While doing some research recently I was pointed towards the Drupal 7 User Experience Project by one of its designers. Drupal is a free content management system that allows users to publish, manage and organize web content. I found the project to be a brave attempt to involve their users in the entirety of the design process basically from sketches on the back of envelopes up to the completed wireframes.

The project used free social apps such as Flickr, YouTube and Twitter to suport the project as well as discussion lists. Looking at what Drupal did gave me some pause for thought. If they can effectively involve their users, who are scattered all over the world, in improving their upgrades shouldn’t it be far easier for intranets to do the same? After all we know who are users are and where they are so there are no good reasons why this shouldn’t be done for every major change that is planned for our intranets.

This approach will not replace user research (aka needs analysis) or usability testing. These activities will always be an absolute must for any intranet project. However as user research is carried out at the beginning of a project and usability testing towards the end, the ‘collaborative intranet’ approach could fill the gap in, allowing users to comment on and provide ideas right through the entire life of a project.

So how might this work? If you’ve read many of my previous posts or articles you’ll know that I am something of a sceptic when it comes to ‘intranet 2.0′. I can see the value of wikis for particular groups of people, at particular times, but the rest of it, especially blogs, are just a waste of time. Who wants to know what the CEO likes for breakfast?

However, sceptic though I am, I feel I’ve just found a valid use for the intranet blog!

The ‘collaborative blog’

 So let’s imagine that we’re in the process of designing or re-designing an intranet. We’ve done all our user research and now its that scary time when you have to somehow turn the research into design ideas. You have a set of user requirements and its ideation time. Once you’ve generated some ideas wouldn’t it be nice to get some user validation as to which ones might be best for the user?

Start up a dedicated blog, available to all intranet users, and start publishing your initial ideas. It doesn’t matter if they are just rough sketches or photos of flip chart sheets covered in post-it notes (in fact these are some of the best way of recording ideas) - let your users have a look. Importantly let them comment on what you put up and also let them upload their own ideas.

Using an intranet blog this way means that you can -

• Keep you users right up to date with what’s going on
• Get good feedback on what users think will work or won’t work
• The ideation process can include all your users if you allow them to be equal partners and let them upload their sketches and photos
• Prepare users for change after the final selection of ideas
• Inform users of the outcomes of usablity tests

I think that this could be a really good way of having a conversation with your users, getting their buy in and perhaps get them thinking that some changes might actually be for the best!

(Thanks to ralphbijker for the great Flick CC photo)

I get email updates from an intranet group and recently they’ve added a jobs section. So I’ve been having a quick dip in to see what the jobs are like in the intranet world of today. This led me to do a little lunchtime research on intranet  jobs on some of the web jobs sites such as Trovit and Monster. What I found was quite depressing.

Some of the skills and knowledge that these senior intranet positions required included coding, CSS, SQL and some acronyms that were beyond me including some arcane CMS systems.  This reminded me of James Robertson’s excellent article ‘Intranet Managers must be Managers’. In the article James states what a good intranet manager should be doing and this is what he says an intranet manager shouldn’t be doing with which I fully agree -

• ‘Writing HTML or publishing web pages
• Reviewing or rewriting content
• Conducting development (coding) activities
• Designing site appearance or structure’

The message doesn’t seem to be getting through.

What they don’t mention

The two things I’ve rarely seen mentioned in these job adverts is anything at all around the user and content. Yet isn’t that what intranets are supposed to be all about? Connecting users with relevant content is surely all intranets should be doing. OK you might want to do it in such a way that keeps the major stakeholders happy but basically its as simple as that. And yet these job descriptions depressingly still stress the need for technical qualifications and IT experience which, in my opinion, is sowing the seeds of failure for those intranets even before they have gotten off the ground.

I hope I am not going to offend anyone but putting basically IT people in charge of an intranet is one reason why intranets have gotten such a bad reputation in many organisations. The success of any intranet will have far less to do with how wonderful the CMS is and how all the pretty plug-ins work than a fundamental understanding of how users interact with content and ensuring that systems are in place for maintaining content and content structures.

Putting IT people in charge of intranets is like asking the people who build the roads to run the traffic management systems. There would be chaos on the roads in no time as building roads requires a completely different set of skills, approaches and culture to those required to make our traffic flow effectively.

