Globally local - locally global

Facebook for companies - open or closed?

I've been checking out Facebook to see how many companies I know have networks on Facebook. To my surprise, quite a few exist. To my greater surprise, some are open to anyone who wants to join in spite of the message being "for employees of..."; I actually joined a couple of them with no problem.

I wonder how many companies are aware of their own presence on Facebook? Like the Wikipedia, some may not yet have discovered they have a page. The era of "shared communication" (Thanks, Anthony)  is getting stronger every day.

I suspect most Facebook communities will not last long. I'm speaking at Online Information in London next week. There is a Facebook page for the conference and speakers are invited to post something about themselves or their talks. I just did so, but imagine that once the conference is over, the page will not live. Also, if most speakers do not post anything, it will end up being just one more marketing gimmick.

Check out Toby Ward's article "speaking of Facebook as an underground intranet" for a good review of the situation:

I quote Toby: I’m a big fan of Facebook, but it poses some serious security and privacy concerns for more than just individuals. Corporate IT and Security officials would do well to not only monitor Facebook activity, but to intimately know and understand the types of applications being used and developed for the Facebook community.

Highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey Reports - just published

  Intranet = the way of working now or very soon

• The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organisations in the survey population. Half say that today employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours, with the figure reaching 3 out of 4 if it “went down” for 24 hours.
• Yet only 1 out of 5 of the organisations say their senior management considers the intranet to be business critical. However this is up nearly 5 points from 2006! So things are improving.

Users come first - at last!

• Focus on users is at the top of the list of investments.
• Usability is a key strategy driver and user-centred design & usability, cited by 3 out of 5 organisations, will be the top investment area for the next 2 years.

Search is suffering

• Nowadays when “search rules” on the internet, it is disappointing that nearly 3 out of 5 organisations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
• However, most  do not make the necessary effort to optimise search. Well over half have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimising search. Very few have taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search logs.

2.0 is making headway

• 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organisations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
• Organisations where the intranet already is or will soon become “the way of working” are more involved in 2.0 than the others. 4 out of 5 compared to 3 out of 5 in the full survey population).   
• 1 out of 3 of these organisations are bringing the topic to the forefront, as shown by the fact that they are starting or have established an official 2.0 strategy. 

Fears for an "underground" intranet unfounded

• Wikis and blogs do not constitute an “underground intranet” as many people feared would happen.
• Over half of the 2.0 population plan to or have already integrated them into the intranet navigation, also making them searchable with the intranet search tool.

Major obstacles still lie with senior management

The top 3 obstacles according to 2 out of 5 organisations considered to be “a serious obstacle that holds us back” are:

1. Intranet not seen as a priority
2. Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet
3. Lack of ownership at a senior level

About the 2007 Global Intranet Survey

178 companies and organisations around the world participated in the second annual Global Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey. They include 45 % headquartered in Europe, 43 % in North America, 10 % in Asia-Pacific and 2 % in other parts of the world. 72 % are in the private sector, 20 % in the public sector, 4 % are associations, and 4 % are extraterritorial world bodies  and NGOs.

Over half the organisations have more than 15,000 employees, including 13 % with over 100,000 employees. All areas of activity are represented from services to goods, basic materials, technology and many others.

Reports available
You can read about the Global Intranet Trends and the Global Intranet Analysis Reports on my web site at netjmc.com/survey. They are available for purchase online. You can read details, download the tables of contents and sample pages for both reports and link to the purchase platform from the NetJMC web site - survey section.
You can download a 1-page description of the reports here: Download Global-Intranet-Reports.pdf (pdf document)

Making intranets work (for communicators)

James Robertson, StepTwo, has made his presentation on Making Intranets Work (for communicators) online via slideshare. He gave it at IABC very recently, and it is focused on the internal communications angle.

KMWorld & Intranets - Augmented Social Cognition - from PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)

One of the most future-looking talks at the conference was from a group of researchers from PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) about what they call "augmented  social cognition, which they define as: (I cite from the ASC blog)

* Cognition: the ability to remember, think, and reason; the faculty of knowing.

