Sprints, leaps and baby steps – What it takes to make an intranet strategy work.

Next week I’m speaking at Intranätverk – the newest star on the intranet conference sky. Kristian Norling has done a remarkable job of putting together a great lineup of speakers mostly from Sweden but also some notable people from around Europe. Kristian promises to bring a twist to the regular intranet conference and I am happy to play my part in making this happen.

My talk will be about intranet strategy and how we at Grundfos have been quite successful with a more sustained model but now find ourselves faced with a challenge. It will not be about Sharepoint although there IS new version out there which is awfully hard to ignore. Heck, just last week I walked though Copenhagen Airport where Microsoft banners lined the security check area. I’m sure there are a whole bunch of jokes that can be made based on that but I’ll leave that up to you J

A new Sharepoint – that also means that whenever intranet peers meet it doesn’t take very long before the conversations turns to the topic of this new version. Sometimes it makes good sense to upgrade but all too often this is done simply because an eager and very tech focused intranet manager wants the newest version. An even more common scenario is that the IT department tells the intranet team that they will now upgrade to the latest version as a part of the overall strategy (or some other reason) with no questions asked.

Let me always having the most recent piece of software is NOT a strategy. It’s an operational thing. Even if it is labeled as a strategic ambition, it is an incredibly stupid one! Strategies need to be made around what the platform – be that the intranet, record management system or something else – can help your colleagues, the users, achieve.

What about the scenario where the USERS are the ones asking for the new version of a given platform? It is not at all a common thing so I was really surprised that when Grundfos announced that the entire company should move to MS Office 365 I was approached by quite a few who excitedly asked “when are we getting Sharepoint?”. Why was that?

The answer is buried in the fact that our intranet is more than 10 years old. It is grown with the company and with the needs of my colleagues but more importantly, it has grown INSIDE the organization and little heed has been given to the outside world since our intranet was – and is – doing a good job. We are in a situation where we have had great success growing our intranet with the company to serve the needs of our colleagues but if you compare to what’s going on elsewhere it is clear that what started as a small discrepancy – a hairline fracture – has now grown into a big crevasse and we now need to prepare to take a big leap.

This is obviously a very daunting task but nevertheless one that has to be done. If we fail to do so people will start looking elsewhere. In Grundfos we have seen a spectacular uptake on the use of Yammer which I think is excellent but it also underlines my point that although a sustainable development model is the best way forward you inadvertently find yourself in a situation where radical change is needed. It’s a fact of life!

So how do you create an intranet strategy that work? My answer is short and simple: Make sure that you always grow with the company. Users hate surprises but every once in a (great) while you need to take a great leap forward to catch up otherwise people will be leaving. Most importantly you should never, ever stop listening to what your customers really need and it is NEVER “the latest version of SharePoint”…

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If you are interested in reading more about my thoughts on the development gap that I have outlined here, I hope that I’ll see you in Gothenburg. If not, you can take a closer look at the J. Boye blog where I wrote a blogpost titled “Mind the gap – also when developing your intranet”

Read the organisation chart horizontally – not vertically

I’ve just been thrown into a project around change management for a global IT transformation project where we are changing from IBM and Lotus Notes to Microsoft and Outlook (plus a huge pile of other stuff – let’s leave it at that…) certainand a very interesting task. I could be whining about that it’s too late in the process and that too many things have been put in motion but a) whining gets you nowhere and b) the fact that communication and change management has been put on the radar is something I see as a very positive thing.

Looking through the material that has been prepared already I must admit I became quite confused. Initially I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that was. The material and plans were very professional and the content was also quite good. What about the target groups for the communication? A quick count of the identified stakeholder groups in the plans and the excellent and detailed stakeholder analysis revealed that we were looking at 30+ different stakeholder groups. Oh dear…!

