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Curiouser and Curiouser! on intranets http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic intranets Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Intranet usage in the UK Tue, 02 Jul 2002 13:47:14 +0100 <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000044.html">Intranet stats</A>. Martin White has just posted some interesting stats on intranet and extranet usage in the UK. A summary of organisations [<A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>] http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000078.html The intranet is not a coporate brochure damnit! Sun, 11 Aug 2002 17:24:11 +0100 <A href="http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog/archives/000070.html">Collaborative working using an intranet</A>. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at... [<A href="http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog/">Intranet Focus Blog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Good pickup on how so many companies still have a narrow view of what an intranet can be.  A good intranet is an information ecosystem and not just a magazine site for the corporate communications team. The questionnaire mentioned looks interesting too.  It is geared towards large companies and seeks to determine: <UL> <LI>the potential value from developing a collaborative organization in your company.</LI> <LI>the current behavioral obstacles in your organization.</LI> <LI>the extent of collaborative levers currently in place in your company.</LI></UL> however I'm sure that many of it's questions could be usefully tailored to fit other situations.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000310.html Fixing intranets with klogs Sun, 18 Aug 2002 22:31:55 +0100 <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000166.html">Fixing intranets</A>. It's interesting how the same issues seem to come up in bunches. Over the last month, I have now talked... [<A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » James has written an interesting post about some of the common problems with intranets that he encounters with his clients.  As someone interested in how klogging (I'll use the term for now!) could affect the role of intranets and content management his issues seem particularly relevant to me.  In preface to my remarks I should point out that I am choosing to address static content rather than the possible dynamic web applications you might find on a typical intranet. The issues, re-ordered slightly to suit my responses, are: <OL> <LI>The intranet has grown over time. <LI>Manual processes (using Frontpage or Dreamweaver) are used to publish pages. <LI>A lot of information has been published, but the site isn't being used. <LI>There is little high-level structure, and users are not able to find information. </LI></OL> 1. If you want a logical hierarchical structure then organic growth is a problem.  It's like running water, it flows down along the path of least resistance and doesn't care about the direction.  Same with people, they'll squirrel stuff anywhere that makes sense today (have you taken a good look at your my "My Documents" directory lately?).   Of course if you're klogging then this organic growth is part of the package.  Whether that bothers you is probably a factor of points (2), (3), and (4).  2. This is most obviously solved by klogging software.  It's one of the fundamentals. 3. Hard to say but I guess much of the information published may be of low quality.  In my experience no matter how hard publishing to an intranet can be, creating information is harder still.  This leads to variable quality in that information.  Variable quality leads to low usage.  Low usage provides little incentive for new information to be created and so on. Klogging address this in two ways I think: <UL> <LI>When you have something to publish it's dead easy: click, type, click. <LI>You can publish in bite-size chunks.  This means that if you have a small but useful piece of information you can just klog it.  You don't have to pad it into a long document to make it worthwhile.  You also don't have to find "just the right place" for it to go, it just gets klogged.  That chunk can exist in it's own right, waiting for the day someone needs it.</LI></UL> Which brings us rather neatly to (4) 4. As it stands klogging is a decentralizing technology that doesn't encourage a formal hierarchical structure.  You klog and, if all goes according to plan, people will subscribe to you and they will link to you.  Will they be the right people?  Does it make information any easier to locate?  Not automatically no.  But then hierarchical structures don't necessarily make life any easier.  Once a hierarchy is more than about 2 levels deep it can cause it's own navigation issues. Some people might argue that a healthy klogging culture coupled with a Google search appliance (or any search engine that has a pageranking algorithm I guess) could well make it easier to find what you're looking for.  I think theres something to be said for that. My own approach is to allow for easy metadata-enabling of klogs.  My hope is that combining klogs with topic maps will allow new structures to be grown from them automagically.  This can complement the pagerank based search and provide new ways of finding and traversing group knowledge. So should you scrap the intranet and replace it with klogs? I don't think so.  But perhaps you should think carefully about what you want your intranet to achieve and whether some of your goals for information publishing and dissemination couldn't be better achieved with a klogging strategy.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000345.html Klogging up the intranet Sun, 18 Aug 2002 23:26:04 +0100 Just thinking about intranets and klogs. I think klogs bring the role of a web or intranet editor sharply into focus. Much as the users of a Wiki should occasionally re-factor pages that are becoming "busy" I think that a good intranet editor should be grooming the klogs in their organization and drawing together useful strangs to form part (or all) of the static intranet. I wonder what kind of tools would make this easier? