This is a question I get asked more often than I would like, as fundamentally they should be treated the same as any other user. However the answer is simple, the intranet needs to be made useful for them.

There are three stages to go through:

1) Demonstration

This will require some preparation on your behalf, so that you can show practical applications rather than abstract concepts. Be selective in what you show – make your choices based on what you think they would be supportive of and able to do. Don’t go and show them the entire functionality the first time you show them the intranet. You are seeking evolution not revolution!

2) Exploration

Discuss how these tools can fit in with what they may already be doing elsewhere. They don’t need to be tech savvy as there are easy-to-use tools they can adopt to help support their objectives. Which of the tools could they use and gain benefit from? Highlight that these benefits could be personal, as well as work related.

3) Support

You may also need to play the role of coach finding out what level of familiarity and experience they have and where they think they might need some guidance and expertise. Be willing to be their coach and help them feel comfortable with having coaching. Ask which of the tools that could be used would they be comfortable using? Would they like to be shown how?

5 characteristics to win over your SMT

The above approach is no different to that which you would adopt with the wider community of users, but it is important to reflect five unique characteristics when you are talking to C-suite execs (aka your SMT):

1) Be consultative

Ideally you will get time with them early on in the design phase, when intranet objectives and roles and responsibilities are being defined. You can ask them to contribute to the intranet objectives and explain that you are looking to ensure that the intranet can help the organisation achieve its corporate aims.

If your intranet is already established and you are trying to engage them in the business as a usual phase, this approach might need some tweaking (ideally you would have involved them as early as possible). However, you can go to them requesting their input into the continuous improvement of the intranet. You should go prepared with some awareness of their current activity and usage of the intranet so you can ask them how it could further benefit and help them.

2) Be focused

Find out what their personal and business goals are? What do they want to achieve? What does the function that they head up wish to achieve? Show how the intranet can be used to help them advance in pursuit of those objectives. As mentioned before, resist the temptation to show all the tools, find out which ones they have understanding of and get their commitment to use them.

3) Be understanding

Understand that the intranet can be a new, more efficient channel for things they are already doing, as well as a channel that offers them new opportunities. How much of the ‘new’ you show them might be dependant on their reaction to, and therefore comfort with, change. If you suspect that showing them new options may overwhelm them then look to focus on how what they do currently can be delivered through the intranet.

4) Be mobile

Go to them. Most SMT are pushed for time, so if you ask for a 30 minute meeting don’t exceed it. Ask them what they want to see and be prepared. Take the opportunity to show them that they don’t need to be connected to the intranet via a laptop and they can contribute while they are mobile.

5) Be adaptable

As with any users, it is important to understand that the approach you take with one member of the SMT might not be the same you take with another. They will each have different objectives, challenges and motivations, therefore it is important to see the intranet functionality as a tool box.

3 simple rules your SMT can follow

As a result of all your activities you should look to get some commitment from them to change. They need to set the tone. If they are seen to be active and interactive then this behaviour will trickle down.

Seek their suggestions of what they can do next – they should be looking to do more than they are currently. Encourage them to think about what they can share and who they connect with.

If they need a prompt as to how they can get involved, share with them these three simple rules:

1) Share

Give employees an insight into their work and objectives. It could be as simple as a frequent status update to say what they are doing, or it might be a more comprehensive blog to give an update of the month. Video is a great communications tool, so if they were comfortable with the idea then film their update and have a transcript added to the intranet.

DWF shares what it achieved thanks to regular blogs from Andrew Leaitherland, CEO.

2) Ask

What question could they ask their employees? They could look to seek feedback via a blog but equally they could ask a question of the company via a forum.

3) Recognise

Who would they like to acknowledge? They could commit to spending 30 minutes per week looking at the content and activity of those within their team and interact with the content of others. This could be achieved by liking, commenting or acknowledging the author for an engaging and beneficial contribution. Who doesn’t like recognition for a job well done, and getting this from your senior manager could be a great boost and act as future encouragement to0.

It is likely that the latter is the easiest to do more of. At the very least they should realise that spending more time on the intranet can be beneficial to them personally and the business. They will be able to listen more to what is going on and capture an insight into the mood of their employees.

The post How to get your Senior Management Team (SMT) using your intranet appeared first on Interact software.

1) Ask your users for feedback

It’s essential to get feedback from the end users, making the feedback channels easily accessible, focused and beneficial. This means it should be made clear that you welcome feedback, and more importantly, it is crucial that it is apparent you act on it.

It should also be focused. Don’t just ask users, “What do you think of the intranet?” as it is too broad and the range of answers you get will be too varied to be truly helpful. Instead ask a focused question, “What do you think of the user profile pages?” Give a reasonable amount of time for the feedback to be provided (a week should be long enough), but also give yourself time to read through it and take action as required.

2) Seeking feedback is not enough

It’s not a one way street so you should also look to give feedback to users. This is a lot easier to do if employees know what is expected of them in the first place, and they are aware of the part they have to play in the intranet’s success.

It is a good idea to acknowledge and reward those that are doing what you want them to do. It doesn’t have to cost anything and it has the huge benefit of increasing employee engagement by making the user feel good, as well as further publicising and reinforcing the behaviour you wish to occur. A fundamental principle of psychology is that “behavior that is rewarded is repeated.” In this case not only by the person being thanked, but also by others that see behaviour being demonstrated and rewarded.

3) When you set intranet objectives don’t just focus on quantity

It’s not sufficient enough to have content being liked as an indication of collaboration, you need to make it clear why that action is desired and what the benefits are of it. Then, when it happens, it is good to acknowledge it as it’ll occur more frequently and widely.

At Interact, on our intranet, Homer, these rewards manifest themselves as a ‘shield’ that is assigned to a user’s profile (by way of an additional field) when they have undertaken certain activities.

Interacters become a member of ‘Interact Academy Level 1’ once they have completed key activities:

(We have Level 2 and Level 3 that are achieved when further behaviours are shown and activities completed that build on Level 1).

4) Locate your Superheroes

There are a number of different user groups in any intranet. There will be those who add and maintain content. For this group you could look at what they are doing to create and care for content and processes, and then reward them for doing so in a user-focused way.

The Children’s Trust do this on their intranet, The Loop, by recognising “Loop Super Heroes” (this too is done by displaying an additional field on their profile page). As well as identifying current Superheroes they also encourage new members and highlight what a Superhero does:

Defining the expected behaviour and roles and responsibilities underpins the idea of having ‘Success Partners’. These are those users that have some responsibility towards ensuring the intranet is a success by behaving in a way that contributes to the achievement of intranet objectives.

5) Treat all users as Success Partners

In effect all users are Success Partners, it’s just what they need to do that differs. For instance, you may talk to the IT team about the part they can play in the intranet’s success by checking the data that is going to be used to populate user profiles is up-to-date. For the HR Success Partners it might be about presenting the answers to common HR FAQs in a user-friendly, concise way. For the Finance team it might be about encouraging them to review the ease of use of common financial forms. Being a role model is also a key behaviour of a Success Partner, so it should include the senior management team by showing them what is expected of them and ensuring that they are aware and able to do what is needed to be the role models of user behaviour.