I started wondering how this extreme complexity had entered the equation. Some big chunks such as “end users” and “global IT” made good sense, however, I started to notice that some groups had only a few individuals in them and that they were labeled by department names and names of committees – even names on individuals. AHA! Card sorting time! After 30 minutes of simple card sorting with the 30+ groups I got that number down to 14 – the joy of simplification!

In a perfectly flat and socially connected utopian world you would not have this problem. You’d simply communicate 100% transparent in a Yammer group or something equivalent but since we are not quite there yet in our company we will still have to work in a more traditional way. As I see it, the main challenge here is to pull people’s head out of the organizational chart. I hope that we will dare to look at the organizational chart in a different way and instead of seeing a hierarchy of responsibilities, command and control we see groups of people with different needs.

The open and transparent organization is coming – but only if we manage to see the people and the needs within rather than seeing chains of command, functional departments, and committees with dubious mandates and strange names…

It’s like Facebook – and it’s OK…

You’ve seen them: 7 steps for a more social enterprise, 3 top-tips for increasing employee engagement, 5 strategies for…. These are all very good and useful, although rather repetitive, but one thing is always left out: The fact that Social networking is for entertainment – not for work! Or at least that’s the way many people still see social media.

I have been working actively on an internal Yammer project for the last 8 months and while we have had lots of people sign up and also quite a few engaging actively in the discussions on the platform. Notwithstanding the relatively large contingent of people who are not active, we think that it has been a quite successful journey – more about this journey in later posts.

Introducing Yammer to the masses.
Nothing beats face to face contact so My colleague and I have introduced and demoed Yammer and what it can do for a certain department at department meetings and conferences. Two statements have stood out and we hear them almost everywhere.

1. We don’t have time for a new tool.
2. it’s almost like Facebook.

The first preconception is relatively easy to address with the simple answer that you need to take some time to get used to a new tool – any new tool – and that this obviously starts with a cultural change and a handshake that a given group of people will give it a try. As always, with things that requite a change of habits, it is much easier said than done but that’s also a topic for another post.

We always start every introduction by asking a few questions about people’s social media habits and since Denmark is one of the countries where Facebook has the highest penetration rate everybody know Facebook – also if they don’t have a profile. Usually this is very helpful and people who compare it to Facebook will be more prone just to get started but there is another side to this statement. Why does this matter in relation to social media at work? More importantly: Why does the Yammer/Facebook comparison pose a challenge for user adoption?

Entering the ‘Corporate Facebook’
In Denmark we have, like many other places, lots of stories in the media about what social media can and cannot do and along with this also quite a few stories about people losing their jobs or getting bullied on various social media. Additionally some of the larger Danish unions early on told people to be very careful with what they share on social media – especially when it comes to work. People listened and learned. Companies were also quick to announce that social media (ie. Facebook activity) was banned or should be minimized during working hours. Again people listened and learned. Just imagine what could happen if I started using Facebook during my workday…

This is where we are today. Our colleagues have been ‘brought up’ with the fact that social media is something that belongs in the private sphere and when you are at work the use of social tools should be kept to a minimum.

Next thing you know is that your manager has invited two strange guys who are talking about how important it is that we share information in the company and how important it is to ‘break down silos’ – and then they show a tool that looks just like Facebook. WHOA! Slow down! Less than a year ago we weren’t supposed to use this stuff at work – and now you’re saying what…..?

What basically happens is that in addition to the change of habits that is connected with the introduction of a new work tool you also have to come to terms with the fact that you must abandon the thought that using social networks is something you do in your private life – certainly not during 9 to 5. It is not real work! You may argue that this is an ‘age-thing’ and to a certain extent you are right. There ARE more young people among the early adopters but you would be surprised how many 20 and 30-year-olds who roll your eyes at you in the beginning of each presentation, some even saying out loud that these social networks are a waste of time and that they have no place in a work context.

