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January 17 2012
How to build the right governance model for the digital workplace
The digital workplace is becoming a higher priority to more organisations in 2012. We have Jane McConnell’s Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report that gives you great research on what is happening. The London 2012 Olympics is forcing some of the most traditional organisations like banks to consider the digital workplace as employees work away from Canary Wharf for ‘flexi fortnight’ while the Olympics take place.
But how is the best way to manage this? How do you reduce that ‘dead time’ when people can’t work while out of the office? Why do employees have to go to their office building to work? How can you save your business money?
All these questions mean you need people with experience and strategic thinking to be involved in the strategy for a digital workplace.
I will use my experience with BT and helping other organisations develop digital workplaces to run a workshop at IntraTeam 2012 in Copenhagen on 28 February. This session will cover what is needed to have the right governance model for your digital workplace.
It will give you an overview on what is needed for the digital workplace to be managed so it brings benefits to the organisation, individuals and collectively, everyone. It should mean that ‘things feel better’ and encourage everyone to use the digital workplace.
By the end of the workshop you will understand the right level of governance needed for your organisation, balancing rewards to be gained while avoiding any risks.
Areas to be covered include:
- Ownership – who is responsible for developing the strategy, implementing the digital workplace and ongoing management of it?
- Consistency – what is the appropriate level of governance across your digital workplace?
- Standards – what are needed for a digital workplace?
- Integrity – do people have confidence when using information and tools in the digital workplace?
- What are the next steps you need to make?
I hope you will join me.
Tagged: digital workplace, governance, standards, strategy
January 12 2012
And the winner of the most useful intranet design competition 2011 is...
January 11 2012
Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report
If you are going to spend any of your own or your organisation’s hard earned cash this year then it will be difficult to find a better reason for spending it than on Jane McConnell’s excellent Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report. It is packed with great research, trends and insights on intranets and the digital workplace that will help you focus on what need your top priorities in 2012. It is impossible to do the report justice by covering it in any depth in a blog post so I’ll pick out three key findings that interested me most.
1. The intranet or digital workplace is the ‘way of working’ in the organisation.
Jane says “the essential place for accessing all or most of what people need to work” is the digital workplace for employees. As I have been saying during 2011 ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’ and recommended how you can achieve this with my digital workplace principles. This is a big ‘win-win’ for organisations saving costs and employees more engaged and a priority for 2012.
2. Internal social collaboration has become well-established
Jane says “social collaboration is well-established at enterprise-wide level or within some parts of the organisation”. It is good to see organisations accepting the benefits will come from this approach. I have said that engaged people who are able to communicate and collaborate more easily with other employees using these tools will prosper with the right culture and governance.
3. A fully functioning, high-level digital board making decisions
Jane says “the digital boards makes decisions for both internal and external digital channels ranging from the intranet to external web sites, and include collaborating and social networking”. This is great to hear. At last more intranets and digital workplaces AND the people who manage them are being recognised by their organisations and taken more seriously. The digital workplace strategy for how they are managed is critical.
Very few organisations achieve all three criteria so for most it is an aspiration which can be the focus for their improvement priorities in 2012 ready for the Digital Workplace Trends 2013 survey.
Tagged: benchmark, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, research
December 27 2011
30 top contributors to the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) LinkedIn Group for 2011
December 14 2011
5 tips to succeed with an intranet business case
I recently discussed this subject with some intranet practitioners in Copenhagen at an IntraTeam community of practice meeting. Several people there had yet to experience the excitement of knowing a business case had been approved or the disappointment of one being rejected.
I know how both of these experiences feel from first-hand experience when I was the BT intranet manager! It was the frustration rather than the disappointment with the rejection of a business case that has stayed with me longer. Frustration because I couldn’t get the people deciding to ‘get it’ and realise how much it would improve the intranet, the experience of people using it, and the business overall that I felt so passionately about.
How to succeed
You need to ask yourself if a business case is needed at all. Maybe by using open source technology there will be no costs that need you to ask for funding? Maybe you do need to later when you have something more convincing, more persuasive even more tangible, in the benefits you can demonstrate have been achieved by what you are doing.
Tip 1: Pick your timing to give yourself the best chance.