Of course having identified the desired behaviour it is important that when demonstrated it too is acknowledged. Often a ‘thank you’ is a cost effective and powerful reward.

So on that note, thank you for reading this blog and if you have any feedback or thoughts I would be happy to discuss them with you – contact me via Steven_Osborne.

The post Treating users as consumers: 5 top employee engagement tips appeared first on Interact software.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be in San Diego at the AIIM @AIIMIntl Conference – Digital Transformation: Embrace The Chaos. It was set to discuss the major disruptive forces which are accelerating the pace of change and driving organisations into information chaos.

As humans we like certainty and by and large resist change. However, change is needed to be successful and organisations must embrace it in order to evolve and maintain competitive advantage. The fact is, organisations don’t just change because of investment into new systems, revised processes or adjusted structures. They change because the people within the organisation adapt and change too. Only when the people within it have made their own personal transitions, can an organisation truly reap the benefits of change. The conference encouraged delegates to embrace the chaos that this brings, and inspire and nurture the innovation that is needed to be successful.

In the opening keynote, Charlene Li (CEO and Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group) @CharleneLi spoke about the ‘The Engaged Leader’ (also the title of her new book, which based on content and style of her presentation I’d recommend.) Her belief was that to be a true digital leader requires a metamorphosis: you must connect directly by listening, sharing and engaging using digital technologies. Engagement in the digital age is all about how you can establish meaningful relationships. The job title only gets you so far, real credibility comes from what you do and that carries you further.

According to Charlene, the key is to “break down the power distance” in order to achieve effective communication with customer facing staff. This can be facilitated if you use the tools that the intended audience does and then engage frequently. She summarised it with “Leadership is the art of followship”.

It may be that the leader needs to transform, and adopt new behaviours, but they may be resistant to the change. They might not be comfortable in doing new things and Charlene shared some common excuses offered by leaders and how they could be responded to;

• “It’s not about me” – it doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be all about you
• “I don’t have time” – you have no time to listen and show you care?
• “It doesn’t replace face to face” – no, and it shouldn’t, it should complement, it’s not one or the other
• “It’s marketing’s job (or A.N. Other)” – no, for it to be authentic it should come from you
• “I don’t want to make a mistake” – you have got to the position you’re in because of your ability. If you need guidance, it can be offered

There is often a fear of failure that needs to be recognised and then tackled. It may be that senior execs have the belief that the path to digital transformation is a disruptive, revolutionary one, rather than one which is an evolutionary process. The focus should be on it being transformative, not disruptive.

Development Stages of an Engaged leader
Based on the Kübler-Ross Change Curve, Charlene spoke of four stages, a model which had an adjustment suggested in a later workshop to introduce a new initial stage of Ignorance. Therefore the amended model would be;

1) Ignorance
2) Denial
3) Bargaining
4) Acceptance
5) Transformation

They key is to build trust and that itself is based on telling the truth and being open. This may mean that you need to manage up. If there is resistance within the senior management team then you should focus on their goals when looking to tackle any obstacles. With middle managers the focus should be on helping them being facilitators of the change.

The reality is that both chaos and change are never comfortable places for managers and leaders to be in.
Culture can also work against the efforts of change. Studies show that in 63% of transformation efforts the culture is the biggest barrier to change. Creating a culture of sharing can help overcome this – sharing underpins the relationships we build and stories are a good foundation. We are all more able to remember a story with a beginning, middle, end and moral, with greater ease than a bullet point list.

Try it for yourself: can you recall the 5 bullet points or 5 numbered items within this blog?

The post AIIM Conference – Digital Transformation: Embrace the Chaos appeared first on Interact software.

It’s hard to sum up the two great days I spent at the Ragan Social Intranet Conference at which I heard so much informative, insightful and engaging content (check out #raganintranet on Twitter for more) but on reflection I think it could be captured in the phrase “You are not alone.” Now rather than causing you to channel your inner Michael Jackson hopefully it will give you comfort that all the challenges you face, the obstacles that are thrown up for you to overcome – they are all faced by others that are trying to be the energy and enthusiasm behind their intranet or enterprise social network (esn).

The great thing with conferences is that you get to find out what the shortcuts are to success by learning from what other practitioners do – both what worked for them and also some of the things that weren’t so successful. Of course, just because something didn’t work for someone doesn’t mean it won’t work for you – as the changing ingredient in the mix is culture – where you organisation is at right now, and where it wants to get to, will be heavily influenced by how you behave now, and if a new way of behaving will be required to get to where you want to be.

With an upfront apology to some of the speakers that I may not mention, or mention as much as I might some others I will attempt to share some of the things I learned from the event that left my head buzzing.

“Do less, but do it better”

Steve Crescenzo (Crescenzo Communications) @crescenzo kicked off the workshop day with “How to write content employees can’t resist.” I’ve tried to put into practice one of his lessons with this blog by using a headline that grabs attention. (It worked if you’re reading this!) He spoke of the importance to take ‘corporate’ out of ‘corporate communication’ and replace it with ‘creative.’

The summary I tweeted on the day was “you do more things that start with C & less those that start with P”

Do be;

• Concise
• Conversational
• Compelling
• Creative

And while you might have to write about the Policies, Programs, Procedures and Products these can all be “deadly dull” so to be creative and look for how to showcase the People or Person involved (and deliver the 4 C’s while you do!).

Steve also kicked off the conference day keynote in which he shared with Communicators how they could be relevant 5 years from now. He is a keen exponent of “Do less, do it better” and that we should all think in terms of three buckets when it comes to content. The ‘Pass’ bucket – content that you shouldn’t do, and therefore a bucket that you should fill as much as possible. The ‘Publish’ bucket – which is the content that you have to do. This should be done well and quickly. The third bucket was the one to focus on the ‘Promote’ bucket, this is where time should be spent as this is the content of real value and relevance. The 7 roles he identified for future communicators was based on the fact that at present social media is chipping away at the communicator as a publisher and that to be needed in the future change is needed.

Steve’s roles were;

• Leadership Counsellor
• Social Media Spy
• Content Cop
• The Talent
• Community Organiser
• Visual Storyteller
• The Executioner

I’m not going to steal any more of Steve’s thunder other than to say if you get a chance to hear him speak – grab that opportunity.

Small team, big impact

You might be a small team, the team might just be you but Carrie Basham Young (Talk Social to Me) @carrieyoung gave an insight as to how passion and energy can win through when launching a social network.

Social breaks the hierarchy rules, therefore hierarchy has a decreasing influence over communication and collaboration. A question to ask yourself – do the Execs in your organisation think that the purpose of the intranet is the same as the rest of the team? If not you need to resolve that.