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000349.html Weaving an Intranet Thu, 26 Sep 2002 09:56:48 +0100 I see a blog-aware Intranet as being like a moving tapestry woven out of the best threads of each blog in the organisation. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000608.html Contributing to an intranet Fri, 29 Nov 2002 10:59:59 +0000 I'm trying to come up with more models for thinking about communication.  I came up with a question: What affects my contributions?  And some attributes of an answer: <UL> <LI>inertia - how hard is it for me to make a contribution</LI> <LI>reward - what do I get in return for contributing</LI> <LI>value - how much use can be made of my contribution</LI></UL> A powerful intranet system makes it easy for people to contribute, gives them a direct return on investment and allows what they have added to be re-used in as many ways as possible. Typically an employee can contribute via: <UL> <LI>e-mail</LI> <LI>bulletin board / discussion list / group mailbox</LI> <LI>document management system</LI> <LI>database</LI></UL> A cursory examination of these options follows: e-mail <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> It is very easy to write e-mails but often harder to know who to send them to for maximum value.  They often go unacknowledged, its very hard to tell if they've had the desired impact and it's increasingly hard to know if and how to re-use the content of an e-mail.  Also with the quantity of e-mail people receive these days I think the law of diminishing returns is at work.  More e-mail (even better e-mail) isn't going to make things any better.</BLOCKQUOTE> bulletin board <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> On the face of it bulletin boards and other discussion groups work very well.  However as long time users will attest they have many significant drawbacks.  The first is that it is very hard to keep on track as an initial discussion widens out in collaboration.  Inevitably people look to take the traffic "elsewhere".  Popular discussion groups can get croweded very quickly which is a curse and a curse.  A crowded group can intimidate new comers and makes it harder for members to find what they are interested in.  A corrolary of this is that it soon becomes impossible to find anything for re-use.</BLOCKQUOTE> document management system <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> These days web-based document management systems (which all call themselves knowledge management systems in the hope you won't know the difference) tend to be pretty easy to use.  As ways of storing and indexing large collections of documents they work very well, but they often fail to solve the underlying problems of managing an organisations knowledge.   This is because, often, the knowledge isn't in the formal documentation. Example:  I'm an engineer working for a company who make handheld wireless workstations.  I acquire through on-site testing some valuable knowledge about a problem with making our equipment work in their situation.  I could write this up in a document and post it in the DMS but more likely I will put it in a notebook or on a post-It or just tell my colleagues about it. This kind of micro-knowledge (micro-content) is often where the useful knowledge lies and it can be very hard to get at if your systems all work at the macro level.</BLOCKQUOTE> database <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> What company doesn't have at least a CRM system today?  Supposedly the channel for storing all information.  But if you take my previous example where does that knowledge go?  It's not information about the customer (at least not really).  And that assumes that your CRM system is flexible enough to handle unexpected data.  Most either aren't or are never properly implemented. Databases are often cumbersome, unfriendly and inflexible.  Also where information goes in, it is often much harder to get it out again in any sensible form (another Access report anybody?).</BLOCKQUOTE>   As I have written before I do believe that all of these systems have a valuable role to play in building a successful intranet, however they address only the macro level and much of the knowledge an organisation needs to gain an understanding of itself and a competitve advantage over it's peers is micro-content. What is required is a communication medium that has low inertia, rewards the constributor and builds shared value.  Answer: weblogs, or more accurately knowledge-logs. More later. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000912.html More like a gallery than a factory Fri, 29 Nov 2002 11:40:26 +0000 I was discussing my recent posting on contributing to intranets with a friend to test the water.  She said something that made me reflect upon my our experience's and what I see around me, namely, that many intranets are a reflective tool rather than a creative one. In this I mean that, quite often an intranet lags behind what an organisation does.  Documents will be put up, after the fact.  A department or project will create a view that must be updated and infrequently is.  Basically the intranet is an afterthought and not a living breathing part of the work of the organisation.  More like a gallery than a factory. This seems to me to be dead wrong, but possibly a fact of life. If it is true then I think it is because there is so little room for peoples lives and work to become part of an intranet.  If the intranet is just a repository of corporate documents, policy's and procudures and dry applications then where do the people actually fit in? I would be interested in knowing whether simply adding workflow changes this somehow? