. Exciting as being in exactly this business it presents me and frankly my business with tremendous opportunity. Bewildering because the power and potential is passing by with scarcely a nod or glance.
Intranet audits are a staple of my consultancy. I see lots of them, I’m working on three of these audits at this moment. With some glorious exceptions that I can count with my socks off there is little to suggest that intranet teams, (where the intranet it is actually seen as a key lubricant for internal comms programmes), are utilising the true power of intranets and adopting the characteristics of the “read-write” Web to develop the concept of two way communication and engagement and all the fluffy pink stuff we put into our mission statements.
Sure, forums, blogs and wikis are finding their way onto some intranets, but the number of companies employing these social computing tools is a bare fraction of the total number of intranets functioning today. As for the other elements of Web 2.0, I’m aware of less than a handful of intranets that have embraced notions like social tagging (as exemplified by del.icio.us, the social bookmarking Web site. The opportunities for social computing applications on intranets are huge.
Some enterprising companies are starting to use Wikipedia to develop an in house internal knowledge banks.( arguably more useful is actually a failure bank but that’s another story) These tools are used so not much for communication but stitches into the ‘at least we know where it is when we want to find it’ principle. But the true asset value of a company is its knowledge repository. It is 60% and more or your net worth if you believe Harvard Business School. Can you think of a better reason than giving the management of knowledge flow, its retention and acquisition in your organisation anything less than 150% support and making it your number one priority? I can’t think of any either but amazingly although Internal communications, innovation and differentiation features in pretty well every survey of corporate priorities, and even more annual reports, few pay it more than lip service. Why? Because it is hard to do and few know really where to start. ‘We tried the intranet thing but it doesn’t work ‘is probably the most often used phrase I hear. So you give up do you? Or, do you just get better at it?
The commonest .net2 deployment are blogs used by collaboration and project documentation but even these only have even now a tentative deployment. Which is frankly bonkers.
Imagine, just for one dizzying moment, that the CEO has a blog for a new product and then, just imagine the impact and discussion arising from 40 sales people dealing with the inevitable launch issues and how quickly these issues would be flagged, fixed and customer facing people made aware of solutions.
Imagine him feeding back by video with a small thank you and identification and appreciation. It really isn’t hard this stuff but lets not get too giddy here.
As I keep saying, there is nothing common about common sense.
So, why have so many intranets become covered in dust and moss?
Frankly, because it is not that big signal on the corporate radar simply because on the face of it there are few metrics that can get put on the spreadsheet for the weekly meeting that get the juices going. It is true to say that the benefits (and costs) are largely hidden. But if you have to pick one try just this one. Staff retention. Then look at the incurred costs for loss of knowledge and recruitment and training. Now that is truly scary. It can wipe of the profit for a business unit in no time. One loss alone will pay for the tweaks in the intranet that may (I would say probably) alleviate much of the frustration in allowing them to do their jobs effectively. Which, if you are still awake, is cited as the number one reason individuals leave jobs
If you can’t measure it then you can’t do anything about it. Its blindingly obvious and one of the true clichés in business. I don’t know why I even have to mentioned it. This position is reinforced by the often prevailing view that it is just good money chasing after bad. The existing intranet hasn’t lived up to expectations in the first place; why invest time and effort in it now? Many executive teams, optimistic about the intranet’s potential in its early days, now wonder what all the noise was about. While there certainly are productivity tools online—that’s just a matter of common practice in the workplace anyway—the innovation and the knowledge sharing that was supposed to flow from the intranet just never materialised.
Why? Well we could point to a range of contributing factors. Actually just pick one and you won’t be far wrong. Ill advised planning, design, not enough thought given to search and findability but in most cases its just simply down one major description often made at the beginning of conception- will will be its ownership. Who looks after it, nutures it and cultivates it. For the answer to that see Chapter 8. ‘What does a knowledge manager manage then?