I think that this is a good analogy for intranets. The IT or infrastructural part of the intranet is important but it is not as important as user considerations, quality content and a good structure. Let’s Illustrate this.

Two examples

Case 1 – An intranet is put together with the emphasis on the IT infrastructure. It has a wonderful shiny CMS, it’s fast and it has all the latest features. You can blog, there’s a wiki and all the latest  ’intranet 2.0′ social stuff.  However, as the focus of activities has been the technical side of things, there has been little regard paid to the user who finds the intranet illogical. Also little thought has been given to structuring and managing content and the intranet is now starting to fill up with obsolete content, undermining users’ trust in the intranet as a whole.

Case 2 – Someone puts together a series of linked Word or PDF documents on a shared drive. The structure of the links is logical reflecting how users in that organization look for content. The content is good quality and a system for maintaining content is in place so no obsolete content can be accessed by the users.

Which of the above cases would really help users to do their jobs more effectively? To a certain extent I wonder if many organizations are throwing their money away on fancy IT stuff when something simpler might prove more effective for their users.

However I did come across one ad which gave some hope. They wanted an intranet manager but they stressed that content management and usability were basic requirements whereas only a general knowledge of HTML and CSS were required. This makes me think that there is at least one enlightened organization out there.

I haven’t put a link in this post for the job advert. I might want to apply myself!

(Apologies to James for paraphrasing his book title!)

In Part 1 of this post I gave an overview to the process of levering knowledge and creating information (KLIC) in the workplace through carrying out a simple knowledge gap analysis or ‘information audit’.  This approach works well when levering knowledge from an individual or small group of people for a particular purpose. But what about an approach that can work across a whole organization as an ongoing knowledge initiative? I was prompted to think about this by a response from someone to the original post who admitted that a lot of this ‘knowledge’ stuff was confusing and was asking for a simple, practical and above all logical methodology or set of tools that could be used by virtually anyone in any organization. 

Therefore in this post I will attempt to outline a metholodolgy for carrying out an organization wide knowledge initiative based on an approach that I have found to work very well in the past - the Quality Circle. The approach is fairly non-prescriptive and should be scalable for organizations of different sizes and with varying resources.

 Quality Circles?

Quality Circles have for some reason gone out of fashion in the West although I note that Toyota still uses the approach. The approach is based on the simple premise that staff will be willing to contribute their ideas and experience in solving problems in their own areas so long as they are genuinely allowed to have their say, they can see that their ideas are taken seriously and that this all takes place within their normal working hours.

In order that it not be seen solely as a management initiative facilitators are drawn from non-supervisory staff and they are taught simple brainstorming and problem solving techniques suitable for use in a team setting. Problems can then be brought to the surface and knowledge levered from the team on how they might be best solved. If a problem was found to be caused by someone or something outside the team it would be noted and escalated to the proper person. It’s really as simple as that.

The main problem with this approach is that it requires real and ongoing support from senior management. Unfortunately for Quality Circles, in the West at least, they were sometimes seen as the only thing that you needed to do to ensure good quality in products and services rather than as a small, though important,  part of a much wider strategy. When they were seen as failing to deliver the goods as a stand alone approach Quality Circles quickly fell out of favour.

I have always considered this a small tragedy as, in my opinion, Quality Circles are not just a good way of solving problems leading to greater efficiencies etc. I also saw them as a way of empowering staff.  They allowed staff to have their say, to contribute and to use their brains.  I have always been amazed at the depth and breadth of knowedge that exists within some teams and have often been absolutely frustrated at senior managers employing consultants at exorbitant fees when I knew that we already had that expertise on tap just down the corridor at virtually zero cost.

Organizations that can effectively tap into such a reservoir of  knowledge will always have an edge on those that don’t. Solving problems early before they grow into major concerns will always benefit an organization as will removing some of the minor day to day irritations that can send staff crazy over time if they are not addressed.  However, in my  opinion, showing your staff that you seek and value their knowledge, experience and expertise can also pay major dividends through increased staff buy-in, commitment and loyalty.

‘Knetworking’ - An introduction

As any methodology needs to be called something I have dubbed this ‘knetworking’ which I am afraid is the best I have been able to come up with. It is, of course, a conflation of ‘knowledge networking’ which is a good short description of the proposed methodology.