There are clear organisational benefits to social;

• Employee happiness – the return on community
• Co-operation in a crisis
• Situational awareness
• Humanizing work
• Building collective intelligence
• More effective new employee on boarding
• Communication outside the hierarchy

Carrie shared the “Clothesline Paradox” (Steve Baer) when it comes to reporting on the success of the social network, there is no way to measure it like you do other ROI. The paradox is “You put your clothes in the dryer, and the energy you use gets measured and counted. You hang your clothes on the clothesline, and it “disappears” from the economy”

Value is created, the problem with is how it’s captured, how is it measured and counted i.e. the organisation benefits but it can be hard to say just how.

There are clear benefits to the employee too;

• You become real to your colleagues
• You can take charge of when and how you work
• You can overcome formal support borders – FAQs can be answered and experts identified
• You can give (and receive) thanks and credit
• You can establish direct relationships and strengthen ties

Carrie spoke about social being a two way street and made a distinct differentiation between champions and advocates which I found interesting as prior to her talk I would have had the two as being interchangeable – I know recognise they aren’t and agree with her when she said that champions work within the hierarchy (and you use them to advance the intranet) whereas advocates “break” the hierarchy, in that they need not necessarily undertake formal roles with responsibility rather they may arise organically and will appear and assume the influential role. You wouldn’t work with one community or the other, instead look to combine the benefits of both.

In common with many other speakers (@BrianMoore320 and @BeckyGraebe) Carrie raised the profile and importance of good ‘Community Managers’ – a healthy community doesn’t just happen it requires stewardship, she had CMs being a hybrid role of doctors (ensuring intranet health) as well as traffic cop, educator and teacher, echoing the 7 roles of Steve Crescenzo.

Executive Excitement

Becky Graebe (SAS Software) @beckygraebe tackled the issue of how to get you Exec team on board – she found that a good angle was to ask them the question “How do the communication tools available to our organisation support and help us deliver on our values” She drew on some statistics from McKinsey about how 60% of execs realised that the benefits of social outweighed the risks but Becky then said to be in the 40% could be placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage when it came to employee satisfaction, retention and recruitment as they might not be offering the tools and work environment workers expect.

So when someone talks about the risks of launching a social network, you should ask them to consider what the risks are of not launching a social network.

When it came to engaging end users with using these social tools it is important to get the small, non-threatening steps right in order to foster future engagement. SAS started off with regular “You tell us” feature that encouraged users to express their opinions on non-business matters, in order that users become familiar in expressing their opinions in front of colleagues before they then started to use the same tool to canvas colleague opinion on more business related matters.

Becky’s mantra was that the “The launch and adoption strategy is just as important as your tech decision,” and that it was vital to keep the social in social network.

You can achieve a lot with one and a half

Brian Moore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) @BrianMoore320 shared the approach and success that an Internal Comms team of 1.5 can have with a social network for 3300 users. He echoed the success achieved by Carrie and showed how it wasn’t the size of the team but rather what the team did that was key and how passion and commitment went a long way to achieving success. The HMH intranet relaunch started small, focussing on delivering the information and functionality that users needed day to day (HR and IT) and made sure that they were set up to meet user expectations rather than be a promotional space for the HR and IT teams. Post launch there was a phased roll-out of more resource pages but they made sure the basics were there for day 1.

The intranet launch (to a dispersed workforce) was announced with “Top 10 facts” with a new fact being revealed for each of the 10 days preceding launch. (It was also a common theme that launch should never be a surprise) Brian too was an advocate for the need for effective Community Management in achieving engagement and commented on how a series of challenges (with associated rewards) helped adoption as well as the very simply act of colleagues being able to thank each other.

It would be great to hear what challenges you’ve faced – and how you’ve looked to tackle them and what success you’ve had – or if you are still facing unresolved challenges and would like to discuss some possible options then please get in touch steven.osborne@interactsoftware.com.

The post You are not alone appeared first on Interact software.

At Interaction 2014 I facilitated an energetic workshop in which we discussed the characteristics of a homepage that had the “Wow” factor not an “ow” factor. While many of us are aware what makes up a positively received homepage I wanted to have some fun and see if we could come up with some agreement on what the characteristics could be, using adjectives that started with A, E, I, O and U.

I did have some thoughts of my own on what the chosen adjectives could be that there was some surprises that emerged too.

‘A’ stars

The top 3 adjectives for A were;

• Attractive
• Accessible
• Amazing

Clearly there are some adjectives that have very similar meanings, so if you considered Appealing to be a synonym of Attractive then 32% of the participants would have agreed with you. Add on those who thought that “Amazing” was a good attribute to have then you have 45% of the Interaction audience nodding along with you.

While it is important for a homepage to look good, it should not be at the expense of functionality. There is little point in something looking good, if fundamentally it doesn’t work, or deliver what a user needs.

I had prepared some props for Interaction which I forgot to use, so here is my second chance. A teaspoon may look rather plain, but its simple design means that it works. Consider ‘Exhibit A’ below – you may agree with me that it looks better – although you might be influenced by your reaction to the colour pink. So, you could say it looks more attractive, but it still works. Compare and contrast with ‘Exhibit B’ – fundamentally the same, basic teaspoon that has been beautified in such a way to render it pretty much useless. You can take “making something prettier” too far.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Beauty can also be in the eye of the beholder and often hard to be objective. In the session I drew comparisons with Beautiful Baby competitions – It’s very hard to be an objective judge and not think that a baby that you are related to is “better” than others – the same could be true for intranet homepages.

So while I would accept that homepages do need to “look nice” it needs to offer something else too.

The E’s

In introducing the session I made a conscious effort to avoid saying “Essential” as that is clearly a characteristic that all homepages should be – a homepage should support and facilitate what someone does – it should act as a work tool.

The E top three;

• Engaging
• Effective/Efficient*
• Easy

* I combined the score for Effective and Efficient as I felt they are interchangeable when it comes to talking homepages (I know that will upset some who are skilled in the art of semantics, but please let us not be pedantic!)

If you though that Engaging and Exciting amounted to pretty much the same thing then you would have been in agreement with 46% of respondents.

Adjectives that are also of note are “Enabling” and “Evolving.” An enabling homepages positions the intranet homepage as being an aid to getting work done, a homepage should be a blend and within that blend should be functionality, not just content. “Evolving” is another key characteristic – the homepage should not be static – it should change as the requirements of the audience it serves changes, and as the objectives of the organisation it exists within changes.

The ‘I’s have it

‘I’ generated the most different options, the top three were;

• Informative
• Interesting
• Innovative

20% of the cards had “Informative” written on them. I think most of us would agree that if your intranet homepage was not rated highly on the metrics of “Informative” and “Interesting” then it would be failing, but this can be as much of how it is presented and how content is written as much as what it presents.