’
Being more specific it is easy to blame IT departments. Too easily in most cases. Now I’m going to stick up for them, well for a minute anyway. It’s a s**t job. That is why they bring their own sandwiches, it is their one small pleasure. (Its really so they can play war games at lunch and not leave their desks). I
t is a close tie as to whether HR or IT departments get more bad raps. To be fair to IT they have probably invested time and effort into developing the infrastructure of the current iteration of the intranet and, unsurprisingly, are in no hurry to move in a different direction. They haven’t had their lunch yet anyway. Intranet software vendors aren’t exactly blameless either. Few are using .NET2, most use ASP. or ASP.net at best. which is five year old technology. Do you get the theme here? I can’t help thinking what is going to happen next few years and when are they going to make that leap. And then we haven’t even mentioned Sharepoint!!! Or bless it, Lotus Notes and making that compatible with their new ERP system.
Corporate IT staff and corporate coms staff, some of them, anyway—are largely under informed, if we can put it delicately, about what’s happening on the Web and often have a blind-spot that something they use daily actually could be relevant to them. They hold the belief, justified or not that ‘Our company would never sanction that’ so they don’t suggest or push their ideas forward. Its a self fulfilling prophecy and a depressing spiral. And any way, the IT department should be doing that. Who should be keeping on top of this - Can it really be the IT department’s responsibility, most of which are stretched pretty thin just keeping the meter fed, printers on line, drying out the latte in sales reps keyboards and coping with Mr. Gates First Tuesdays. And beating their previous best in Call of Duty 4.
Many communicators figure the intranet is working just fine the way it is; why fix what isn’t broken? An interesting view from the delusions of competence. How do they know??? By definition, at least the ones I know, change is not discrete but is perpetual motion. It’s a classic mistake to look at the project having an end and walk away from it when it goes live and not put continuity and development factored in to its ongoing lifecycle. If it is put down on a shelf you can’t be surprised if it just gathers dust and gets ignored.
Trust in communications is developed through consistency, relevancy timeliness and accuracy. One intranet I recently was asked to look at had not had anything added to it for three years. That is not an intranet, it is a historic document. Is it any surprise I some times have to run out of meetings screaming.
Then we start talking numbers as you or somebody else from higher food chain undoubtedly obligingly point out. That there already has been an investment that been made in the existing portals that haven’t produced the kind of results most companies hoped for. It’s difficult for organisations to write off significant investments in order to start from scratch. But that doesn’t mean you should persevere with old tools tactics otherwise we would all still be pushing paper memos around. It is interested to see the metrics applied to measure its affect, success or return on investment. Generally it’s a big fat none, which is just plane daft. Its tricky yes, but hardly impossible.
The really infuriating thing is that none of this has to be expensive either to implement. SOAS such as Basecamp to name but one, or my current favourite Page flakes which has now demoted my I-Google as my home page costs peanuts or less than that compared to your ERP or SAP introduction. The effect though is disproportionately positive
There are some practical limitations too and by far the trickiest for most organisations, both public and private sector, is struggling to retain a command-and-control structure for their intranets. Tools that put control into employees’ hands are an anathema to intranets where only authorized representatives of the company can contribute content. But is that what they should be their role anyway? Is there an argument for loosening the approval processes in key areas? I’d argue, yes absoblinkinlutely yes. Should senior management really be a feared of any possible negatives and shouldn’t they be aware of them and manage them anyway? We live in a world of 360 degree reviews and employee engagement surveys, you carry out them of course don’t you? You don’t? Well you are in trouble then.
Or maybe you subscribe to the view I saw recently in a post from an HR VP which was a thinly disguised ‘You should be bloody lucky to work for us, just get with it’. And then to sweeten the message, guess what, we are having a pajama day next week just to show you how cool and cute we are. Erm, yeah. Really? Then I’d polish my CV. You will be needing it when your competition cream you into history or you get ‘outsourced’.
Just ask for this stuff, what can they say? No? Its just a word and won’t kill you. I’m hoping here that you actually have some form of innovation and idea management built into your intranet. No? Then start reading at the top again and pass this onto your boss.
Copyright Rainmaker 2008
Extract from ‘Defrag your business’.