You need sponsors, preferably senior sponsors, better still the CEO as your sponsor. The more strategic and senior the level of support gained by you in your organisation, the better your chances of success and your efforts and time to achieve it will be rewarded.
Tip 2: Build up your relationship with your stakeholders.
You need to be complete in your business case. That means include all the costs – technology, licences, support, training, and implementation. But don’t forget all the savings – paper, accommodation, time, benefits – productivity, better decision making, risks avoided to brand, and reputation. There could also be revenue generated from extra sales because what you offer could mean more time and ability to compete than before for new business.
Tip 3: Don’t leave off something which could come back to bite you and affect your credibility with future business cases.
You need to consider the wider context for your business case. Is your organisation looking to expand or is it just trying to survive? What is your organisation’s strategy? Is your intranet strategy in line with it? Is your business case connected to your strategy (make sure it is!)? You need to align what you will achieve with the organisation’s values – teamwork, openness = collaboration tools.
Tip 4: Choose your agenda and use the language your audience will recognise.
You need to make your business case as compelling as possible. That means showing as many savings – money not leaving the organisation – and income – extra money coming in – that can justify. While there will be many benefits from productivity and reduced risks, it is the bottom line that will be the main focus and the hardest to achieve.
Tip 5: Focus on the savings and benefits which are most important to your organisation.
Lastly don’t forget to use every weapon in your artillery to help convince your sponsors of what your proposal will achieve. In addition to the five tips you can highlight how it fits with the organisations’ values, the downside of not approving the business case and risks being taken by that decision.
Good luck, be passionate about your business case. GO FOR IT AND WIN!
Tagged: benefit, beta testing, intranet, money, strategy, user testing, value
December 12 2011
Intranet home page design competition entries
December 05 2011
10 ways to increase intranet adoption
Since 1996 I have been pioneering the best ways to increase adoption of new tools on the intranet. For the 9 years as the BT Intranet manager and since then as a consultant, I have experienced different ways organisations have encouraged adoption of technology. My top 10 ways are:
Research what people need
Ask what their biggest pain points are. What could be made easier? What is missing from the intranet? What is good and they want more of?
Prioritise improvements
How important is the task to the person and to their organisation? How many people are affected by this? How frequently is it happening?
Early adopters to become ambassadors
Identify adopters who have the most urgent need to try something new to solve a business problem. Involve adopters in proposed changes as early as possible to get their buy-in. Satisfied adopters will be your best ambassadors and spread the word.
Make the first experience a good experience
You need to encourage not discourage usage to avoid unnecessary costs in extra effort. Act on early adopters’ feedback. Test with usability experts. Compare with existing best practice.
Advance communications so no nasty surprises
Manage peoples’ expectations. Clearly explain what it is you are offering and where they can get advice, training and help.
Consistent navigation
Give people a bridge from wherever they were on your intranet to get to another part more easily. Show the same headings and position on every page. Find out what are the best navigation headings that would help people most.
Personalise and target information
Give people the relevant information they need. Give people the applications they need to use. Give people confidence their personal information is secure.
Embed standards into templates
Reduce the barrier for publishing. Make it as easy as possible to do. Focus on what is important – the quality of the information – not how to use the technology. Consistently apply governance. Embed standards in the templates.
Compliance tools gave users confidence
Standards need to be enforced when publishers’ behaviour falls below best practice. Compliance tools enforce important standards – business, regulatory and legal requirements – and minimise time and administration. Users’ confidence in the integrity of the information must not be compromised.
Clear responsibilities and roles
Who is responsible for managing the intranet strategy, standards, IT infrastructure? What should everyone involved – publishers, contributors – need to do? Align intranet roles with performance management and job descriptions.
Tagged: best practice, content, engagement, governance, intranet, killer content, Mark Morrell, navigation, publishing, research, standards, training, usability, user testing
November 24 2011
Intranets are still very much alive!
I read with interest the blog posts by Tony Byrne ‘Death of the Intranet‘ and by Martin White ‘Death of the Intranet: ‘The Times They are a-changin’‘. They are both interesting posts with provocative titles to catch the attention. It has caused some great discussions about intranets which is great. The biggest and most negative reaction I found has been from intranet practitioners who feel it is an over reaction and not how they see things.