* Social Cognition: the ability of a group to remember, think, and reason; the construction of knowledge structures by a group.  (not quite the same as in the branch of psychology that studies the cognitive processes involved in social interaction, though included)

* Augmented Social Cognition: Supported by systems, the enhancement of the ability of a group to remember, think, and reason; the system-supported construction of knowledge structures by a group.

Their demo of the wiki dashboard, a social dynamic analysis tool designed to build trust based on transparency was amazing.  I suggest you check it out following the link on the Trust me page: Wiki Dashboard demo.

Speaking of wikis...some quotes from the front lines

The following are comments provided by participants in the 2007 Global Intranet Strategies Survey when asked to share lessons learned and viewpoints on 2.0 tools.

The following quotes reveal obstacles and concerns felt by some organisations:

"The biggest problem I have encountered with the Wikis currently used is the large volume of unstructured data being collected and how to handle it into the future."

"Web 2.0 tools such as wikis are taking us back to the technology driven ages of intranet development and can act to actually dilute information flows. This is a challenge to the intranet as it threatens to cannibalise efforts on the intranet and replace the intranet as a channel with a tool with far poorer general usability. Wikis need to be incorporated into the Intranet design (UI) and search facilities to really add value."

"The wiki is very functional; however, we find our employees are turned off by the limited presentation & display of content (i.e. people don't like the look of it). Those who do take the plunge use it in managing teams and projects and find it valuable."

KMWorld & Intranets 2007 - Tagging strategies and the impact on search in the intranet

Notable quotes and key ideas from Jordan Frank from Traction Software who spoke about "Tagging Strategies & E2.0 in Action". (This is not a product endorsement - only comments on the talk.)

Described 3 wiki use cases
1.  Unordered documentation (for example a wikipedia), glossary,  policies, FAQs
2. Ordered documentation, reference manuals, proposals
3. Project team collaboration - hybrid blog and wiki, combines wiki content - order and unordered
as well as blog type content - questions, issues, status, meeting notes, comments - chronological information.

Described 5 types of tags that can be defined, then used to slice and dice information and display it in different ways. A way of bringing some structure without limiting spontaneity and flexibility.

1. Content - bulleting, requirements, milestone, process, practice, etc
2. Importance: headline, alert, priority 1,2 etc, next, etc.
3. Status:  to do, done, stalled, skipped, waiting, no
4. Assignment: person, role, function, etc.
5. Category:  strength, weakness, threat, opportunity; 4 P's of marking, and so on (depends on the group)

Put this cocktail of tags together in a  project team space, and you can see a lot of different angles

Impact on search

• Search in the wiki/blog context can outperform the traditional intranet - wikis and blogs often reference information outside themselves. They are tagged in such a way that is more effective than in the average intranet CMS-driven content.
• You can use the wikis and blogs to weight the information around them, in the enterprise, which will help to make search better.

Frank included 3 case studies in his presentation: a competitive intelligence application in  Ipsen, a team in the Department of Defense (US) doing experiments with night vision equipment and a team in the National Health Services (UK).

KMWorld & Intranets - Global Intranet Survey Highlights

I presented highlights from the Global Intranet & Portal Strategies survey I conducted from June to August, 2007  in the  intranet track of KMWorld & Intranets today. A lot of interest from the audience, and a number of new participants ready to roll in 2008. This year the survey population was 178 companies, compared to 101 last year. Good progression, and it looks like 2008 will go quite a bit higher.

You are welcome to download the slides I used. They are mainly charts, as they were just visual support for extensive verbal commentary. I think (hope!) you'll find them relevant to your case. I'll be blogging more about the results in future posts, but here's a starting point: netjmc >documents > 2007 Global Intranet Survey Highlights. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

You can read more about the reports, and download the tables of contents from the netjmc web site in the survey section. I'll soon be posting sample pages, and making them available for purchase by mid November.

KMWorld & Intranets 07: Building a strategic roadmap - Biogen Idec

I moderated the first day of the intranet track of KMWorld & Intranets, and the presentations were all of very high quality.
Some highlights:

Christine Carron from Biogen Idec - Her subject: "Building a strategic roadmap"

Notable quotes & key ideas:

"Getting approval for doing the roadmap was a project in itself."