I’ve been working on one truly inspirational and breathtaking web based project for over eight months now. It is just mind boggling and humbling to come in every day and see what the boys and girls have achieved. No-one can say that web technology hasn’t taken massive leaps forward over the last few years. Except, that is, if they look at one specific area. Intranets. Almost without exception they look exactly the same as they did five years ago. While the wide-scale adoption of social networking and the early stages of true Web-based applications are part of our daily out-of-office lives we haven’t seemed to connect to the benefits and opportunities they provide. Sure, they may have added a few tweaks and funky functions but actually fundamentally not much has changed.
I find this both bewildering and exciting. Exciting as being in exactly this business it presents me and frankly my business with tremendous opportunity. Bewildering because the power and potential is passing by with scarcely a nod or glance.
Intranet audits are a staple of my consultancy. I see lots of them, I’m working on three of these audits at this moment. With some glorious exceptions that I can count with my socks off there is little to suggest that intranet teams, (where the intranet it is actually seen as a key lubricant for internal comms programmes), are utilising the true power of intranets and adopting the characteristics of the “read-write” Web to develop the concept of two way communication and engagement and all the fluffy pink stuff we put into our mission statements.
Sure, forums, blogs and wikis are finding their way onto some intranets, but the number of companies employing these social computing tools is a bare fraction of the total number of intranets functioning today. As for the other elements of Web 2.0, I’m aware of less than a handful of intranets that have embraced notions like social tagging (as exemplified by del.icio.us, the social bookmarking Web site. The opportunities for social computing applications on intranets are huge.
Some enterprising companies are starting to use Wikipedia to develop an in house internal knowledge banks.( arguably more useful is actually a failure bank but that’s another story) These tools are used so not much for communication but stitches into the ‘at least we know where it is when we want to find it’ principle. But the true asset value of a company is its knowledge repository. It is 60% and more or your net worth if you believe Harvard Business School. Can you think of a better reason than giving the management of knowledge flow, its retention and acquisition in your organisation anything less than 150% support and making it your number one priority? I can’t think of any either but amazingly although Internal communications, innovation and differentiation features in pretty well every survey of corporate priorities, and even more annual reports, few pay it more than lip service. Why? Because it is hard to do and few know really where to start. ‘We tried the intranet thing but it doesn’t work ‘is probably the most often used phrase I hear. So you give up do you? Or, do you just get better at it?
The commonest .net2 deployment are blogs used by collaboration and project documentation but even these only have even now a tentative deployment. Which is frankly bonkers.
Imagine, just for one dizzying moment, that the CEO has a blog for a new product and then, just imagine the impact and discussion arising from 40 sales people dealing with the inevitable launch issues and how quickly these issues would be flagged, fixed and customer facing people made aware of solutions.
Imagine him feeding back by video with a small thank you and identification and appreciation. It really isn’t hard this stuff but lets not get too giddy here.
As I keep saying, there is nothing common about common sense.
So, why have so many intranets become covered in dust and moss?
Frankly, because it is not that big signal on the corporate radar simply because on the face of it there are few metrics that can get put on the spreadsheet for the weekly meeting that get the juices going. It is true to say that the benefits (and costs) are largely hidden. But if you have to pick one try just this one. Staff retention. Then look at the incurred costs for loss of knowledge and recruitment and training. Now that is truly scary. It can wipe of the profit for a business unit in no time. One loss alone will pay for the tweaks in the intranet that may (I would say probably) alleviate much of the frustration in allowing them to do their jobs effectively. Which, if you are still awake, is cited as the number one reason individuals leave jobs
If you can’t measure it then you can’t do anything about it. Its blindingly obvious and one of the true clichés in business. I don’t know why I even have to mentioned it. This position is reinforced by the often prevailing view that it is just good money chasing after bad. The existing intranet hasn’t lived up to expectations in the first place; why invest time and effort in it now? Many executive teams, optimistic about the intranet’s potential in its early days, now wonder what all the noise was about. While there certainly are productivity tools online—that’s just a matter of common practice in the workplace anyway—the innovation and the knowledge sharing that was supposed to flow from the intranet just never materialised.
Why? Well we could point to a range of contributing factors. Actually just pick one and you won’t be far wrong. Ill advised planning, design, not enough thought given to search and findability but in most cases its just simply down one major description often made at the beginning of conception- will will be its ownership. Who looks after it, nutures it and cultivates it. For the answer to that see Chapter 8. ‘What does a knowledge manager manage then?