Homepages will retain interest if they are dynamic – there should be some element on it that changes, usually this is some type of news, or communication. If it remains the same for “too long” will soon become wallpaper, and lose any relevance or interest. Often what makes the homepage of interest is the same as that makes it informative. The aspiration here is to make a homepage relevant to its audience, which in some organisations may mean having different homepages for different audiences. It is also important that those who contribute to the homepage, or the content that may be featured within it are aware of how to write and produce content that is appealing and engaging.

The desire to exhibit “Innovation” has close connections with “Original” which was a popular ‘O’ adjective. While there are elements that are common to all good intranet homepages there should be elements that clearly exhibit it as a “bespoke” homepage and not a “mass produced” one.
‘Interactive’ and ‘Intelligent’ were also popular suggestions and there was also some desire to have ‘Idiot Proof’ homepages as well as ‘Inspirational’ ones.

Top ‘O’s

• Organised
• Open
• Original

37% cards had ‘Organised’ on them, if you supplement this with those who said ‘Ordered’, ‘Obvious’ then you have 50%. A good homepage will have a logic behind it – not necessarily one that needs further explanation, but one that presents itself in a ‘useable’ way (See the ‘U’s for more details).

‘Open’ could be interpreted in many ways – it could be that it is the characteristic of an organisation that wishes to break down silos, and have transparency – it could also be a homepage that displays user generated content and shows that it is a platform for peer-to-peer and bottom-up communication and collaboration rather than the traditional, top down communication style of pre-social intranets.

The desire to have originality was also apparent. Interaction featured a “Homepage Wall” where many organisations happily shared their intranet homepages .It was clear to see that there are many common elements but these can be delivered in a way, and style that can demonstrate originality.

I think that it is important to have a homepage that is “Owned” – there should be someone who has responsibility for the homepage – too make sure that it achieves some of the adjectives discussed here as well as considering another key ‘O’ word. How successfully does your intranet homepage help you deliver the intranet objectives? Best practice in intranet governance would be to clearly define what these objectives are, as well as who it is that has responsibility for ensuring homepage effectiveness.

Homepages should also offer something that is “Of the Moment” – again this could be just another way to desire informative and interesting, as well as useful, on which there is more below.

Over to ‘U’s

• Unique
• Understood/Understandable
• Useful
• User friendly

All of these came within 1% point of each other so it is hard to distinguish them. For ‘Unique’ we could read ‘Original.’ A homepage will be ‘User friendly’ if it is Understood and Understandable. A homepage should not need to be explained. If it is then it is not ‘Intuitive’ which is what 12% participants said a homepage should be.

Homepages should be both ‘Useful’ and ‘Usable’ – there is an important distinction to be made here. ‘Useful’ – means someone has a purpose for it – ‘Usable’ means it is designed to be easily (and effectively) used. Exhibit A is useful, Exhibit B is not. Both Exhibit A and B are usable (although not many would choose Exhibit B to stir their tea.) A homepage is useful if it meets the needs of its audience. It is usable if it can be quickly and easily used.

Having a homepage that is “Uniting” or “Unifies” was also suggested – this may be the characteristic of an intranet of an organisation that is going through a period or change, a restructure, a merger or acquisition and there is a clear decision to have one homepage for all – or a homepage that brings people together.

Clearly there is no recipe for a perfect homepage – each homepage will use some of the ingredients that are part of other organisations homepages but the blend is unique to each organisation and needs to be a blend that is harmonious between the needs of the organisation and the expectations and requirements of its users.

Maybe it is time for you to go and ask your colleagues to provide you with their A, E, I, O, U of the intranet homepage that they would like – and ask them to comment on how the one they currently have fits the bill.

The post The AEIOU of an awesome intranet homepage appeared first on Interact software.

There is more to making a homepage vital than it just looking nice. While it has to be engaging, it also needs to be relevant and deliver what a user needs. Homepages are important as they are the first impression that a user will get of the intranet they are about to use.

However the first impression will soon pass and a user will judge the homepage on how useful it is for them. Does it present them with the information they need? Does it offer them clear routes to the functionality they need, or the tasks they wish to complete? These considerations apply both to the intranet homepage as well as the landing pages of the sub-sections of the intranet.

Here are some things to consider about your intranet, is it delivering what is expected of it – or are your homepages obstacles that a user needs to overcome and click past?

Let’s start with some of the ailments which a homepage may have

1. Welcome messages

Does your intranet suffer from very obvious & dominant welcome messages?

This is a fictitious HR director who some may recognise. I appreciate that what this well-meaning HR director wants on their part of the intranet is a warm and friendly welcome message which explains what the HR section is all about, or what the user can get from the HR section.

But, who does this benefit? Is it the end user? If the answer is no, then there needs to be some push back. Instead of taking up valuable space with a “vanity piece” it should instead be used to promote a recent policy update, important communication, or links to frequently completed tasks. It is also likely that as such widgets require manual intervention to update them the information contained is likely to be static and long lived, so quickly loses its impact and consequently soon becomes irrelevant.

Action 1. Search your intranet for any unknown free text welcome messages

2. Is your intranet homepage too busy?

If it is too busy then users will struggle to understand it, and its purpose. They will question what they need or what they could be doing in this area.

Ask yourself if it is laid out to meet user’s expectations? This is a key thing to consider. Does the name and the labeling chosen for the area reflect the actual content when you link through? For example if you have a “Forms” section on the homepage is the user quickly routed through to the form that they need? You can also make this time sensitive; as the end of the month approaches you could add a quick link through to the expenses claim form, which is then replaced by something else for the first three weeks in the month when claims aren’t going to be made.

Action 2. Look at your homepage in terms of assessing if its user focused

3. Is your homepage one which requires scrolling?

I’m not going to state that scrolling is good or bad. The question should be – if a user scrolls is it to their benefit? As we have evolved as web users we have become comfortable with scrolling. However we shouldn’t be scrolling down to something useful, because something less useful was positioned higher up the page. More and more of us are familiar with content extending below the bottom of the screen, and we will happy to scroll. But don’t take liberties and expect users to scroll down a long way, and certainly not to have to scroll down to something which you consider to be important.

Set out your homepage so that it shows the important content and shortcuts without scrolling. Some will feature short cuts to functionality; there is no harm in having these below the ‘fold’ if they are consistent and your user knows that they are always there. You don’t want things changing too much, there is a fine balance, but I will come to that later.

Action 3: Review the depths of the page.

4. How many areas of your intranet are unloved?

Where is the dust and cobwebs on your intranet? You may have many areas which are not used, like the electronic equivalent of a dusty book shelf. The more content areas you have, then the more homepages you will have and the greater likelihood that you have unvisited areas on your intranet. So this might not be just a homepage issue but also a structural issue. They long forgotten homepage may have been fit for purpose in the past and have become redundant over time

Action 4: Look at the unused areas of your intranet and either revive or delete.