The worked on "Perception transformation". Involved 4 inputs:

1. Tracked usage on a monthly basis - 60 % increase, now at 40 % increase (intranet in its 3rd year)

2. Usability analysis done by external consultancy, validated strong and weak points from an external expert viewpoint.

3. Did an intranet satisfaction survey, to be used as a baseline. One of the questions: Is the Intranet necessary to get my job done? 56% agree - therefore had integrated business processes. This was good information for management.

4. Used the Avenue A Razorfish Intranet maturity framework to do a gap analysis.

Our mantra became "business productivity".

New change requests or user requests analysed with a weighted scale, with business value representing 60 % and other criteria that were previously used making up the remaining 40 %.

The slides will be available on the KMWorld & Intranets web site later - not sure when. I'll try to remember to let you know if I notice them. Otherwise, you can check out this link from time to time, and let me know if you see the conference slides! KMWorld & Intranets.

This presentation is one of the best case studies I've seen about how to build a strategic roadmap.

KMWorld & Intranets - Making groups smarter: James Surowiecki

Notable quotes from the opening keynote by James Surowiecki, author of the "Wisdom of Crowds".

(This post is not intended to be very structured - it is cleaned up notes taken while listening.)

Started by giving examples of how wise the crowd can be...

• Google’s page rank algorithm based on their realisation of the "remarkable hidden order and intelligence under the surface of the apparent chaos of the web".
• Uses example of a crowd of bettors at a race track and shows that the odds are usually right.
• Refers to another example of prediction markets - the Iowa voting one for presidential elections since 1988, more accurate than the Gallup polls 75 % of the time.
• Companies that use markets internally: HP, Google, Siemens,  (see the Wikipedia article on the subject for other names of corporations)

Prediction markets get around the problems created by hierarchies and bureaucracies: hard to move information,  incentives to hoard information, tell bosses what they want to hear.
The only premium placed by the wisdom of crowds is for being right, no matter who you are, where you are in the organisation.

What's the catch? Only works under certain circumstances:
How do we make the crowd smarter?

1. Aggregation: A way of aggregating a lot of individual judgements to produce a collective judgement (this is not a suggestion box where ideas go in and are then filtered out)

2. Diversity: real case for diversity is that it improves the bottom line and decision making. Referring to cognitive diversity - different ways of thinking about and framing problems.
Diversity expands the range of information available to you
Example: Has a group of engineers solve a problem. Then has them solve one together. One group is the best of the best, the other a mixture. The B of th b does well, but is almost always out-performed by the other random group.
The ones at the lower end of the spectrum, less successful than the B of th B, - is bad for them as individuals, but put ito a group it makes the group smaller
Less likely to get hung up for a wrong answer
Diversity of perspective: geographical, training, age, 
People make mistakes, so want to ensure they aren't all in the same direction. Errors cancel each other out. 

In a homogeneous group, the more people talk to each other, the dumber they become. They become more convinced they are of the rightness of their positions.
You need to find ways to break that apart - disrupt that.
You need a devil's advocate. Must not be the same person everytime. That person serves an automatic role of being the devil's advocate. The others listen to him out of routine. We listen, then do what we want to do anyway.

3. Independence: have people relying as much as possible on their own knowledge and opinions. Give their thoughts, not others.

People want to appear reasonable in the eyes of others. Therefore, tend to do what others do. If you're wrong, you're still close to the others. If you go out on a limb, have a different judgement, more risky. Those people tend to get punished in some way in most organisations.
Humans herd together in conditions of uncertainty.

Paradox: groups are smartest when the people in them are acting as much as individuals as possible.
Make people free to offer genuine opinions. Must be able to accept disagreement.

Consensus: Finding consensus too quicklty can often be a mistake. People must be able to disagree strongly before making a decision. Imitation makes sense for individuals, but not for the group. Leaders have to learn to step back.

On my way to San Jose....