It starts with the managers
I’ve had this talk with quite a few managers who have been wondering why the adoption is relatively slow even if the group has received introductions, training and it has been given an official seal of approval. When we talk about the change of habit and that social networking in a work context largely is like eating forbidden fruit, the manager often realizes how much more there is to it than just throw a new tool into the mix.

The biggest upside is that the “Facebook is not for work” argument works – it makes intuitively sense and it helps underline the importance of the change management effort connected with these tools and I believe that it will ultimately improve adoption. It still takes the 5, 7 and 10 tips that I mentioned in the beginning in order to truly succeed but make sure that you repeat after me over and over: “Yes! It’s like Facebook… and it’s OK…. Really….”

Smarter business in the year 2012 – also on paper…

I have attended a fair share of conferences and event – some good, some bad. One thing that always makes me a little apprehensive is when the big vendors invite to the big annual events. It’s always a good chance to see all the new stuff in action but more often than not they roll out the red carpet and present a ‘Big Mac’ event. Big Mac in the sense that it’s beautifully presented but leaves few lasting impressions other than you are hungry again two hours later.

This morning I boarded the train from Aarhus at 05.42 with a slight apprehension and when I entered the beautiful venue 3½ hours later it was reinforced by the fact that it turned out to be a HUGE event. I don’t know what I had expected but a crowd of 1000+ delegates was certainly not it!

At the time of writing this I am on my way home from what ended up being one of the best events of its kind that I have attended for a long time. It would be a shame to say that my world was turned upside down but it was very refreshing to hear how IBM works with social business externally. Susan Emerick explained how everyone in IBM has the opportunity to participate on social platforms but also how they identify talent and resource people internally and make their participation an important part of their strategic go to market initiatives.

One of their very important conclusions was that the ‘digital engagement’ was 3 times more effective than the traditional digital marketing. I spoke to Susan afterwards where she reiterated this point – find an applicable area where you are likely to create new business opportunities – dedicate a portion of your budget to the new initiative – and compare…

The comparison obviously requires measurement. Measurement inevitably categorises content (and even people) as good or bad in terms of their digital efforts. In my opinion, this will become an inconvenient truth for many people in the social business. If you listen to many experts in this area they are advocating various pseudo-metrics related to how engaging you are but in the end it all boils down to what can be documented on the bottom line……or as Jerry McGuire would say – uhm, well, shout – SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

The Swedish Chef in action (photo by @unwiredchris)

However, the main topic for the social business track remained the challenges of creating an organization where the people and the culture embrace the value of sharing information and knowledge openly. Until this change is brought about it makes little sense to talk

about business opportunities in stead we need to focus our energy on getting the right mix of ingredients that make up a proper social business and this both begins and ends with cultural change – or to paraphrase ‘the Swedish chef’ Christian Carlsson who introduced the metaphor of social business components as ingredients in a bread:

“Culture is the yeast that makes a social business rise”

Enough about food….. What about the paper mentioned in the header? Well, I was not the only one who was surprised when all participants was reminded to fill out the evaluation form and hand it in before we left. I couldn’t help but to ask if that was what IBM defined as “smarter business” but as it turned out, they had learned that online forms were not nearly as effective for gathering feedback. Agree or disagree, if that’s the case then a piece of paper CAN be a smarter way – also in our hyper-connected world.

3 different takes + 1 opinion about BYOD

Lots of people – also internally in my organization – talk about bringing own devices to work (BYOD). On one side in some ways it is easier for companies – and me – to let me to bring my own cool gizmos that I know inside out instead of having to stay on the cutting edge. On the other side companies ought to provide the tools that enable you to get your work done and it must work sufficiently fast, reliable, and most important sufficiently supported. This will not be the latest candy-themed Android OS or the newest iPhone, but it still gets the job done.

Personally I’m not quite sure where I stand on the topic but three BYOD themed articles/blogsposts have caught my attention today – each offering a different view on the BYOD debate. I will share them here along with a few of my thoughts.