5. The ever changing homepage

Change is good, there should be something new and fresh each time a user visits, especially on the main intranet homepage. But it shouldn’t change too much or have too much of it changing too often. As users of an intranet we appreciate consistency and continuity as much as we do the stimulation which change brings.

Action 5: Consider what you should be changing on your intranet and what should remain consistent

6. How does the homepage help people do what they need to do?

Intranet Manager Geoff Garcia from March of Dimes believes that having these 4 elements of a home page supports users in getting work done.

a.What’s happening

News, company announcements or events calendar

b.What’s trending

What popular in terms of feedback, what are people talking about on forums etc

c.Something fresh

This could be a blog, not necessarily from the chief executive or the management team, but something from a colleague which gives an insight into their daily responsibilities

d.Something fun

Something as simple as a poll or a gallery, maybe some content which is purposefully non-business. It might be the fun element which draws a user in and gets them to come to the intranet. When they get to the intranet they will then have the opportunity to see the corporate messages you wish to publicise.

Action 6: Look at how you could integrate each of these elements into your intranet

7. Customisation

In terms of the intranet homepage itself, you might want to consider customisation. These pictures below are not of an intranet but the Guardian website homepage on the day Prince George was born. The structure has stayed the same but the content of the homepage is different. This reflects that many who are interested in what is happening with the Royals would be very interested in the news an on the other hand on the same day you could switch to an alternative news story if not so interested.

The same thing can be achieved on an intranet homepage, the template or structure can be the same but with some alternative content for different audience groups, this could be based on job role or geographical location for example.

Action 7: Could you make 20% of your main intranet homepage unique to specific groups of users?

Toolbar

With Interact Intranet 7 there is a tool bar which offers content unique to each user, on the left of the screenshot below represented by a bell icon, is the notification, where the user receives alerts about the notifications unique to them.

Further along the tool bar is the eye icon which will notify users of any changes or updates to content which they have selected to watch.

Finally the star icon shows content that users have chosen as favourites, which may include content they use on a regular basis to help them in their role, or content which is of interest to them. This gives access to a drop down list of quick links to help users easily navigate to their frequently used content. This means you don’t need to add a widget for individually tailored dynamic content. It is already there in the structure.

Drag and drop

Home pages can also be facilitated by the drag and drop function as part of the new responsive design so it’s far easier for you to make a widget size narrower or wider, if you want to move something around you just hold your mouse but down and slide it to where you want it to go.

The post Embarrassing Intranet Homepages – it doesn’t have to be that way appeared first on Interact software.

This is your chance to look at your intranet to determine how tidy it is, tidiness can be an indication of health, intranets are usually healthier and run more efficiently when they are tidy.

So what are the warning signs?

Good analytics will reveal what your users are searching for, what you can then do is put your popular search terms in to see what is presented, from the first few characters you type in you will start to see results. This will be your first clue as to how tidy your intranet is.

Is it as tidy as you would like it to be? Or is it like opening a draw and pulling out drawing pins or an old boiled sweet, when all you want is paper clips.

Take it to the next level and do a full search, look at the search results and consider if you as a company or community of content editors are seeing the results you want. This must involve others, you are not going to be alone in tidying up that cupboard or draw. If you search for award you may be happy with the results this returns.

Or it might be that you have a whole host of content that isn’t useful, it needs to be relevant to user’s needs. The example above only shows 10 results, so this is fairly tidy, but how much of it is useful?

If that’s not as expected look to promote content with best bets – tag the most looked for documents with related key words or phrases. So that’s one way to investigate it from the users point of view.

You can also use analytics to look at the document quality, how much care, attention and love do your content editors give to the content they put on your intranet? Do they remove irrelevant or out of date content? You probably do even if you are not aware of it.

Look if you have an author who is particularly good? Always give praise where it’s due, and look for ways to increase lower quality scores. It may be the case that particular editors are responsible for content which is more difficult to make engaging, but you would look to get the two’s and three’s as close to ten as possible.

The warning signs

With Interact Intranet it couldn’t be much easier as it gives you warnings to draw your attention to documents which need your attention, with an urgency rating. A document with a low quality score, for example a document which hasn’t been viewed in 3 months would be classed as high importance.

High Warnings

The high warnings you should probably look at quite soon, the low you can follow up as and when you have time. Above is a screen shot from Interact Analytics, you can see that 14 documents have passed their expiry date. By clicking through from here you would be taken to a page which links through to each of these documents.

Those that haven’t been used in 3 months may no longer be relevant, for example how relevant are the coach arrangements for the 2010 Christmas part in 2013?

If you have documents with inactive authors, what happens to when someone comments or gives feedback? Nothing is going to happen; this causes a situation where users may be disengaged by your intranet as their feedback has gone unnoticed.

Moderate warnings

There is criteria which marks the quality of your content out of 10, the content summary contributes to that score. So you will see that documents with summaries outside of the recommended word count would be flagged up.

Low warnings

One of the low warnings are, for example, possible duplicate documents, it will pick up on the title of the document and notify you here as a possible duplication.

It will show you the number of documents which have a low quality score, it will also let you know how many widgets appear on the home page with the same widget name that Interact gave it. For example ‘free text’ with a message from your HR director, needs changing to something relevant to the content of the widget or relevant to your intranet brand.

It will look at structure and tell you where you have a high volume of content in a particular area and it will also point out if there is a poor blend of widgets of your home page.

So these are practical measures you can use to assess how much of this applies to you and how can tidy your intranet, so you can become an Intranet Womble, Orinocho is my favourite.

So be an intranet Womble, love your intranet and keep it tidy.

The post How clean is your intranet? appeared first on Interact software.

This blog contains some key points from selected speakers;

First speaker was Dux Raymond Sy, a Partner at Innovative-e (@meetdux)

He started by reassuring us that social is not about pretty pictures of cats – which most of those present knew there were many more benefits but the challenge can be to show those who doubt or fear social that it has clear tangible benefits. Social allows business agility, doing less with more and recognising that in our everyday life social collaboration is the new norm.

He identified that the problem we often encounter is we focus on the social behaviour and the tools, rather than the purpose we are trying to achieve. He shared a statement from Gartner who believe that “80% of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology”.

He revealed his 4 steps to achieving sustainable adoption;

1) Secure stakeholder buy-in. To help with this you should identify your vision and tie the social purpose of your intranet into your organisational values.

2) Initiate a pilot program. Dux is a firm believer in not doing the big bang – work with a smaller group to determine their needs, map those needs to the software and then train the on the effective use of the software to achieve that purpose. Success is easier where you look to maximise the use of familiar tools – as change is hard!

3) Implement Enterprise wide – engage key business groups and identify champions. The other challenge is to be able to support the excitement – so that the initial buzz is maintained.

4) Facilitate Engagement. Gather feedback, have regular adoption activities where you showcase how other use the tools and the success they achieve.

