Intranet Manager role: evolve or devolve?

July 2, 2010 | Comments(7), | Categories: 2011 Intranet Trends, Intranet Manager Role, Social Media in the Workplace |

Will it evolve? Will the intranet manager role grow deeper, go higher and become more strategic in the spirit of “survival of the fittest”?

Will it devolve? Will the tasks and responsibilities be passed on to business managers and users in the organization? I like this definition of devolve:  “to delegate something to someone else; to be inherited by someone; a slow degradation”. (Wiktionary)

The Global Intranet Strategies Survey has looked at the intranet manager role for the last 3 years. We have seen that the career path is ambiguous as are many job titles. We have questioned whether intranet managers have the right priorities in terms of knowledge they need. In this year’s survey (year 5) we are asking specific questions about how the role is evolving professionally.

Ambiguous career paths and job titles

I wrote about this in No Career Path for the Intranet Manager in November 2006.

In 2007 I posted:  To all intranet managers: Things are getting better, aren’t they? and Does your job title reflect the strategy and vision behind your role?

The right knowledge priorities?

Based on the 2008 survey, I wrote about the knowledge areas intranet managers feel are most important for their roles in the post “Talk money in order to get money.”

The knowledge areas as rated by the 2008 survey participants: (from high to low)

  1. User-centered approach, design
  2. Information architecture (structuring information)
  3. Organizational dynamics
  4. Business and business processes
  5. Tools: e.g. search, content management systems
  6. Technology trends
  7. Needs analysis techniques
  8. Business cases
  9. Finances, return on investment analysis

You can access all the blog posts around the intranet manager theme in the blog archives.

What professional evolution?

The 5th annual 2010 Global Intranet Strategies survey explores the professional evolution of the intranet management role. (Sign up for the 2010 survey. Requirements here. The Trends for 2011 report will be published in October.)

Specifically, we are asking these questions to all the intranet managers “in the trenches”:

1. How do you think the intranet manager role will evolve in your organization?

Multiple answers possible:

  • Become integrated into “business as usual” and disappear as a specific role.
  • Evolve to a knowledge-sharing role.
  • Expand to cover all online activities, internal & external.
  • Become more strategic.
  • Become more operational, less strategic.
  • Remain as is.

2. How specialized do you think intranet management roles will become?

Answers from strongly agree to strongly disagree:

  • Roles will be more specialized vertically: Search engine expert, information architect, user experience specialist, etc.
  • Roles will be more specialized horizontally: Broader, more general communication or business  responsibilities.

3. How formalized do you think intranet management roles will become?

Answers from strongly agree to strongly disagree:

  • Formal performance management including objectives, evaluation, accountability will be the norm.
  • It will be possible to get education and degrees in intranet management.

4. Open questions: What impact do social media have on your career or your profession in general?

It will be interesting to see how people answer this question. Survey participants come from communication, IT, HR and business areas of their organizations, and I’m expected the answers to vary.

Take note: New Linkedin group dedicated to the career path of intranet managers

Mark Morrell, intranet manager at BT, has opened Intranet Career Path group on Linkedin where discussions have started on the role and career of the intranet manager.

Participate in the 5th annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey

The Global Intranet Trends for 2011 will be published in October 2010 and you’ll be able to read about the trends around the questions listed above and many others. The survey is open from June through August. If you are in the intranet management role and would like to participate, you will get a free copy of the report. More information about signing up here.

7 Responses to “Intranet Manager role: evolve or devolve?”

  1. Bertrand Duperrin Says:
    July 4th, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    Great piece (as usual) Jane.

    Let me add something I recently noticed (even if I still don’t have any certainty about its meaning).

    When I tried to put all my thoughts about the last E2.0 conf together I realize that no one mentioned intranets in any speech or question. It was not even in the title of any presentation or keynote.

    Sure it means something for the future of intranet managers. But what ?

  2. Neil Morgan Says:
    July 5th, 2010 at 8:10 am

    Thanks for the post Jane. Great topic of discussion here at our org recently.

    Will it evolve?
    For sure just like any other role within an organization, it must adapt to the times and the needs of the business. I’ve only been in the field for 10 years but I have already seen the change from information manager, knowledge manager, intranet manager, portal manager, community manager, … and it will continue.

    Will it devolve?
    I sure hope so. I’m happy when business units begin to realize the accountability and responsibility that they should have for the information they own.

    Perhaps this speaks to Bertrand’s point about no mention of intranets at the E2.0 conference. The intranet as a platform is there, it’s what we now layer on top to bring together the information from multiples systems that that will be the primary challenge for the “integration” manager.

  3. Jane McConnell Says:
    July 5th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Bertrand,
    I assume you’re talking about the E2 conf in Milan where we last met? I noticed the same thing.
    I think it’s because the traditional intranet and the enterprise 2.0 concept collide and few organizations have blended them, which I think should happen. Maybe I should write about this. Have you written about this?

  4. Jane McConnell Says:
    July 5th, 2010 at 4:07 pm

    Hi Neil,
    10 years is a long time in the intranet space. I agree that devolving is the way to go, but have noticed that some intranet managers get nervous about their roles.
    I may sound like a broken record, but I really believe we have to dump the word intranet and starting using a different language. I’ve suggested “workplace web” but anything is good as long as it suggests business, activities and a broader view than purely internal.

  5. Martin White Says:
    July 13th, 2010 at 10:17 pm

    What is never brought up in these discussions is that there is no formal certification of intranet managers. How do you assess a prospective candidate when you have no way of verifying the impact they made in their current organisation or how solid their skills are? But then what skills do you expect an intranet manager to have? As an intranet manager how do you define and satisfy your training needs, especially when there are no entry requirements other than being ready to volunteer? Who provides CPD for intranet managers? No organisation that I know of.

    Lots of questions and at present no answers.

    I welcome the new two-day course in intranet management from Melcrum http://bit.ly/bW2lip but that is oriented towards people with a background in communications. The new LinkedIn group on Intranet Career Path issues referred to above is a great piece of visionary thinking from Mark Morell.

    By profession I am an information scientist and the Institute of Information Scientists was set up in 1958. It took probably twenty years for HR Managers to realise that information scientists were not librarians and that career development paths were not the same. We cannot wait that long! I see an urgent need to define the skill sets of an intranet manager and to support organisations that will perhaps develop a modular distance-learning course for us.

  6. NetJMC / Intranet Strategies Global Organizations / Globally Local Says:
    July 27th, 2010 at 4:33 pm

    [...] Intranet manager role: evolve or devolve? [...]

  7. Intranet teams changing in the face of distributed publishing sites « Katrina Marques: Intranet Specialist Says:
    January 13th, 2011 at 11:37 am

    [...] While we no longer need Intranet Teams to be responsible for creating content and publishing it there is still much support needed for the overall structure and ongoing support of an Intranet that should not be dismissed. Make sure when implementing a new Intranet and changing to a distributed publishing model that you consider these factors and plan to succeed. A really good read I found on this (after I’d already written my 2 cents worth) was Jane McConnel’s blog: What future for the intranet manager? and  Intranet Manager Role: evolve or devolve?. [...]

Comments are now closed