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000917.html Locus for action Thu, 12 Dec 2002 08:32:37 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog/archives/000112.html">Who Needs an Intranet?</A>. Martin White has an interesting answer for managers of small companies wondering about intranets -- you probably don't need one! I concur, companies under about 50 employees, with everyone located in the same facility, can likely forego the expense and ha [<A href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">b.cognosco</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I think this is where I begin to diverge from mainstream thinking on Intranets.  My thinking here is along the same lines as my <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/11/29.html#a587">previous post</A> on whether an Intranet is a factory or a gallery.  I agree with Martin that a 50-man organisation doesn't need a gallery intranet to reflect upon work done or to showcase the HR policy set.  But who does?  More often than not I think these sites are built with an eye on senior management approval.  Hence: glossy, bright colours, simple headlines and little substance. However if an intranet is living work, an embodyment of the spinning flywheels and turning cogs of the organisation, then why is it any less relevant to a 50-man, or even 5-man organisation?  To me it's just as relevant.  In a small organsiation there are less people doing the work, everyone needs to be that bit more focused on it (don't I know it!)  In a large organisation there are more cracks for things to fall through, but the idea is the same. An intranet should help to collect things together and provide a locus for action.  The intranet should be part of the process, embedded in the work not separate to it.  As <A href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">Terry</A> says in response to the gallery post: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> In "The 21st-Century Intranet" Jennifer Gonzalez describes four types of intranets ranging from the asynchronous broadcast model to the symmetrical interactive model. Almost none of the later exist and I belive it is becasue of the point you make -- there is almost no room for people. Even the idea of adding people to the intranet draws gap-mouthed stares from executives in many companies. I don't think a change in workflow alone will do it. As numerous k-log threads have discussed, the cultural and personal barriers are greater than a simple change in workflow can address. But a comprehensive approach, will solid management support, could drastically change the nature of intra-company communication.</BLOCKQUOTE> The basic point is this: If the Intranet is about the people, and their work, then why does the number of people matter? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000986.html Does size matter? Thu, 12 Dec 2002 20:28:33 +0000 <A href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/2002/12/12.html#a1041">Size Matters</A>. <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/">Matt Mower</A> asks good questions on why company size should matter in intranet development, but I believe there are several other factors to consider. [<A href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">b.cognosco</A>] Okay Terry raises some good points.  Lets take 'em one-by-one. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Many small companies don't provide their workers with computers, so intranet access is moot. </BLOCKQUOTE> Agreed.  Although I would want to be certain that the reason for not providing computers was legit.  Example:  Is there a need, but no expertise?  This isn't an argument not to have some kind of intranet. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Intranets are designed to supplement human communication and learning, not replace it. If everyone is sitting within talking distance it makes little sense to put another layer of machines between them. </BLOCKQUOTE> Well now I don't think that's always true, even in the situation of 5 guys in an office (and I'll let you assume that they are always all there, 5 days a week.  weekends?)  So: <UL dir=ltr> <LI> <DIV>Terry what did we do on the firefly account last august? (Hope you've got a good memory).</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV>How many support calls did we get last week?  What was the hottest issue? (Want a debate?  Or do we have that data?)</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV>We need to order & configure a new server same as the last one.  What do we do?</DIV></LI></UL> Now I grant you that you don't need an intranet for any of this stuff.  I just think you are more effective if have one.  And what if things aren't so simple?  What happens when times aren't so good and you have to let Larry & Curly go.  Oops, all the knowledge about the Firefly account and how to build your servers just walked out the door.  Or when Moe's brother joins the 'ol firm.  How does he figure out how things happen around here?  Sure, he can hang around and watch you guys but why not let him see it. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Peter Drucker says "all work is knowledge work," but if workers aren't already spending the majority of their work day in front of a computer (the case in many small service companies) intranets make little sense.</BLOCKQUOTE> I'm with Peter on this one.  Give 'em hand-held's, give 'em tablets, give 'em something.  And for service folks that goes double.  For small companies life is often about quality of service.  Serve the customer better than the big NoNameCo and you stay in business (and the old guy whose been at this 40 years... he should be writing lots of content - he won't be around forever). I guess for me the central point is "what is the intranet for?" If it's part of the solution then why wouldn't you want your people to have it? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000996.html