The user perspective
“What’s my motivation? A mental model for BYOD” is a great post about how people have different motivations for wanting to bring their own devices to work. A very good starting point for a discussion as I have experienced that the BYOD talks quickly evolves into an arms race about features and specs – not about the underlying problem itself and this is in my opinion where you need to start.

The management perspective
The header “When BYOD Is a Productivity Killer” almost says it all and it did make me a little apprehensive. It turned out to be about how using your own device will make work seem more pervasive thus making it easier to switch off. The concluding sentence “Essentially, BYOD eliminates the free work that employees with corporate phones were doing.” makes me question if the author has understood the basic BYOD concept at all.

The bigger perspectives
Gartner offers a bigger picture and I have to say that I agree completely with their statement that “BYOD is not for every company, or every employee…..For the vast majority of companies it is not possible to force all users into a bring your own (BYO) program without substantial financial investments — and considerable support from senior management. It’s hardly revolutionary but there are some valid points and I believe that this is how we will see this trend play out.

Where does that leave me? Have I gotten any closer to form an opinion on BYOD? I’m not sure that this is about devices at all. It’s more about how work becomes more independent of time and place. Productivity and purpose will determine how and if BYOD will apply to your situation. One thing that’s 100% safe to say is that if BYOD is about “free work” – heck, if your company is even considering such a thing as “Free work”, no amount of gadgets will solve that. It’s about trust and respect and this truly IS the most important foundation stone of any BYOD initiative.

The Engaging, Social Intranet

How do we *do* social? In our wiki? In the document management system? …or do we just buy Chatter/Yammer/SocialCast? These questions are being asked in many organisations – my own included – and the answer is not always easy. Truth is we *do* social where it makes sense. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the context.

What about the social intranet? Personally, I’m not too fond of the term as it indicates that we need something new. A new intranet. This may very well be the case, but I find it much more important to look at when, where, and most importantly why people should use the social features on your intranet.

Chris McGrath and Ephraim Freed from Canadian ThoughFarmer have written a very interesting white paper that dives a bit deeper into what a social intranet is and what it can do for your enterprise. Among other things, they advocate that HR need to take a lead role in making companies more social and the workforce more engaged. I agree that HR is a vital player due to the fact that they reach all corners of the enterprise  but your social initiatives should be carried out in a symbiosis between Comms, IT, and of course HR.

One of the conclusions from Jane McConnell’s Digital Workplace Trends 2012 is that the emergence of collaboration solutions in companies is re-creating corporate silos – the very thing that increased collaboration was supposed to break down – but the main difference is that by introducing a social layer, i.e. a social intranet, you can bridge the silos and the serendipity of social media is likely to make it easier to discover gems of knowledge.

According to a study by Gallup, presented in the white paper, the companies with the most engaged employees have seen much higher growth rates than those with less engaged employees. This fact alone ought to command at least some attention from management. It’s hard to disagree that a happy employee is more likely to be an engaged employee – it’s harder to agree on how you make people happy (and make more $$$ along the way).

I strongly believe in the intranet as the hub for the digital workplace but as I wrote earlier I’m not too sure whether it should be dubbed a social intranet. It’s a matter of words, agree, but I would like to see it as “The People Centric Intranet”. The most important task on intranets in numerous surveys is to find people. The consumerization of internal platforms creates an expressed need to connect and follow fellow employees and share updates with them but you still have a large proportion of your intranet that consist of documents, forms, etc. which is not very social.

One of the big questions is what benefits you will get from a social intranet. It depends on the resources that you put into it but also on the culture of your company. If informal communities are common place, I would venture a guess that you are much more likely to succeed than if you come from a more traditional culture. A cultural change is a big job and this is where HR – due to their wide reach – would be formidable change agents. You people who can act as ‘flight attendants’ on the journey. You need to get safely airborne but once you are in the air the attendants need to make sure that the passengers are happy and have a comfortable journey. Hopefully it’s going to be a long haul flight

One of the finishing comments in the whitepaper sums everything up very nicely:

“Successful social intranet become virtual places that employees inhabit rather than visit”

I personally believe that this should be the ultimate goal for all intranets – social or not.