In order to describe how ‘knetworking’ might work in practice I am going to use a very simple organizational model. The only extra, dedicated resource required is a ‘knowledge facilitator’ who should be the hub for all knowledge activities. In smaller organizations the ‘knowledge facilitator’ might be a hat worn by a member of staff for a few hours a week. For larger organizations perhaps a team of facilitators might be required. Whatever the resource available the ‘knowledge facilitator’ must be the single person responsible for pulling together and monitoring  all ‘knetworking’ activities. I would like to think that this activity might become part of the intranet responsibilities in many organizations as I think that it would be a good fit as detailed in my posts on the Enterprise-wide Information System. However, as you rarely get something for nothing in this world, extra resource must be made available to ensure that existing intranet activities are not compromised.

‘Knowledge’ – the traditional model

In order to explain how the methodology might work I am using a very simple organisational model (below).

As the activities in almost all organizations can be reduced to the input/transformation/output model, using this approach should make the model more generally applicable. You can see that it consists only of four areas, input (which might be material control, stores or customer information), two sets of transformation teams (which might be transforming different products or different stages in a product assembly or process) and output (finished products or services). Above these teams there are two levels of management. I have used this (too) simple model to hopefully make it easier to see how the methodology works and how the flow of knowledge around the organization might be achieved.

As you can see from the ‘traditional model’ knowledge flows generally only occur in an ‘up and down’ or hierarchical manner meaning that at the grassroots level teams and their managers have little idea of what problems other areas of the organization are solving and what innovative ideas they are creating and using to improve their processes. The buck stops at the highest level of  management who, theoretically, can pull together all the knowledge gained but this seldom happens due to the fact that a single person, or even a small team, can only do so much. Therefore top level management relies on condensed reports to aid decision making which comes up the chain of command from the grassroots and then communicates strategy decisions downwards.

This is unsatisfactory and inefficient on several levels -

- Knowledge silos are not just allowed to exist but are, in effect, actively encouraged

- The same problems are being solved again and again in different parts of the organization

- The knowledge, experience and creativity of staff members is not being accessed

- Innovation is stifled

- Reliance on documented information solely, whether this is electronic or hard copy, will never tell the whole story. Therefore, without human to human input, management at all levels will not be seeing the true picture and may be making important decisions based on partial data only

‘Knetworking’ – a methodology

 So if the ‘traditional model’ doesn’t work what might?

Let’s look at the same model again.

This time, however, you can see that there are lots of red arrows linking all the teams at the same levels and blue arrows for links between levels. These arrows represent the periodic attendance by team representatives at other teams’ ’solution sessions’ thus allowing knowledge to spread over time from all teams and to all teams . This approach essentially provides a ’side to side’ approach to knowledge in the enterprise and also enhances the traditional ‘up and down’ model of knowledge flows. This ensures that good ideas and approaches to problems are not siloed and are made available to everyone across the enterprise. 

How might this work? If you can imagine that a half an hour a week or every two weeks is set aside, perhaps as part of the team brief process, to look at the problems that a team is encountering and how they might be solved, as well as actively seeking suggestions for new ideas and approaches. All input,  tranformation and output teams will each be holding their own ’solution sessions’ hosted by their own team representative who has been trained in simple knowledge levering approaches such as the fishbone (or Ishikawa) diagram, simple root cause analysis (5 whys), pareto analysis etc.  The only rules in selecting the representative is that they are not part of the supervisory team and should be seen by all team members as an ‘honest broker’.

However if these sessions are creatively timed it may then become possible for team representatives to attend other team’s sessions and report back. In this way members of the Transformation 1 teams can see what other teams are doing with the same transformation or product and communicate this back to their own teams. They can also see what problems and ideas the Transformation 2 teams come up with. This may be especially beneficial if the Transformation 2 team is ‘upstream’ in a process so that the effect of what the Transformation 1 Team is doing (or not doing) can be communicated.

At their next team’s ’solution session’ the team representatives can then report back so allowing for ‘knowledge’ to be communicated across teams at the grassroots level. This process is also important for sessions at higher management levels too. Allowing members of teams at all levels to sit in may contribute greatly in ensuring that the correct solution for a particular problem is selected and may also help staff to understand the day to day problems that managers face.