Having recently been an intranet practitioner as the BT Intranet manager before becoming a consultant, I can see the subject from both points of view. I believe intranets are still live and kicking To adapt the famous quotation by Mark Twain after hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal “The reports of the death of the intranet are greatly exaggerated” in my opinion.
Continually evolving
I believe intranets are naturally evolving and maturing. Over the past 15 years intranets have been called many different names. Intranets have needed to adapt to changes in technology, different business requirements and climates. But they are still here and thriving. The digital workplace is a wider environment that intranets will be a vital component of. Yet another evolution for intranets to absorb and adapt to.
Wikipedia says ‘Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools and applications, e.g., collaboration (to facilitate working in groups and teleconferencing) or sophisticated corporate directories, sales and customer relationship management tools, project management etc., to advance productivity. Intranets are also being used as corporate culture-change platforms. For example, large numbers of employees discussing key issues in an intranet forum application could lead to new ideas in management, productivity, quality, and other corporate issues.’ I agree with that from my experience of how intranets generally are being used.
Different tools to access intranets like mobiles won’t end the intranet. It’s just another opportunity to show how adaptable intranet can be in providing the information people need while on the move from their smartphones. Intranets are still the bloodstream for information and applications, properly managed and accessible any time, any place, any where and more and more using any device, that employees need to do their work each day.
Passionate practitioners
I am writing a report about how the passion showed by intranet practitioners about their organisation’s intranet that they manage can help accelerate improvements. I believe it is the personality as well as the abilities of an intranet manager that can help achieve more. Intranet practitioners know better now than ever before how to feel the pulse of their intranet and organisation it supports.
I recall in my previous role how I would champion again and again something I believed passionately about would improve BT by its adoption sometimes against sceptical line management as well as partners like IT and some stakeholders. Of course, judgement is critical as your reputation will suffer if you keep getting it wrong. My point is that passionate intranet role models are being created which other intranet practitioners can benefit from and will continue to help intranets improve in the years ahead, not die.
The development of the digital workplace will be seen not as a threat but more as an opportunity for two reasons:
- The intranet will fit well within the digital workplace and grow in influence on the back of it as more senior stakeholders see how the organisation will benefit from adoption.
- The digital workplace role will be another step an intranet practitioner can consider when looking for their next career move (more on this in a later post).
Increasing relevance
Intranet managers don’t feel intranets are dying – quite the opposite in fact. They believe intranets are moving into a more critical role for the organisations they support. More and more they are seen as providing a business critical role. This is a long way from just being another communications channels. While I see intranets that are struggling to show value and be taken seriously by their senior stakeholders, there are many intranets growing in value and championed by practitioners who have learnt how to seek support and sponsorship and can talk the language of the business not just the technology.
I believe senior stakeholders, as with intranets, have matured in the last few years. They understand better how intranets have added value, shown benefits in the wider sense and don’t think in straitjacket terms of just ‘return on investment’ so loved by Finance for business case submissions.
For me intranets are a living organism at the heart of organisations, managed by passionate people and increasingly championed by senior stakeholders who ‘get it’ about intranets and can see how they will continue in the wider digital workplace that is unfolding now.
Tagged: benefit, best practice, bt intranet, career path, digital workplace, intranet, Mark Morrell, value
November 18 2011
Reminder: Just a few days left to enter the intranet home page competition
November 16 2011
Stopping knowledge leaving with the person
How do I engage employees and improve collaboration? is a question I have been addressing in my posts Make a newbie welcome and more engaged,, Integrating and engaging a newbie , How an engaged newbie can become a top performer, A top performer’s career development and 3 steps to making it easier for top performers to share knowledge.
My last post in this series will cover what happens to the knowledge of an experienced top performer when they leave an organisation.
Physical and digital assets
It is a common problem as I know from personal experience. An organisation will closely track all the physical assets that you hold – computer, phone, car, etc, – and want them returned before you leave.
But your digital assets and your intellectual assets are rarely managed so the knowledge about how your work is carried out – processes, priorities,etc. – and the right contacts are lost to your successor (if your replacement has not been recruited), your manager and other people you work with.