Pat Miller (@PatZMiller) from American Family Insurance (AFI) then shared her experiences on “How to Win support for and create a powerful social intranet” and how AFI went from “a top down intranet to a bottom up one.” She injected a note of realism to the challenge – AFI has 18,000 users “18,000 people is a town” she went on to show how they went about introducing new tools, encouraging adoption and monitoring use. Key to allaying the fears of senior managers was the creation of a “What if…” document that listed all the things they feared may happen, and then highlight what the process was for responding to it if it did occur.” Pat was erudite source of intranet truisms; “a community is only as successful as its manager”

Karen Lee (@KarenMLee) from SAS (known for its presence on FORTUNE’s “Great Place to Work” list 15 years running) then shared insights into a newly launched intranet that she had to fight to get seen as a business priority. She recognised that a major issue facing SAS was that not everyone that worked for the company knew what the company did, she also confirmed the way that social activity has become part of everyday life; the average person checks their phone 150 times a day and that there are more Android devices activated daily than children born (NY Daily March 2013)

Her motto was “Think mobile, social and digital for everything you do, or don’t do it.” The new SAS intranet had shifted towards more video content rather than text pages and this was seen as a cause and effect for a 300% uptake in readership. SAS had reached the conclusion that “people don’t want to read, they want something short and quick and they like to view it or hear it.”

Vida Killian (@VidaK) from Starbucks then spoke of how they engaged employees to show them that they owned the intranet, rather than the organisation they worked for. Starbucks, like SAS had recently relaunched an intranet as they recognised that there was a disconnect between expectations and reality” the old intranet disappointed and failed to deliver or delight.

Vida shared 6 milestones on the Starbucks journey and 6 takeaways.

1) Aligned approach with key stakeholders

2) Definition and creation of “inner circle” – Vida identified “Launch Partners” that were similar in concept to Dux’s key business groups. Starbucks’ Launch Partners were those departments or teams (such as HR) that were responsible for the content that people needed.

3) Engage Everyone – an initial step in this process was a naming competition

4) Prepare leadership. 2 months out of launch they held sessions with  managers to make them aware of what they would need to do – as a minimum all were expected (and shown if required) to complete a profile.

5) Create a pre-launch buzz – this was 2 weeks out from launch – teaser campaigns, ongoing communications through regular channels, display booth at staff event.

One idea that they had which I though was really good was a life size example of the profile page with a “cut out” “where the user’s photo would be displayed. “A space for your face” if you like.

6) Make a big deal of launch – a really effective part of this was an “In Memoriam” video to the old intranet in which people said what they would miss.

Starbucks’ Takeaways were;

1) Branding and usability are important

2) Mobile is huge win

3) Be prepared but don’t expect to solve everything

4) Expect the unexpected

5) Change Management takes time and effort and doesn’t stop at launch

6) Guide and govern but don’t define

Marge Medd from Microsoft HR showed how to shift your intranet from information to action, and how to transition your intranet from telling to doing.

A key element to this was a structural redesign that focused on user needs rather than departmental approach. They redesigned the anatomy of a homepage, as if you want the intranet to promote self-service then the homepage has to deliver it. To prepare for his they had to blur the lines of ownership for content and transactions and those who were the owners had to appreciate that users don’t think of it as clearly as the support function might be. A user might expect that a change of bank details is something that is actioned by HR, and not the Finance department as might be the case. The approach that Marge took was “you can keep the back end [of the process] but we are going to redesign the front end.”

This meant that some content had to be rewritten to cut through the clutter and simplify the task – which initially unnerved some content owners but has seen to be welcomed by end users and increase the efficiency and self-service element

The final presenter that I enjoyed listening to was William Amurgis (@wamurgis) in an engaging and interesting presentation he showed how the trust of an intranet could be built. The context of his talk was that experts (colleagues) are more trusted by employees than the CEO and that the intranet could be a very effective channel for individuals to achieve higher levels of trust. Interspersed with M&Ms (for those physically present) William shared his 12 tips.

1) Show Respect. Trust begins with trust

2) Be Accessible. Let me access it whenever and wherever I need to access it.

3) Load Quickly. Speed is important. Users aren’t patient

4) Be consistent. In navigation. In messaging.

5) Follow Consumer Trends

6) Pay Attention to details. Be precise and accurate

7) Be fresh and timely. Users should see something new and something happening now on each visit.

8) Bring the Outside Inside. Feature external sources.

9) Encourage Dialogue. Have “React to this” as a call to action.

10) Welcome dissent. It is OK to disagree but still be respectful

11) Monitor All Activity. Know what is going on, what people are thinking.

12) Respond to feedback. Every last piece.

Read about William’s 12 tips further in his recent Ragan blog “How to create a social intranet employees will love”

His overall belief is that you should continue to strive for the intranet to be a trusted source of information but also enable people to use it to become more trusted personally.

The post Social Intranet Summit appeared first on Interact software.

Now, of course I know that this is not a scenario that applies to your intranet, but what could you do if it did?

Here are 7 things that I think you could do right now, or plan to do in the next couple of weeks that would help your intranet get back on track and feel loved. These suggestions reflect that the time you have available to spend may be limited.

Don’t forget though that procrastination is the thief of time – so if you think that one of these ‘magnificent 7’ is a good idea, don’t take too long to get started.

1. Review the homepage

I’ve purposefully made this first action point, because the homepage is the first thing that users see. But, have you ever thought …do people “see” it? Or do they quickly click off to some other area of the intranet as the homepage isn’t relevant or beneficial to them? The homepage needs to strike the balance between user needs and organisational needs.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does the homepage present the content that a user needs?
• Is the content it presents engaging and relevant?
• Is it easy for a user to complete the task they came to the intranet to do?

If the answer to any of these is not an emphatic yes then there is something you should be doing! (See point 7 for an idea!)

2. Look at search results

Looking at the search analytics will reveal user behaviour and expectations. “Popular Searches” will reveal what they are searching for. “Searches with Zero Results” will show whether their searches had results. “Failure to Find” will also show you those searches that didn’t reveal any beneficial results and the user kindly gave you more information.

All of the search statistics will help you make sure the right content is on the intranet. You can use this information to help the content managers to make sure that their own precious time is focused on the content that is in demand. It will also help you to help them to make sure that the right words and phrases are being used as keywords.

3. Look at quality of content

Once you’ve looked at the search statistics you’ll be more informed and able to provide a more expert eye over the content the intranet contains. What is the “Document Quality Score?” – The closer to 10 the better it is.

If scores are low then check for ‘two word’ titles or really lengthy ones. Do all documents have a summary?
If they do it increases the findability of it as well as giving a user more information about the content they might be about to read. If they don’t then the quality score will be lower.

Keywords are important too – but are they the words that user’s type when doing a search? Check that popular searches and keywords used have some relationship! While you’re looking at the Analytics also look to see if there is any “unowned” content – where the owner is inactive. If there is then it needs to be reassigned, so that it can be looked after.