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Being more specific it is easy to blame IT departments. Too easily in most cases. Now I’m going to stick up for them, well for a minute anyway. It’s a s**t job. That is why they bring their own sandwiches, it is their one small pleasure. (Its really so they can play war games at lunch and not leave their desks). I
t is a close tie as to whether HR or IT departments get more bad raps. To be fair to IT they have probably invested time and effort into developing the infrastructure of the current iteration of the intranet and, unsurprisingly, are in no hurry to move in a different direction. They haven’t had their lunch yet anyway. Intranet software vendors aren’t exactly blameless either. Few are using .NET2, most use ASP. or ASP.net at best. which is five year old technology. Do you get the theme here? I can’t help thinking what is going to happen next few years and when are they going to make that leap. And then we haven’t even mentioned Sharepoint!!! Or bless it, Lotus Notes and making that compatible with their new ERP system.
Corporate IT staff and corporate coms staff, some of them, anyway—are largely under informed, if we can put it delicately, about what’s happening on the Web and often have a blind-spot that something they use daily actually could be relevant to them. They hold the belief, justified or not that ‘Our company would never sanction that’ so they don’t suggest or push their ideas forward. Its a self fulfilling prophecy and a depressing spiral. And any way, the IT department should be doing that. Who should be keeping on top of this - Can it really be the IT department’s responsibility, most of which are stretched pretty thin just keeping the meter fed, printers on line, drying out the latte in sales reps keyboards and coping with Mr. Gates First Tuesdays. And beating their previous best in Call of Duty 4.
Many communicators figure the intranet is working just fine the way it is; why fix what isn’t broken? An interesting view from the delusions of competence. How do they know??? By definition, at least the ones I know, change is not discrete but is perpetual motion. It’s a classic mistake to look at the project having an end and walk away from it when it goes live and not put continuity and development factored in to its ongoing lifecycle. If it is put down on a shelf you can’t be surprised if it just gathers dust and gets ignored.
Trust in communications is developed through consistency, relevancy timeliness and accuracy. One intranet I recently was asked to look at had not had anything added to it for three years. That is not an intranet, it is a historic document. Is it any surprise I some times have to run out of meetings screaming.
Then we start talking numbers as you or somebody else from higher food chain undoubtedly obligingly point out. That there already has been an investment that been made in the existing portals that haven’t produced the kind of results most companies hoped for. It’s difficult for organisations to write off significant investments in order to start from scratch. But that doesn’t mean you should persevere with old tools tactics otherwise we would all still be pushing paper memos around. It is interested to see the metrics applied to measure its affect, success or return on investment. Generally it’s a big fat none, which is just plane daft. Its tricky yes, but hardly impossible.
The really infuriating thing is that none of this has to be expensive either to implement. SOAS such as Basecamp to name but one, or my current favourite Page flakes which has now demoted my I-Google as my home page costs peanuts or less than that compared to your ERP or SAP introduction. The effect though is disproportionately positive
There are some practical limitations too and by far the trickiest for most organisations, both public and private sector, is struggling to retain a command-and-control structure for their intranets. Tools that put control into employees’ hands are an anathema to intranets where only authorized representatives of the company can contribute content. But is that what they should be their role anyway? Is there an argument for loosening the approval processes in key areas? I’d argue, yes absoblinkinlutely yes. Should senior management really be a feared of any possible negatives and shouldn’t they be aware of them and manage them anyway? We live in a world of 360 degree reviews and employee engagement surveys, you carry out them of course don’t you? You don’t? Well you are in trouble then.
Or maybe you subscribe to the view I saw recently in a post from an HR VP which was a thinly disguised ‘You should be bloody lucky to work for us, just get with it’. And then to sweeten the message, guess what, we are having a pajama day next week just to show you how cool and cute we are. Erm, yeah. Really? Then I’d polish my CV. You will be needing it when your competition cream you into history or you get ‘outsourced’.
Just ask for this stuff, what can they say? No? Its just a word and won’t kill you. I’m hoping here that you actually have some form of innovation and idea management built into your intranet. No? Then start reading at the top again and pass this onto your boss.
Copyright Rainmaker 2008
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