How can organisations retain your knowledge better?
Leslie has decided after many years excellent service that a career move outside the organisation is the next step to take. Leslie has many years experience of how the organisation works. Leslie has worked on many projects. More importantly there are many nuggets of knowledge Leslie has learnt and used to perform so well. Who are the ‘right people’ to contact when you need help on different subjects? How is the best way to get approval for a project when you are not certain you have all the information to support you? What are the best shortcuts that cut out some of the worse processes? (we can all think of at least one can’t we!)
The main aim of the organisation is to have Leslie’s knowledge already stored in its digital workplace and have a governance framework to manage that knowledge so it continues to be available after Leslie has left. This means Leslie leaves but not Leslie’s knowledge. Bingo!
SharePoint 2010
There are many examples of how this can be done in a practical way. I will use SharePoint 2010 because I am familiar with it.
You need a knowledge management strategy that is aligned to your organisation’s values that knowledge is an important asset.
The governance framework that SharePoint 2010 fits within helps to separate personal from business information.
MyProfile contains all the personal information about Leslie – contact no., home address, manager, reporting lines, personal blog.
MySite contains other information that is personal to Leslie but is available if people need to find out more about Leslie to see if Leslie is in fact the best person to ask about a subject or not.
TeamSite has all the business information contained in the various projects, discussion groups, policy sites and functional areas of responsibility Leslie is involved with. This is where the rich knowledge is managed.
The governance framework ensures all the TeamSites are clearly owned and the information is reviewed in line with an Information Retention policy. Permissions are set so employees can see or not see the content, perhaps edit some or all the documents or even create new documents. SharePoint 2010 is very flexible in how you can configure it.
Good knowledge management
When Leslie leaves, Leslie’s MyProfile and MySite will be removed. This has personal information only.
All the TeamSites that Leslie has contributed to remain and will continue to be managed in line with the needs of the business.
This ensures the knowledge that Leslie has does not leave as well but is kept for future use.
Tagged: collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, social media
November 10 2011
Design an intranet home page and win a Kindle!
You have the chance to design what you believe is a useful hompage with the added incentive of winning a Kindle. Surely this is one of the easier decisions for intranet professionals to make!
When I look back at the BT Intranet homepage versions over the years I was there and the many other homepages I have seen that other organisations use, I wish I could have done this when I started to think about improvements.
While it is functionality that brings people back to a homepage again and again a design that is pleasing to the eye and helps bring to bring branding, content and layout together is the best combination for a useful homepage.
So, don’t delay, design it today!
Tagged: homepage, intranet
November 09 2011
3 steps to making it easier for top performers to share knowledge
How do I engage employees and improve collaboration? is a question I have been addressing in my posts Make a newbie welcome and more engaged,, Integrating and engaging a newbie , How an engaged newbie can become a top performer and A top performer’s career development.
Leslie has been a top performer for some years as Leslie has moved from one role to another. Leslie has agreed to mentor people as part of their career development.
There isn’t one standard way to mentoring. From my experience as a mentor and running a mentoring programme, it is the personalities of the mentor and mentee (protegé), the needs of the mentee and the ways and frequency of contact between them which can create a dynamic, enriching and long relationship or quickly fizzle out to nothing.
Leslie has the right characteristics to be a mentor. Leslie has broad experience, is a natural collaborator – willing to share ideas and listen to different views, and deep knowledge of many areas of common interest with the mentee to explore.
There are three steps to make it easier for Leslie.
Digital workplace
A digital workplace helps to give the relationship more opportunities to develop successfully between a mentor and mentee. Before it could be a combination of email, texts, calls or face to face meetings that helped nurture and grow a budding relationship into a strong friendship which can last for many years and extend into their personal lives.
The digital workplace means a blog post of interest can be shared with each other for comment, collaborating in a shared workspace on a subject with each other or with other trusted people that can help is easy to do. Using micro-blogging for direct messages as well as re-sending useful comments is great. Having a video call instead of a face to face meeting takes less time, effort and possible delay to fit with other commitments.
