Subscribe to newsletterIs the social intranet really here?
Toby Ward has opened the second edition of his Intranet 2.0 survey. You can read about it here where he talks about 2010 being the "year of the social intranet".
His study last year brought some interesting results. I was interested in comparing his figures and observations with my own, since a large section of my 2009 Global Intranet Strategies survey dealt with the same topic. The comparison was very interesting.
I strongly recommend your participation in Toby's study. Participants get a free copy of the final report.The survey only takes 10 minutes and you can win a $400 cash prize.
One of the comments in the social media section of my survey last year when I asked about why organizations are hesitating to experiment with social media: "
Lack of positive examples from
peer organisations of successes in internal social media tools is a major factor in
hesitancy."
The more information we can get, the easier it will be for organizations to decide to make the leap. Or if they have already made the leap, to keep on swimming. And if they're already swimming, how to keep a sense of the shore and the destination.
In answer to the question "Is 2010 the year of the social intranet?" I'd say no. Enterprises are testing the waters, a few have clearly moved in that direction, but for the vast majority it is still a couple years away.
Incidentally, the enterprises that have done the most experimentation are the very large ones (over 30,000 employees) and those where the intranet is already quite mature and is or is on the verge of becoming the way of working.
11 Responses to “Is the social intranet really here?”
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February 11th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Jane – when does an intranet become ‘social’? Is it a measure of functionality … adoption levels ..? I’d be interested in your thoughts …
Best wishes,
Richard
(PS are you snowed in yet?)
February 11th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
There is an issue about language here that no one seems to be addressing. Toby has developed a very good survey but no where does it address language. A huge challenge for organisations is the extent to which the ‘language of business’ is also the ‘language of social interaction’. In many ‘English’ intranets I find countries using a lot of local language because they have to for compliance reasons (France) or socio-political reasons (Quebec). I am also amused by the fact that no matter how strong the edict to use English 5 March 2010 can be presented as 3/5/2010 in the USA and 5/3/2010 just about everywhere else. That’s because the more social the content and context is the more we will use terms and expressions that we use outside of work. I received an email today that just said +1. On querying what this meant I found out that it represented ‘count me in’ to a meeting invitation. I wonder what other managers of my generation would make of that shorthand if they saw it on a blog, wiki or instant message communication.
When I was working in Kuwait a couple of years ago discussions about intranet design with groups of staff took place in Arabic, and the moderator of the group then translated the outcomes into English for the project team. This was because the groups wanted to argue and disagree and this was goiing to be much more open and constructive in Arabic. It was not just the words (all the Kuwaitis could speak reasonably good English) but how they were used, and the discussion would not have half as useful if conducted in English.
I have an anecdotal feeling that the extent to which the business/local language issue is managed will have a significant impact on adoption rates of social media. There is no right or wrong approach to language support, and it can vary with the country and even the region.
Another factor is the organisational culture and this too can vary significantly not only between countries but between subsidiaries and business units in the same country.
I’m delighted to see Toby leading the way with social media research in a way that complements the work that Jane has been doing on intranets. But if we don’t ask the right questions then we will never get the interesting answers. I still bear the scars of a decade of being the market research business!
February 12th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Richard,
Yes I’m still snowed in Friday morning, and with the sun shining it is beautiful.
As for the “social” intranet, I would agree to your suggestions – that it is a question of both functionality (features that enable people to express themselves via blogs, commenting, tagging, …) and adoption. Having just a few pockets in the enterprise is a good start, but does not mean there’s been a major shift.
Historically intranets have been primarily top-down communication as expressed in the old term B2E (business-to-employee). Enterprises used to take pride in this term, which they saw as representing their focus on employee needs. I know some that created “B2E” teams who were then put in charge of the intranet.
When the culture of the enterprise makes it easy to have “E2E” flows of information, then we will have a “social intranet”. This will require a major shift in the minds of management but also in employees.
Data from my most recent survey show both that senior managers are hesitant to blog, and that there are issues with user resistance.
Maybe we can say an intranet is “social” when the top people blog in a meaningful way (not corporate-speak) and others comment, react, ask questions (about real issues) and everyone in the enterprise finds this normal, healthy and beneficial. Know any companies like that?