‘Knetworking’ in your organization

As all organizations and their cultures differ there can be no single prescription for how ‘knetworking’ might be accomplished in your organization. The frequency of ’solution sessions’, how long they should take and how they are to be facilitated in really down to what works for you. However, in my opinion, even if the approach is adopted using the minimum resource it should still provide benefits for your organization and its staff. 

We need to talk now about the ‘knowledge facilitator’ role. This is probably the most crucial role as this function will be the ‘go to’ person for all things knowledge based as well as being responsible for providing a holistic overview to the whole enterprise-wide knowledge initiative.

The ‘knowedge facilitator’ must basically ensure that -

- All team representatives are competent and are trained to a suitable level

- That ’solution sessions’ are timetabled so that team representatives can attend other teams’ sessions

- That periodic ‘knowledge summits’ are held where all team representatives can get together and exchange views and discuss the latest problems afecting their areas

- That a system of recording what goes on at each ’solution session’ is instituted and maintained. This might be something as basic as a spreadsheet containing bullet points encapsulating the discussion or perhaps a data base which can be accessed by all team representatives

- That the knowledge data is suitably analysed and that a report on knowledge activities is pulled together monthly or quarterly to ensure that senior management are kept informed

And that’s it really. In these posts I have stated that knowledge leverage and information creation (KLIC) can be carried out in two ways -

- The knowledge gap analysis or ‘information audit’ dealing with specific areas and processes

- ‘Knetworking’ which is an ongoing enterprise-wide approach aimed at levering knowledge to solve problems and produce new ideas at every level of the organization.

What I have described above, and in the previous post, is really the skeleton of an enterprise knowledge system, it’s up to you to put the flesh on the bones and tailor the basic idea so that it works well for your organization. Relying solely on hard copy or electronic data only can only provide  part of the picture. It’s my hope that such an initiative will increase the flow of human to human information giving everyone a much richer picture of what’s going on in their organization.

(Thanks to quinn.anya for the superb Flickr CC photo)

In my posts on the Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS) and articles on the Lean Intranet I talk about the role that knowledge  should play in the enterprise. Apart from James Robertson you don’t hear many intranet commentators mention ‘knowledge’, yet no organization can function without  the knowledge held in staff member’s heads and the shared knowledge that constitute the informal systems that are often at the heart of an organization’s success. If organizations don’t consider knowledge as part of their overall information strategy then they are missing a very big opportunity to improve their processes through the innovative ideas of their staff. They are also in danger of letting important knowledge walk out the door when employees leave.

It is my belief that intranet and internal communications workers should be contributing to the knowledge debate, especially when it comes to knowledge in the workplace, if only to ensure that a simple, practical approach is arrived at that can be of value in the enterprise. In this post I will try to outline such an approach in the hope that knowledge issues in the workplace might start to get attention I think they deserve.

The two strands of ‘knowledge management’

Some years ago I had the unfortunate task of researching knowledge management for an MSc and I was left totally bewildered at the plethora of different approaches, terms and, if I’m honest, academic nonsense that went under the guise of Knowledge Management (KM). Apart from some of Nonaka’s approaches, which I talk about below, and a few others there was very little that I could identify as being of real, practical use in the workplace. 

The phrase ‘knowledge management’ has, in the UK at least, been hijacked by IT functions and has come to infer something different than what may have been originally intended.  I feel that for this reason that we can no longer use the phrase ’knowledge management’ as it has become inalterably linked in many people’s minds with IT functions. This means that we must find another way of referring to the process of levering and codifying knowledge in the workplace.

My candidate term is ‘knowledge leverage and information creation’ or simply KLIC. It may sound a little long but there is a reason for this as I explain below.

Classifications of knowledge 

As I stated above I found some of Nonaka’s approaches to be illuminating and useful. In the Harvard Review in 1991, Nonaka provided a classification for types of knowledge. This has now become common currency and is a good way of  thinking about knowledge. At the highest level knowledge exists as -

• Tacit – knowledge that only exists in someone’s head
• Explicit – knowledge that has been documented in some way, allowing others to share or, in other words, information

Nonaka states that knowledge may be transformed in four ways -

• Tacit to tacit – people talking to each other or demonstrating how things are done (socialisation)
• Tacit to explicit – documenting tacit knowledge by writing it down or recording it in some other way (externalisation)
• Explicit to explicit – where explicit information is re-shaped e.g. a book into a film or the writing down of recorded voices (combination)
• Explicit to tacit – when someone reads or views information and turns it into tacit knowledge e.g. school, training courses, reading (internalisation)

So there you have it – two types and four transformations. I have found this way of looking at knowledge to be simple and logical and, as such, it lends itself well to describing knowledge interactions in the workplace. 

