Subscribe to newsletterTo technology strategists: how to blend enterprise + business + people?
The workplace web has 3 perspectives:
- the enterprise,
- the business,
- and the individual person.
When I work with global organizations to help them define the business objectives of the intranet, we do it from these 3 angles. The problem is when we push each dimension to its logical conclusion, we end up with a technology dilemma.
What tool or combination of tools can support all 3 dimensions?
Software solutions tend to favor one dimension more than the others. Each dimension has its own fundamental logic.
This post talks about how the traditional CMS favors the enterprise, collaborative software the business angle, and social networking the individual person. This raises fundamental questions about the entry point for the individual user and the governance for the intranet.
The traditional CMS favors the enterprise.
Authorized content publishers are designated throughout the enterprise and trained to use the publishing tool. Even when the publishing approach is highly decentralized, there is a limited number of people who do it.
People are authorized to publish in specific places on the intranet, and must follow enterprise guidelines and CMS tool restrictions/requirements (such as meta data, format, etc.). The org chart of content publishers looks like the pyramid org chart of the enterprise.
In theory, users’ “starting point” is the enterprise home page, which they often click through without really seeing!
Collaborative software favors the business angle.
How many times have we heard stories where business goes straight to IT to provide a solution for their teams. The global intranet team never even hears about it. It is usually discovered (read “uncovered”) when an enterprise intranet project starts.
Why did business go straight to IT? Because the intranet team was either too distant (physically or mentally) or had other things to do (such as managing content publishing on the CMS!).
People’s “starting point” is their own team page, and they rarely or never see what’s published on the enterprise intranet home page.
Social networking software favors the individual person.
The first thing you do is set up your personal page. You can then connect to others, build your network, join other networks. These solutions are often promoted loudly and strongly by evangelists inside the organization, believers in individual choice, personalization to an extreme.
Individuals are is their own starting points. They then click out to what is relevant to them. Or they may follow or subscribe to what they find useful.
The organization trying to meet all three needs is faced with mixed situations.
- The user entry points are different. This impacts what and how content is pushed, pulled, customized, commoditized.
- The governance required for each is different. This impacts ownership, quality standards, life cycle requirements.
How do you get the right balance?
All three perspectives are essential. The challenge is how to balance them against each other when selecting software solutions.
My question to technology strategies:
- How do you bring these complementary but frequently conflicting perspectives together in a way that makes sense for the users?
Food for thought:
Tony Byrne, founder of RealStory Group (previously CMS Watch) ) wrote a low key but hard-hitting post: When infrastructure vendors use niche products for Enterprise 2.0
Michael Sampson, collaboration strategist, author of User Adoption Strategies
is investigating what organizations are doing with Sharepoint: (participate in his survey; it only takes a few minutes)
So, what is your experience? Have you found ways to meet the needs of all three dimensions?
10 Responses to “To technology strategists: how to blend enterprise + business + people?”
Comments are now closed
August 3rd, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Aargh!! Filled in the wrong captcha and lost my comment…
What I was saying: Nice post, Jane. Your point is important and complex. In my work I have related issues: how to relate unstructured and structured information processes. Managers focus on the structured, formal processes and the tools that support them. Users focus on the network and the tools that support networking.
Our intranet doesn’t support this multiple perspective. We focus on the enterprise too. If we had to choose I would focus on the individual and go from there.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is: could learning management tools help us overcome these different perspectives. Building a learning layer over our info to help users navigate through the right info when needed. A user could stay at a high level or drill down to detailed info. A user could also start in the ‘whats in it for me section’ and navigate up to the broader perspective he/she’s working in. Just my thoughts.
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Samuel, a learning layer is an interesting idea. Makes me think of a presentation I saw of the Nokia”pedia” at a conference a few years ago. The wiki layer (Nokiapedia)was a very open space where any employee could contribute, including adding internal and external links. It was often used to talk about company issues or policies and then linked to the official documents in the “official intranet”. I wonder if they still have this.
Does anyone have an idea?
August 3rd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Jane-
I think you’ve effectively identified the three different interest groups and their tendencies. Only thing to add is that sometimes they don’t line up one-to-one (Enterprise:CMS / BU:Collab / Indiv:Social). Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, but I frequently run into enterprise stakeholders who want to push “Social” and individual power users who want more Collaboration, and so forth.
I have been trying to get enterprises to think of social networking as more of a pervasive layer, rather than an application, and that they should make sure that they have effective (i.e., usable and useful) collab services in place first, and not pretend that social communities can somehow replace helping people get real work done collaboratively.
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:02 pm
NetJMC / Intranet Strategies Global Organizations / To technology strategists: how to blend enterprise + business + people?…
This article has been submitted to IntranetLounge, a website with a collection of links to the best articles about intranets…
August 6th, 2010 at 3:46 am
Jane, thanks for this. It reminds me of a blog post I wrote in 2008 … see http://currents.michaelsampson.net/2008/09/adding-connecti.html
A couple of other points:
- If the organization has multiple tools in place, the integration between these three levels can be difficult.
- If there is a “platform” product in place, it is easier.
- Products have richer functionality, platforms have broader functionality.
And yes, governance is different between the different levels.
M.
August 7th, 2010 at 6:07 am
Tony – I agree the layer concept is helpful. However, it seems to me that it depends on what social networking software is being used. One of my clients showed me how some of their groups have migrated from their early collaboration solution (Notes-based I believe) to Yammer and now to Jive. This organization lets teams and groups use whatever solution they want. For the moment there is no official policy or recommendations on which solutions best meets which needs. It will be interesting to see how this evolves. (Company is around 50,000 employees, global.)
August 7th, 2010 at 6:19 am
Michael – It’s interesting to read your and James’ posts from 2 to 3 years ago on this topic.
What also needs to be taken into consideration is the role and scope of each one of these “places” (referring to the boxes on your re-drawing of James’ layers.)
So often, there is lots of overlap, creating lots of user confusion. In the large global companies I work with, I have rarely seen an example where true governance exists and works well. It’s often challenged by local initiatives, enthusiasm and the wide availability of alternate tools that decentralized IT team or even individual users implement (for local, specific use, in theory). This is part of the “marketplace” evolution I’m beginning to see in intranets.
I’d like to read the post you refer to at the bottom of your linked article “destination vs aggregation” but the link does not work.
August 7th, 2010 at 6:49 am
Thanks Jane … fixed. Link is http://currents.michaelsampson.net/2008/10/more-on-the-thr.html
M.
August 9th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I’ve looked at this -my approach is that you need to synch in with the comms team and align the tools/channels/comms/knowledge platforms to the Business Strategy. There has to be a structured yet fluid approach. I need to write a blog on this…
August 10th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Hi Jane,
I’d look for another angle on the problem. For example, I might start to look for links between the objectives. How does collaboration within business units support enterprise objectives? How does supporting individual objectives enable the organisation to meet business and enterprise objectives?
Questions like this might enable you to build up a systems model (in the sense of Senge, not in the sense of technical systems) of objectives and the links between them. The most useful technology may well support the links between objectives, rather than directly supporting the objectives.
A good balanced scorecard can also help you do this. (Most balanced scorecards lack the strategy maps needed to build a model of the links between objectives. This makes them only marginally useful.)