I remember your comment in Copenhagen when you said there was no reason employees should not be able to add comments to any and all content on the intranet, including official policy and reference documents. That would not fly in most enterprises I know today, unfortunately.
What is your take on an intranet becoming “social”?
February 12th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Martin,
I agree that language is potentially an issue for “social interaction”. My most recent study indicated that awareness of potential “age silos” and “language silos” increased with experience in social media experiments.
At the same time, I’d like to point out that one huge upside of our virtual world is that people no longer need to rely so completely on the spoken language. I’ve been in so many meetings that were dominated by the native-speakers and the non-native speakers who best mastered the working language, which tended to be English.
However, over recent years, I’ve been involved in online situations where people who have difficulty expressing themselves in spoken English are able to participate much more actively because they have time to think and formulate their phrases. Their contributions may be written, in chat rooms or online discussion forums.
People who run on line “virtual meetings” well always ensure there are regular moments when they “go around the table” and ask each person to give an opinion about the topic being discussed. This might appear artificial in a face to face meeting, but is natural in a virtual meeting where it is harder to know who would like to make a contribution.
This structured approach makes it more likely that all members will have a chance to contribute. I have also found that the meetings are often shorter and more action-oriented.
There are, of course, types of meetings there the online approach is much harder and not to be recommended unless absolutely necessary. The reality is that cost reductions and travel restrictions are making virtual meetings a way of life for many organizations. I ran a virtual workshop last week with 3 geographical locations participating over video conferencing. We were working on hypotheses for structuring a new portal and designing the home page. I broke the session into small chunks, with each location working as a sub-group, then reporting back. It was interesting to see how people who had been very quiet most of the time became much more active when it was their “official turn” to talk.
I did a needs analysis for an intranet project a few years back where we used a layered approach: the communication managers (who spoke English to some extent) handled all the local interviews in the local languages, then reported back to the project team in English.
All this is to say that I agree that language is an issue, but that we need to develop creative ways of handling it. Maybe there are cases where the old “1-to-1″ simply does not work. But then it would not have worked in the past either. The difference today is that we are able to be in contact with many more people around the world than before, even within a single organization.
What do you think? How do you see this evolving?
February 12th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Jane
Although my examples in the blog were about face-to-face communications the concerns I have are broader than that. I am currently working for a client where English is the business language, and get the local language is one that very few people speak outside of the country. Internal comments are being made by email in the local language, and are being forwarded on to me with a commentary in English, knowing that I can use machine translation to cope with the language. I would have course have the opportunity of asking the client contact to translate for me, and that in a European situation is acceptable.
Life gets more interesting in countries that do not use a QWERTY or equivalent keyboard. Try typing English using an Arabic or Japanese keyboard! I’ve had the good fortune to work in around 35 different countries in my career and the one thing I know for certain is that national cultures are very deep seated, and that judging behaviours from a Western European perspective can be very risky.
The more challenging problem is one of ‘face’. People in many cultures see it as disrepectful to openly criticise a more senior member of staff even if this is in a virtual collaboration space. At least in a physical meeting it is possible to get feedback from people of a culture we are familiar with through facial expression and body language. I challenge you to do so when working with (say) Chinese staff of a company who have a totally different set of visual signals. I teach at Sheffield University where at post-graduate level the classes usually have a majority of non-UK students. No matter how open I feel I am with the students in an open class most will not want to challenge the views of a Professor and even in small tutorials I have to be very careful about how I work with the students to ensure that they feel able to contribute in their own style. Given the age of the students this shows that it is not a ‘generational’ issue.
Translate this to a virtual collaboration situation and someone who is Chinese and speaks what they would regard only as acceptable English then has to comment in English on a subject and not be sure that the English they have written has not confused the message or far worse brought them into disrespect.
As you rightly say we are able to be in contact with many more people around the world than in the past. Certainly we should be working on creative ways of handling the problems, but first we have to know what they are.
There is an old saying that when you buy the person you are buying from will willingly speak your language. When you are selling, you have to speak their language. All I am suggesting is that when we collaborate we need to first agree on how we are going to communicate with each other, and respect and work around any langauge problems that may arise. If language was not a problem Google would not be spending a fortune on developing real-time voice interpretation software!