What is ‘knowledge levering’?

Nonaka and Takeuchi in their ground breaking book ‘The Knowledge Creating Company’ admit that the creation of new knowledge ‘boils down to the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge’.  That’s basically finding out what people know and writing it down. This doesn’t sound like rocket science to me.

It seems to me that we  have become far too reliant on the paradigm that progress must be inalterably linked to more and more complex technologies. There might be a case for this with regard to internet sites and applications where a site somehow needs to reach out and connect with a niche market embedded in billions of faceless people, but we know our users, they are all around us. No interaction can be as information rich as a face to face encounter with another human.  It has been surmised that one of the reasons that our brains have grown so big is to enable us to read facial expressions and body language that say so much more than words. For this reason levering knowledge is an exercise that can only be done face to face.

I have been involved in ‘knowledge levering’ for many years. For most of those years I had no idea that this was what I was doing. As part of my Quality work I had to talk to staff in order to identify the informal methods they used and then write this up as a process or procedure. In other words ‘externalisation’ (tacit to explicit knowledge). Once all of the key tacit knowledge areas were made explicit we were able to see how all these informal processes could be linked up and improved.  The process of levering knowledge I used is very simple and the only real qualification for those carrying out this activity is that they must be ‘people’ people. In other words they need to be able to listen and effectively communicate with staff at all levels within an organization in order to get the maximum value from the exercise.

In order to find out what knowledge you will need to lever you must first carry out a knowledge gap analysis or ‘information audit’. This need not be too complicated or time consuming especially if a kaizen approach is used and the exercise is carried out over time. Look for key areas within your organization and try to identify what information exists that describes what staff do. Does it exist? If it does is it adequate and up to date? There is an important point that must be considered when it comes to levering knowledge. A fine balance has to be struck between how much needs to be made explicit, ensuring that important information is maintained within an organization, and how much is left tacit ensuring that staff have the human right to customize and improve some activities.

..and ‘information creation’?

So OK we’ve managed to sit down with our staff and note down key aspects of the tacit knowledge they hold but this is only half of the exercise. The reason why I’ve used the term ‘knowledge leverage and information creation’ is because it should always remind us that there are two aspects that must always be considered. Noting down tacit knowledge is part of ‘knowledge levering’ but turning those notes into information will require much more work. The notes will need to be worked up into a logical document and then assessed to see where it fits into and/or affects information currently held within the intranet or other information management systems (see my posts on the Enterprise-wide Information System). The affect of this assessment may mean that information gained may need to be amended or indeed that information currently held elsewhere may need to be amended.

If ‘information‘ can be considered as contextualised data formatted for a particular audience then you will also need to consider who the audience actually is, what the best format might be for that audience and where the information might best be stored so that the target audience can easily access it.

 That’s basically it

The basic thrust of this post is to get intranet workers thinking about knowledge issues for I feel that in the future this may become an important part of what they do. I also sense sometimes when I mention ‘knowledge’ to intranet workers that they consider that it must be some esoteric and complex area of human discourse to which they cannot contribute or fully understand. 

This, of course, is a nonsense as we do it all the time. I internalise knowledge when I look at the news which I do first thing every morning. Knowledge is socialised when I ask one of my work colleagues the football scores from the night before. When I write down notes from a meeting with my boss I am externalising knowledge. And I combine knowledge when I take a quote from someone else and insert it in my blog.

Globalisation and the freer flow of information brought about by the internet has had the effect of levelling the playing field and eroding the competitive edge of many organizations. Using knowledge leverage and information creation techniques in the workplace will retain important knowledge, improve processes and provide innovative ideas and solutions. For most organizations considering knowledge has, in my opinion, just moved from being a luxury to a necessity.

(Thanks to quinn.anya for the wonderful Flickr CC photo)

Want to get some fast feedback on your intranet but both time and resources are very limited? Try the user research version of the elevator pitch – the elevator interview.