4. Look at the way content is promoted

If your intranet has been launched for a while then when you look at the search stats there will be a lot of information. By default it will be showing you the last 30 days. You can adjust the time frame for “Popular Searches” and “Popular Search terms” to go right back to the start of your intranet (if you wanted.) You could then find out what terms have been used – and use “Best Bets” to ensure that the appropriate content was displayed at the top of the search results.

A word or phrase can be used three times as a best bet. Look at the most popular search terms and discuss with your content editors what content do they think should be promoted once these words are used.

5. Look at user profiles

How much care are users taking over their “own information” Are profiles kept up-to-date and completed? If you go to “Profile Completeness” you can see who the good guys are. Click the title of the ‘Score’ column to get the results displayed by lowest score first. Here are your “bad-guys.”

You can send reminder notifications to users who are ‘Missing Image, “Missing Bio” or have yet to sign up to any “Expertise” or “Interest” You might also like to consider putting the “Signpost widget” onto your reviewed homepage to encourage users to fill in the gaps and get things up to date.

6. Look at what’s going on

What levels of engagement and collaboration do you have on the intranet?

Good indicators of collaboration are the levels of “Liking” and ‘Sharing’ that are going on. If ‘Liking’ is going on then make sure those that have added what is liked are recognised and praised for their efforts – this could be done simply by leaving a message on their profile page. If there is not much liking going on then encourage users/readers to show their appreciation of content by liking as appropriate. You could then acknowledge the user who does the most liking!

Of course it might be that content isn’t being liked as it isn’t regarded as being beneficial or relevant by the people reading it. If that’s the case then you need to have a word with your content editors!

‘Sharing’ is something that can started by content editors – when they add content to the intranet they should know who they are adding it for (if they don’t then they shouldn’t be adding it) but once they have added they should make their first action to ‘share’ it with someone.

Instances of ‘Liking’ and ‘Sharing’ can also be publicised through the “Collaboration Space” widget or “Timeline” – consider putting this on your homepage if it is not already there!

7. Get User Feedback

It is never a bad idea to get user feedback. If you haven’t done it then you should do it now!

It can be sought very easily – set up a forum on your intranet to seek user feedback on how they use it, what they like about it and what they think could be improved about it. Users can engage in discussions around each other’s feedback. If you wish you could make it more focused by having a thread for “homepage views” another thread on “have you liked or shared content” etc.

If you wanted to have greater analytical capabilities around the results then you might want to set up a workflow form to get some user feedback. However don’t forget that this is not as public a channel as a forum – I’ll let you decide if you think that is a good or bad thing.

It would be great to hear back from you as to what you have done as a result of reading this blog and what the results were!

The post Show Your Intranet That You Care appeared first on Interact software.

We’ve identified ten elements that when effectively managed, we believe can contribute to an effective and essential intranet.

On 20th March I will cover Interact’s EIS in more depth, in the webinar, ‘The Essential Intranet Strategy: 10 Key Elements to Intranet Success.’ For now I’m going to focus on the key element; Governance.

This both underpins all the other 9 elements whilst also supporting them. Governance touches upon all of the others and effective governance is dependent on the choices and decisions made within the other elements.

Governance is…

Simply, it is about steering your intranet in the right direction.

All too often we chat to intranet managers and intranet teams about governance and while they recognise the importance of it, they also appear to be wary of it. Nigel Williams, Interact’s Community Manager offers the following reassurance: “Governance should not stop people doing what they want to do; it should help them to do it better and more effectively.” The fear of governance may be fear of the unknown but if you break it down into its constituent parts, it’s a lot easier to understand and deal with.

Roles and Responsibilities

Have you identified who is needed in the intranet team? Have you defined and made them aware of what their responsibilities are and what commitment they need to make? This can be helped by defining “job specification” for each role.

User Management

How will users “appear” on the intranet? Will user account creation and management be controlled by active directory sync, or is there another process in place? What information will be featured as part of their core profile? Giving a user a profile with the ability to update it, is a key step in establishing that user’s presence on the intranet and within the community.

Permissions

What will users be allowed to do? How will their access and permissions be managed? More often than not, permissions and associated security groups will be linked to the structure of the intranet. Where possible a permissions strategy should be simple, with simplicity trumping complexity. Wherever possible try to minimise restrictions and have secure areas as the exception, not the rule.

Training

The different roles within the intranet and the likelihood that these roles will have different permissions mean that there is no “one fits all” to training. There will need to be different training activities and using different methods to allow for different learning styles. Yes, there will be some who will be adventurous and explore, but others will require a demo and the chance to experiment, there will also be some users who would welcome a user guide – online and paper versions. Don’t forget to have an eye on the future and to think about how new starts will be trained to. Does your intranet contain some content that will answer the question,”How do I use the intranet?”

Content Strategy

Content may be king, but those responsible for adding it need to be sure that they are adding the right content, in the right format. Wendy Jordan at Glasgow Housing Association encourages the GHA content editors to ensure that the content they add is “Used, Useful and Usable.” Content Strategy also needs to recognise that its not just about content addition, it’s about the on-going curation and when appropriate, deletion.

User Expectations

When engaging in “user” training there is a need to clearly state what the expectations are, for an end user it could be that this may be something like “You access the intranet on a regular basis so that you keep up-to-date with news and announcements and to complete tasks like expense claims and holiday booking”. For your content editors (and other identified roles) you may have a different, additional expectations. Recognise that “Expectation” is a two-way street though so the organisation needs to be aware of what user expectations are and address these when planning, designing launching, evaluating and evolving the intranet.

Analytics

Knowing at any point in time how the intranet is performing is an essential role of an intranet team. What are its strengths and weaknesses? Where is it performing well, where could improvements be made? How are the users – are they engaged with the intranet? Or are there groups whose adoption could be improved. Why are the non users not using it? You should be looking to regularly check the health of your intranet and make improvements on what you find.

Roadmap

An effective, essential intranet does not stand still; it will evolve as the needs of the business evolve and as the behaviour and expectations of the users change. Good governance will plan for regular reviews of intranet performance against objectives. It will make sure that the intranet is being used as required and if the business objectives change then it will ensure that the intranet changes to support these new aims.

Join my webinar on March 20th at 3pm – 4pm (GMT): The Essential Intranet Strategy: 10 Key Elements to Intranet Success. There are limited places, so reserve yours today

The post Are you steering your intranet in the right direction? appeared first on Interact software.