February 13th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Martin,
It strikes me that the issues you raise are the result of globalisation rather than virtualisation. I don’t think these issues are made any harder per se because they are not face-to-face … collaborating on-line has a specific set of difficulties regardless of language/cultural issues. Of course the langauge/cultural issues are an extra layer of complexity for on-line collaboration but they exist in all forms of interaction, face-to-face or virtual, when people from different cultures meet.
For what it’s worth, our policy is that English is preferred, but people can use local langauges in our user-generated tools if they want to – but we encourage them to summarise in English, or use English tags/key words to help other users identify the subject matter of content even if they can’t read it. This enables people to identify others with common interests and make connections which they can build on off-line if they wish.
February 13th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Jane – I am struggling a bit with the concept of the ‘social intranet’ … it’s quite hard for me to visualise at what point the ‘transition’ occurs – is the transition point a cultural measure or an infrastructural measure.
For example, we have loads of great tools and good adoption levels and some senior level participation (and I believe complete senior level buy-in) but I’m not sure it really ‘feels’ like a social organisation – I wonder if it will ever feel that way … or indeed if it is actually desirable for a global organisation to feel ‘social’ … sorry, not very well thought through ramblings – maybe I’ll post about it when I’ve given it some more thought
February 13th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Richard,
(one term I do like!).
Vocabulary is making things hard these days! I find the term “social media” as ambiguous as “social intranet”. I try to avoid referring to “intranet 2.0″ and also “enterprise 2.0″.
Yet, we need some words to talk about the shifts that are happening in the “workplace web”
Did you know that in French the politically correct word for a strike is “movement social”?
Please definitely do a post about this when you can!
February 15th, 2010 at 7:20 am
This is very good debate that I rather enjoy
Regarding language on the intranet: I can tell you that we have a few dozen Fortune 500 companies as clients — and many with offices all over the world, and operating in multiple languages. I can tell you that language is sometimes an issue but its never a top 5 issue for most organizations. Culture, however, can be a top 5 issue. Even at two of our big Paris based companies, each with more than 100,000 global employees, the language issue isn’t even a top 10 issue. But geographic and cultural representation (excluding language) is an issue, particularly as it relates to reporting news and internal communications from management.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Toby, I agree.
I do a pre-survey quick poll every year preceding the full Global Intranet Strategies survey, and language is usually near the bottom of the list of concerns.
Language is never in the top issues of the organizations I work with either. However, the point of contact for intranet projects (for me, and for you I assume) is usually the head-quarters of the company. That is the place in an organization where most employees do speak English and there is the least concern for local languages. This is not said outright, of course, but is reflected in plenty of actions and decisions.
Is this lack of awareness? Lack of resources to translate? Lack of time to even think about this issue?
However, how news is reported, by whom, when and where on the home page is a huge issue, as you refer to in your comment.
There are also differences in the way different cultures organize content on the intranet. I’ll do a separate post on that because it’s a different topic that I’m sure people will have opinions about!
February 15th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Richard
Certainly the issues I am raising are fairly typical globalisation issues, but if intranets are being managed with a WCMS there is usually a review process that catches language and (sometimes!) metadata issues, and it is also fairly easy to make a page disappear permanently or temporarily if there is a syntax/word problem. Collaboration sites rarely have a review process (for good reason) and taking down a contribution can be very obvious because other contributions may have already refered to it.
Your solution around English tags is good in principle, but still needs careful moderation. A few months ago a German client referred consistently to the ‘binding document’ in an internal briefing paper which actually referred to what many would regard as ‘a standard’. If you used ‘standard’ as one of the search terms the document did not show up.
Jane’s comment about HQ-centric replies is also worthy of note. On several major intranet strategy projects over the last few years the moment I start talking to intranet managers outside of the HQ country (and that goes for UK managers in a US company – and vice versa) I sometimes wonder if they are talking about the same intranet because the perspectives are so different.
Final thought for any company operating in multiple countries. Many cities are spelt differently in local language and business language. If you have an office in Cologne and wanted to find out information about the business operations at the office then I think you would want to have the same number of hits independent of using Cologne, Koln or Köln. And as for transliteration standards for Arabic, have a look at the issues raised by the name of the Libyan President at http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/editors-blog/2009/0923/gaddafi-kaddafi-qadhafi-how-do-you-spell-it