Most importantly is the degree of subtlety that a true friendship needs. It means a quick tweet or micro-blog comment helps keep the relationship ticking over when previously no response could chill things for a while and need more time and effort to repair……………..or even worse, lead to a terminal decline and end of the mentorship.
Use the full range of options that a digital workplace offers for how you communicate to find out what works best for a mentor and mentee.
Performance management
You need a framework that rewards a mentor and mentee for their time and effort and value that an organisation gains from helping accelerate the career development of a potential future top performer. While some mentors will be happy just to have some informal recognition, maybe meet their mentee in their own time, for the majority some formal reward is needed.
A performance management framework enables this to be given in an appropriate way. For the mentee, a personal development plan, reviewed regularly with their line manager, can include the progress with the mentor (without breaking any personal confidences). This helps to plan future development and work that maximise the mentee’s engagement to the organisation.
For the mentor it gives a more subtle choice. It may not be a promotion or pay rise but a formal recognition award could motivate the mentor and with publicity encourage other top performers to consider being a mentor. It may help with the future career path of the mentor who wants to progress into a new field of work using the skills learnt mentoring.
Culture
None of this will be possible without the right strategy, values and behaviour for the organisation the mentor and mentee works in. Creating the right environment for collaborative working; feeling we are all part of one big team; seeing the bigger picture and how everyone contributes to the overall success; being clear what is the direction the organisation is moving in; all of these help mentoring.
Without the right culture a performance framework would focus only on individual performance and what is being done now, not in the future.
A digital workplace wouldn’t happen. The old view “if you are out of my sight I don’t know what you are doing” would stop it dead in its tracks.
Combining these three key factors will mean you have a very good chance of many strong mentorship helping the mentee, mentor (like Leslie) and the organisation.
My last post in this series will cover what happens to the knowledge when a top performer leaves an organisation.
Tagged: blog, career path, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, plan, social media, training, wiki
November 06 2011
WICly intranet news #8
November 02 2011
A top performer’s career development
How do I engage employees and improve collaboration? is a question I have been addressing in my posts Make a newbie welcome and more engaged,, Integrating and engaging a newbie and How an engaged newbie can become a top performer.
Leslie is a now a top performer and is considering the next move for career progression. Leslie reviews what the options are:
Performance management
Leslie’s performance is recorded. Leslie has made the information available to propective managers who could be interested in Leslie’s skills and experience. Leslie’s preferences for the next role can also be seen – just like with LinkedIn.
Career development
From day 1 that Leslie joined this organisation, Leslie’s career development has been recorded, progress reviewed and options updated so it is relevant and accurately reflect Leslie’s development and future preferences.
Networking
This has proven to be the most valuable resource to help Leslie’s career progression. Through discussion forums, communities of interest, communities of practice and wiki contributions, Leslie’s expertise is well known and appreciated.
Leslie’s blog posts and MyProfile showing Leslie’s skills, exdperience and current activities are a showcase that everyone can view.
Leslie has carefully cultivated relationships with key people in mutual areas of interest. These people are actively considering where Leslie could fit in to their team.
In my next post I will cover how Leslie becomes a mentor.
Tagged: blog, career path, collaboration, engagement, sharepoint 2010, social media, training, wiki
October 25 2011
How an engaged newbie can become a top performer
I have been answering the question “How do I engage employees and improve collaboration?” in my post Make a newbie welcome and more engaged which covered how day 1 can be the right start for a newbie joining a business and how you can accelerate engagement over the first few weeks in my post ‘Make a newbie welcome and more engaged’.
I now want to pick up as the first year for the newbie shows they have become a top performer. Let’s give this person a name (rather than ‘newbie’ or ’top performer’) from now on of Leslie.
Leslie is now a fully integrated, high performing employee at their organisation. This hasn’t happened by chance or luck. This is because of the way the organisation has provided the right environment to encourage a committed, engaged, productive performance.
Let us cover how Leslie has become a top performer:
Performance management
Leslie’s performance is measured on outcomes. There are clear, agreed, measurable, objectives with a time line, budget and quality standard to be achieved. They are challenging but not impossible to achieve all or most of. The objectives are regularly reviewed with Leslie’s manager. Progress is recorded and actions agreed to be reviewed at the next formal review or anytime in between if needed. This approach is very successful because it gives Leslie the freedom to innovate. It encourages decision making and is supportive when they don’t always work out. (No decision is the worst decision to make?)