In the discussion, “Taking the Training Wheels Off of Social Software and Getting Down To Business” Alan looked forward and predicted what he saw to be the future social business trends, at the time I tweeted what he said and as it was later retweeted by Alan himself, I conclude that I must have been accurate in my reporting of what he predicted, that “in 3 to 6 months it will be standard fare for us to assign each other the things we need to work on,” this was a comment within a discussion on task assignment in which people are using social tools to actually get work done, rather than “just” being engaged on social activities such as “sharing.”
So why was I left thinking that the future is already here? (and that Interact was ahead of the game?) Well in a time zone 5 hrs ahead of Boston, Interact had just announced that Activity Management was part of its upcoming 5.1 release. This clearly demonstrates Alan’s predicted shift from sharing to “Getting Work Done.” (Twitter #GWD)

At about the same time that Interact was sharing its insight into the future, over here in Boston the day had started off with a discussion by Andrew McAfee (@amcafee) – Principal Research Scientist at MIT who gave a very engaging and provocative speech on “E2 in the Era of Big Data.” His opening statement was that “The world is one big data problem,” and one in which computers and their associated algorithms are best set to resolve as, “computers are getting smarter all the time” and they have often out performed man in predictive tasks as “humans were never really that good anyway.” Far from being a depressive opening McAfee said that the solutions for us was to “race with the machines” and adopt new roles. He also pointed to some MIT research that enabled him to finish on a positive note for us, “Your chances of professional survival increase as your use of social goes up.”

Many later discussions highlighted what social business was and how it can be used to leverage business benefits. In the conference track “Organisation & Operational Readiness” lead by Sara Roberts (@RobertsGolden) President & CEO, Roberts Golden Consulting there was a clear message that it wasn’t about the tools it was more about the behaviour of the users and what they were doing with the tools at their disposal. Dan Pontefract (@dpontefract ) Head of Learning & Collaboration, Telus, said that effective use of social tools could enable a measurement of return on performance, he also shared the 5 C’s that were key to Engagement:

• Connect
• Consider
• Communicate
• Create
• Confirm

Another popular topic in the rooms and on Twitter (personally with @RobynMiller and @elsua) was on gamification and in particular on the awarding of Badges to reward certain achievements or actions. I’m not sure how much of a motivation getting a ‘Badge’ can be, certainly in the long term, I can certainly see its benefit as a “start-up” activity to kick start engagement, but I am yet to be convinced on the longevity or business benefits of badge collecting, to me it takes me back to my days of being a cub scout. But, I’m willing to listen to counter arguments so please send me your thoughts, although please accept that I wont be awarding badges for your efforts.

Although I may be sceptical of Badges I am not being dismissive of the concept of gamification, done well it can be beneficial and have clear business benefits. Interact’s own Signpost Widget is an example of gamification in which you achieve a higher score for engaging in beneficial activity such as profile completion, document sharing and other activity by the individual that is beneficial to the community.

Going back to the start, or indeed back to the future I will conclude on a similar sci-fi theme to the one on which I began – as part of a keynote presentation Wim De Gier (@skywim) Senior Global Project Manager Corporate Strategy & Development, LeasePlan Corporation spoke of contribution to the ‘Corporate Brain’ within the LeasePlan intranet; LinkedPeople. Wim’s assertion was that if you use (work on or contribute to the LeasePlan intranet) then your actions were contributing to and so growing the “Corporate Brain” he said that the main benefit of all this activity was that LinkedPeople allowed users “to find the gold and dig in the right place.”

I think that talking of the brain is a good conclusion as today at E2 was very thought provoking, but pleasingly it was also frequently scattered with specific examples of how people had done things and what they had done within the sphere of social business.

Follow me on Twitter at steven_osborne

The post My Day 2 findings at E2 Conference (Enterprise 2.0) appeared first on Interact software.

When I used to come home from school, without fail my Mum or Dad would ask me what I had learned today – and if it was a good day I would expand on what had been discussed. Well today was a good day and with the concept of knowledge sharing in mind what follows are my selected highlights and headlines from Day 1 of E2.

The intent to share also dovetails nicely with one of the themes from a keynote speech delivered by Bryan Barringer (@bbarringer523) Manager, Enterprise Collaboration Implementation, FedEx Services. He spoke of how the challenge to encourage knowledge sharing across the organisation is one of getting employees to adopt a new mental model, and move away from the belief that “I have knowledge and I must limit access to that knowledge in order to stay valuable”, to a new desired mental model where the thinking is, “I am valuable because I have knowledge and I am willing to share it.”

Bryan shared how FedEx are planning to use the concepts behind gamification to reward desired behaviours and activity. In rolling this out to the enterprise they are starting small to ensure that it has relevance and is not seen as a game, but a valued award of recognition. Bryan also said that it was always best to avoid ever mentioning the word gamification as it often caused a confused or negative response, instead of focusing on what it was called, it was better to focus on what it means and what it can deliver.

The keynotes were kicked off by Nathan Brick (@socialbrick) SVP, Head of Social Strategy, Wells Fargo, Wholesale Services who explained his journey from being in the audience in 2011 through the challenge of encouraging collaboration amongst 265,000 users across 80 lines of business. Nathan was a firm believer in the idea that the people you meet and the people you work with help you grow and was keen to facilitate this expansion of personal networks within Wells Fargo. He explained that their mindset was to see that Frustration = Opportunity and that the problems employees faced presented opportunities for collaborative activities to be the solution.

In solving the problems, the approach was to ensure that what they built was something that didn’t get in the way of what (users) wanted to do. Nathan’s belief is that, “part of successful collaboration is reducing unnecessary collaboration” and also recognising that social isn’t always the answer. Where it is you should use it, where it isn’t you should look for an alternate option.

Recognising that the key to successful social software adoption is community management, the discipline of getting loosely federated networks of individuals to engage and work in productive ways, my focus in later sessions was the conference track on Community Management. I have already shared much of what I have learned with Nigel Williams (@footshort82) Interact’s Community Manager.

Catherine Shinners (@catshinners) President, Merced Group highlighted the stages of an effective community she explained the 4 stages within the “Lifecycle of a Community”:

1. Inception – where high value content sparks engagement
2. Establishment – where there is a growing sense of community
3. Growth – where there are higher levels of interaction and engagement
4. Maturity – nwhere the community is self-sustaining

Of particular interest to me was Catherine’s reference to Forrester’s Social Technographics that looks that how consumers (users) approach social technologies. The latest model (often portrayed as a ladder) groups consumers into seven different categories of participation – and participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels.

Users can be one or more of;

• Inactives
• Spectators
• Joiners
• Collectors
• Critics
• Conversationists
• Creators

Where would you put the users of your intranet on this ‘ladder’

Catherine’s overview, although not solely theoretical was enhanced by the following speaker, Rachel Happe (@rhappe) Principal & Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable. She went on to give explicit examples of what a Community Manager does; the simple answer being they do a lot more than just tweet all day. An effective community manager does a lot off-line, or through back channels and not necessarily on the intranet itself.

So, these are my take-aways from Day 1 – apart from a free signed book (The Collaborative Organization by Jacob Morgan – an Interact review of which will follow sometime), a rubber brain and a skipping rope. I will share my insights into Day 2 later this week

Image Credit: empowered

The post What did I get from Day 1 at E2 Conference (Enterprise 2.0) in Boston? appeared first on Interact software.