Intranets Should be about People and Processes
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Hands up if you have been on a company intranet, probably your own company intranet, confronted by an electronic bureaucracy of confused procedure, ill-placed information silos and unexplainable over-provision of information for the job at hand. More often than not intranets are the dumping ground for anything project or work related that used to live on paper – intranets are usually giant ad-hoc shoe boxes.
As you can see I’m no great fan of the contemporary corporate intranet as they stand today in many organisations. In Gerry McGovern’s article People are not always the problem he talks about this issue – organisations are installing technology as an end rather than as a means to an end. Technology is being touted as the cure in itself… when the real cure is to provide technology to individuals in your workforce in such a way that it enables and enhances their ability to meet objectives, foster innovation and manage the day-to-day business that makes your organisation successful.
Most corporate intranets are difficult, cumbersome – like moving through a virtual shoebox of ad-hoc anomalies in the hierarchy defined by a many in different contexts on alternate days throughout a leap year or two. In short, they don’t make much sense.
Most corporate intranets stifle, obfuscate and demand bureaucratic obeisance to the Info-Obstructionist Overlord. Most suck. Most lose your organisation money. Often the intranet being circumvented is a sign that its just not working out for either of you.
The answer is simple. Rethink your intranet solution. Maybe it needs to be more organic, more context-relevant to individuals in the workplace. I mean you should employ people to follow your workers around for a while, to learn what it is that makes them a radiographer, a receptionist or a calligrapher. I don’t know what job they do so how can I design an intranet for them to achieve their outcomes? And that’s the current case in most instances… you need to employ smart people (not programmers) to dissect and dismember the people and processes that make you money, that contribute to innovation and to productive processes… and you need to invest in the solution they envision. You need to hire skilled interface designers and experience engineers to ensure that the vision is sufficiently articulated when users hit the virtual pavement of the new intranet solution.