Collaboration tools
Having the right collaboration tools in place with a good governance framework in place has helped Leslie to use:
- discussion forums: Leslie has shown a real flair for sharing knowledge with other communities of interest and created a strong reputation across the business
- MyProfile: Leslie has used SharePoint 2010′s features to good advantage with Leslie’s skills, experience and current activities showcasing these to help other colleagues
- micro blogging: Leslie follows key people with similar interests and has cultivated a growing number of followers across other business functions with similar interests
- wikis: Leslie has learnt from the knowledge shared and increasingly contributed his views and experience which other people are valuing more and more
- blogs: Leslie’s blog is regularly viewed, frequently updated with new posts and has an increasing number of comments that add to the topic posted
- communities of interest: Leslie has joined groups with similar interests and contributed to the webinars, and online Q&As
Digital workplace
Leslie, Leslie’s manager and business colleagues all work from different locations, in fact some in different time zones and sometimes from more than one location each day. Leslie is comfortable not going to a phyical workplace. A digital workplace where Leslie is connected virtually has proved a great success. Leslie has the tools to connect from a hub, home or while on the move. Leslie is pleased this saves unproductive time, being able to keep in touch with everyone though the laptop, tablet and smartphone given by Leslie’s organisation. Leslie knows the performance management system measures what Leslie’s output is while Leslie’s manager is contactable whenever needed.
My next post will cover how Leslie uses the digital workplace and collaboration tools for future career opportunities.
Tagged: blog, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, sharepoint 2010, social media, wiki
October 22 2011
WICly intranet news #7
October 20 2011
Competition: Design a useful intranet home page and win a Kindle
October 19 2011
My interview about the social workplace
I posted recently that I will be a panellist at the Social Workplace conference in London, UK, on 1 November. Ahead of the conference I was interviewed for my views on the social workplace by Jon Ingham discussing engagement and collaboration.
You can see my interview on YouTube if you are interested or just curious to see me in my digital workplace. There is also a great interview with Sam Marshall who will be at the conference too.
It was a bit wierd talking to Jon using my webcam and not fully appreciating my facial expressions!
I hope to meet you at the conference or tweet about it on the day if you can’t make it.
Tagged: best practice, beta testing, bt intranet, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, social media, user testing
October 17 2011
Redefining productivity in the Digital Workplace
The way people do their work is shifting from a physical workplace to a digital workplace. This gives organisations an enormous opportunity to change their business model and create competitive advantage by deciding early how to take advantage of the digital workplace.
From my own experiences and knowledge I can see the risks if organisations delay and or make the wrong decisions. I have blogged about this in the past and how it affects engaged people are in their organisation, how effective collaboration will be and whether tools like SharePoint 2010 will help.
I have just read a great whitepaper written by Stephan Schillerwein on ‘The Digital Workplace: Redefining Productivity in the Information Age’ which offers a business perspective on the future of information and knowledge-based work practices and technologies in organisations.
Stephan says “Today, information-related work constitutes the number one activity for any organization – both from a quantitative as well as from a qualitative perspective. And despite decades of investment in information technology, information and information work is still badly managed and a source of unparalleled waste in employee productivity.
The Internet has reshaped industries, changed the way business is done and affected all areas of our lives. If the Internet were an industry sector, its weight on GDP would be larger than any of the industries of mining, utilities, agriculture, communication or education.
The same cannot be said for internal systems and practices in dealing with information, like for example intranets and the many other information management tools that exist in enterprises today. Their impact on organizations is in no way comparable to that of the Internet and the impact it has had on all aspects of human life and activity.
It therefore seems fair to say, that while mankind, as such, has definitely moved into the information age, organizations have done so only in very limited ways. This impacts productivity and performance in major ways and to a significant extent – even if not always visible to our eyes which typically still evaluate information-based work using the bygone standards of industrial age business orthodoxies.”
Anyone who has an interest in the digital workplace, engagement, search and collaboration will find this worth reading.
Tagged: collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, search
Quick poll results: the most useful intranet content types
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