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These were some of my thoughts after reading the whitepaper. I strongly recommend that you download a copy and put it on your Easter reading list – you can find it here: ThoughtFarmer – Social Intranets & Employee Engagement

Microblogging – The sound of inevitability…

(Ok. The header may be a little over the top….)

As a long time Twitter user, I strongly believe in the power of microblogging. Twitter has enabled me to build an international network with other online pros who provide excellent daily insights for which I am very thankful. I am not claiming to be an evangelist and sing the 140-character praise at every given moment – all I am saying it that I derive a great deal of value from it. And so do others.

A couple of days ago I read this article about how schools and universities have started taking to Yammer. I would not say that this comes as a surprise to me, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could be valuable here as well since they’re all on Facebook? Right?

Yammer Trumps Facebook for Some Graduate Students

On second thought I immediately started thinking about the implications of this. Today, many companies struggle with the internal social dimension – my own included – and most initiatives are on grassroot level, or at least they have started there. The reason for this struggle comes in many forms and shapes and unfortunately one of these is the Y shape – Why?

Although a good question indeed, and although there is no a single answer, you’d better get on with answering that question if you want to keep up the pace. People like the author of this and the likes of him may have been banging on about this for a long time, but has failed to provide a proper ROI or business case, but the fact is that this is not a clever, flavor of the month idea – this comes from outside. From the web. From the services that people use and find useful. They want to be able to have something similar ‘inside the firewall’ as well.

The best example I can think of is Enterprise search vs. Google. I acknowledge that finding reliable information easily is paramount in any organisation, but with the ascent of Google, the focus on finding information has increased vastly. People today google everything, and they expect to be able to do the same when they are at work. We are leaving the requirements for enterprise search alone here, but I think that it is safe to say that people are not going to be satisfied before they have a Google-like experience at work too. This is not because people have become more demanding – they have just seen an extremely good solution AND it is available for them at home, so why can’t we have Google at work?

Same thing goes for collaborative services like Yammer, SocialCast, etc. People are used to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, etc. from home and now they expect something similar at work. Add to that a generation who will be more and more familiar with these types of services from schools and universities entering the companies. Something is going to happen.

It will not happen over night, but I do find a great deal of comfort in the fact that this change will happen whether we want it or not, and I can’t help but think of a quote from the movie ‘The Matrix’: “Do you hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability…”

User adoption – How hard can it be?

Today I was invited as guest speaker at one of the international communities of practice by J. Boye at their meeting in Gothenburg hosted by SKF. An excellent meeting with like minded people from all over Europe.

The topic for my presentation was the introduction of new features and subsequent user adoption. Unfortunately I am not allowed to share my slides here, but here’s the outline and recommendations I presented.

Get involved!
Don’t expect your colleagues in IT to look out for the end user. It may happen, but all too often projects start out with a tech-focus and this makes it likely that the user experience will suffer due to things which may seem logical from a technical point-of-view, but backwards for the users.

Know your audience!
Make an effort to find out how the new solution impact the daily work and what the IT skills the users have. This is a good opportunity to go sit down with someone, or just to see how they actually work.

Culture and values – ”This is how we implement”
The old, familiar way is not necessarily bad. When you implement eg. social features it is tempting to use radical approaches, but it is important to bear in mind that implementations create discomfort in the organisation. If the level of discomfort created is to low you will not succeed in creating sustainable change. If the discomfort becomes to big, people will object to the change.

Align user adoption strategy with business case – and vice versa.
What does the business case say? That everyone need to use the new solution? Then you need to set a lot of money aside for user adoption compared to if the business case calls for 50% adoption. The problem is that business cases listing less than 100% adoption are less likely to get approval!