KMWorld & Intranets 2007 starts Monday with the workshop day. The conference itself opens Tuesday and runs through Thursday. I have a workshop Monday afternoon where I'll be going through the results of the Global Intranet Survey with my attendees. I'll be using the intranet maturity framework I have developed over the last year to see how different intranets or rather different "pieces" of intranets fit into the 5 steps of maturity. I say "pieces" because as we know, all intranets are uneven. They all have effective parts and less effective parts. (This is one reason I so appreciated the StepTwo approach to the Intranet Innovation Awards - see my previous post.)

Here's a description of the workshop:

Workshop 14 - Global Intranet Maturity Workshop: Lessons and Opportunities
This workshop is structured around an intranet maturity grid developed specifically for large, complex organizations. Data on the grid comes from 2 years of results of the Global Intranet Strategies Survey (conducted in 2006 and 2007), showing where different types of enterprises and intranets are positioned. Participants walk through the grid step by step, comparing the global data with their own contexts. Numerous best practices and lessons learned collected in the 2007 survey are presented and discussed. Participants will get a clearer understanding of what other organizations are doing, how they are positioned, and a list of ideas and practices contributed by survey participants and other members of the workshop. Topics covered include strategy planning, governance, content management, 2.0 technologies, localization, collaboration, application integration, search and findability, customization and personalization, and budgets and resources.

I'll let you know how it goes, as this will be my first official presentation on this subject.

Tuesday, I'll be moderating the intranets track, and speaking on the following subject with my guest Susan Grow of the US Federal Treasury Department. (Susan organised a group of US government agencies who participatedf in the Global Intranet survey.)

Session D103: Global Intranet Practices & Trends
Jane McConnell, President - NetStrategyJMC
Susan Grow, Performance Measurement Consultant - The Federal Consulting Group, U.S. Treasury

Based on 2006/7 results of the Global Intranet Strategy Survey conducted on a worldwide scale, this session focuses on where organizations are at today regarding: landmarks on the path to globalization of intranets and portals, integration of 2.0 technologies, how intranets are different when senior management considers them to be business critical and how they are evolving to prepare for tomorrow’s workforce. It discusses current trends in customization, personalization, search, governance, measurement and other issues, so participants can see where they fit in the overall intranet-portal landscape.

If any of you will be in San Jose, drop me an email and we'll find a moment to get together.

Intranet Innovation Award winners

James Robertson, StepTwo, has announced the winners of the Intranet Innovations Awards.
I was one of the sponsors of the awards, and support them especially because they take the pragmatic approach of looking at specific applications and enhancements, and not whole intranets, which as we know are too all encompassing to be able to judge them in their entirety. Unfortunately, most awards attempt to deal with the "whole intranet" and thereby become less meaningful.

I have read the report and recommend it to intranet managers who would like to see very concrete examples of innovative intranet applications including screenshots. 

Announcement from James Robertson, StepTwo, in Australia....

These Intranet Innovation Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative
approaches tothe enhancement and delivery of intranets. Uniquely, these
awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as
a whole.

Global in nature, the Intranet Innovation Awards have uncovered many
innovative ideas. Fiat, this year's platinum winner, has used their
'Avanti e Veloci' web portal to help turn around the fortunes of their
whole business.

The Environment Agency has developed a rich set of personas to support
the delivery of better intranet content and functionality. City of Casey
and SunGard AvantGard have innovated the traditional staff directory.

Perkins Eastman has created active collaborative communities, while
Nycomed has brought product information together in a single location,
no small challenge for a global pharmaceuticals business. QBE has
created an interactive 'Investigator Wizard' to assist in assessing
insurance claims.

Winners:

Platinum award winner:

* "Avanti e Veloci web portal"
Fiat Group Automobiles (Italy)

Gold awards winners:

* "Staff Locator"
City of Casey (Australia)

* "Persona pack"
Environment Agency (UK)

* "Practice Area Communities"
Perkins Eastman (USA)

* "Product collaboration"
Nycomed (Switzerland / Denmark)

* "Away Today"
SunGard AvantGard (USA / New Zealand)

* "Investigator Wizard"
QBE (Australia)

---

You can find out more about the winners on the StepTwo web site by reading the article that provides a summary for each winner. The report is available for purchase (115 pages):  "Intranet Innovations 2007" report: (cost $189).