For more on this topic, I can recommend Michael Sampson’s book “User adoption strategies” which I have written more about here Don’t just build it and throw it out there!

Don’t just build it and throw it out there!

That is one of the most important messages from Michael Sampson in his most recent book “User Adoption Strategies – Shifting 2nd wave people to new collaboration technologies“. This is the first time I read one of Michael’s books and since he calls himself @collabguy on Twitter I have to say that my expectations were rather high….

….and I can now honestly say that I have not been disappointed!

The book provides a comprehensive toolkit which you can put to good use when you need to get users to use the new stuff you have developed. Obviously the book is centered around online tools, but most of the approaches work equally well with many other kinds of projects as well – and not only things online. Michael outlines 20 different approaches for you to pick and choose from because as he says already on page 14 “Don’t do them all, and don’t wait until page 105 before figuring that out!”

The initial chapters focus on adoption and change in a more general perspective and provides a nice introduction. One thing that becomes increasingly clear after reading this is that change is not about tools and methods - Change is social! If you can’t get enough on board there’s really no point! This brings us back to the “How?” and the 20 approaches.

They have been divided into 4 stages which are somewhat linear. Most of them are complemented with survey results from Michael’s recent user adoption survey which gives a nice picture of what others do and what actually works. Here are the headers and my own brief interpretation (more details in the book – obviously):

1) Win Attention = Make sure to get lots of attention, and most importantly from the right people!

2) Cultivate Basic Concepts = Educate people on the basics of the new system

3) Enlivening Applicability = Make people comfortable with the new system

4) Make it Real! = Get it done! Make it a part of daily lives.

If I should point at one small thing that I miss, it would be some kind of quick overview of the 20 approaches for quick reference after you have read the book.

All in all Michael has written a book for everyone who is working with change management and adoption – particularly in the online realm. Whether you are an experienced change agent or you are coming to terms with your first project, I’m sure that you will find a lot of useful tips and strategic approaches, and that you’ll find yourself reaching for it again and again.

Some may say that parts of the book seem an awful lot like plain, common sense, but isn’t that often what makes a book truly great? As French philosopher Voltaire put it: “It may be common sense, but after all sense is not that common!”

Using the energy of Facebook

Today, I participated in a quite interesting discussion about how to leverage the power of social media. The subject is not really new, but the approach was a little different. This time it was not so much focused on the tools and that ‘we need one of those Facebook-things’. Facebook is number 1 in Denmark so it is quite natural that this is the yardstick, but what I found interesting was that it was all about, quote, ‘using the energy that people put into Facebook’ in the sense that you should create the same sense of excitement internally.

I like the idea but it’s still a tricky one. The minute that you apply the corporate setting on to a social network, you also apply the corporate values, culture, and most importantly that many people act very differently in a corporate setting than they do privately – they apply what I would call a corporate filter which comes in many shapes and forms, but all these filters are a result of company culture and values.

The strength of personal social networks is that they are – well – personal. You are only accountable to yourself – not to your boss – not to team-members – only you. This means that the filtering is a whole lot easier, you don’t share something that you don’t feel comfortable sharing.

Creating a culture where you openly share things are not as easy as it sounds and all too often I hear that everything needs to happen at once, and this is actually the first stepping stone to make people REALLY uncomfortable. Depending on your corporate culture, the change management task kan be huge!

In stead you should start small. Don’t announce the “Acme Facebook” – in stead make it possible to ‘like’ (and maybe dislike?) your news. That’s a start. What about management? Do they see Facebook as a waste of time? Maybe you should look at what LinkedIn offers, chances are that the guys in the corner offices use (and recognise) LinkedIn as a valuable tool. You and I may agree that quite a few features overlap between Facebook and LinkedIn, but who cares – as long as it gets you moving

We did not come to a conclusion at the meeting, but we had quite a few discussions around the topic. Actually I don’t believe that you have one single truth here. Do you?