I stumbled across this technique when carrying out some user research in one of our sites and the intranet webmaster who was my tour guide for the day kept bumping into people she knew in the elevator (or lift in the UK). She asked them what they thought of the intranet and I was really surprised at how much information could be transferred in a very short time. I also got the feeling that, as time was short, users had little time to be polite and so I got a better picture of their true feelings.

I am in the middle of a large user research project for my intranet right now but I would like to use this technique in the future as a quick and easy way of getting users’ perceptions of the changes we might make. So I thought how could this become a user research methodology? This is what I came up with.

The elevator interview methodology  

Only one question can be asked at a time so think very hard about what the best question might be. You can always ask other questions on subsequent trips but be careful to not wear out your welcome by becoming a pest.

Get a clipboard with ‘Intranet User Research’  printed in big letters on the back. This will save time explaining what you are doing.

Start the research before the elevator arrives by introducing yourself to the staff who are waiting. Don’t be pushy and see who is really willing. One staff member per trip only should be interviewed otherwise it could turn into a madhouse with everyone trying to get their point over at the same time. Continue the research once the interviewee has reached their destination if you need to but only if the user is willing. If you need to do further, and more in depth research, ask the interviewee if they would be willing to take part at a later date. This way you can easily build up a list of volunteers.

Take the time to write everything up straight after the interview or use a voice recorder.

Use as many different elevators as you can in different buildings during the time allowed to ensure that you get as wide a selection of staff as possible.

You can use screen shots to get users’ perceptions of page layouts as people take a lot less time than you might think to make up their minds.

If you want to gauge users’ reactions to a specific item or change try using the Product Reactions Cards  approach. I am currently using this approach as part of our user research and I think it would lend itself well to elevator interviews. Simply ask users to select five words that describe the item or change. Tell them that they don’t have to read every word but just shout out any word that leaps out at them from the list. Before the research begins assign numerical values to each word e.g. 1 = very negative, 2= negative, 3= neutral, 4= positive and 5 = very positive. This will enable you to provide an overall quantitive result. Also look for the  meaning in the group of words users choose. For instance if a user chooses -

 essential, time consuming, valuable, complicated, hard to use

 They are telling you that althought the content might be of great use there are serious usability issues which might need to be addressed.

What if you don’t have elevators?

Alternatives to elevators might be any place where users spend a brief period of time doing things that aren’t work. Hang around water coolers and coffee machines or where users might queue for a time such as in canteens.  It is important that the interviews are kept as quick and as light as possible. Do not interrupt an existing conversation and be on the lookout for signs that the user has had enough – don’t annoy people as you may want to do this again in the future.

I’m going to try this in the near future as a quick check on changes we are planning to our intranet. Just hoping that there isn’t such a thing as an elevator version of sea sickness!

 (Thanks to metamarois for the Flickr CC photo)

In the third of three articles on the Lean Intranet, I discuss the implementation of Intranet 2.0 and look beyond to what Intranet 3.0 might look like. You can access the article on the FUMSI website.

If you have any comments I’d be grateful if you could post them here.

A while ago I was surprised to be invited to talk about the ‘Lean Intranet’ at the Intranet Summit in Frankfurt. I was even more surprised when I first looked at the programme and found out that in fact I was to be was the keynote speaker opening the summit. A real honour indeed!

 The summit lasted two days, finishing yesterday, and I enjoyed every minute. Before I launched my presentation I explained that one reason why I was always thrilled when I attend intranet conferences, of which there isn’t enough in my opinion, was that I knew I was with people who have felt the same pain as myself. When I said this it raised a lot of wry smiles. I think that conferences such as the Intranet Summit are vital in raising the morale of intranet workers who can often feel very isolated and under-appreciated in their own organizations.

I need to thank Stephan Schillerwein of the IntranetMatters blog who was kind enough to act as interpreter and especially Bjoern Negelmann and Thomas Koch of Kongress Media who looked after me as if I were a visiting king. Although my foreign language skills are virtually non-existent, and most of the presentations were in German, I found that I could understand quite a bit as they were also using ‘intranet speak’ and some of the screenshots were very informative. The networking afterwards was really rewarding and I must thank everyone I spoke to for switching to English when I was around. That was real hospitality.

 I could go on for longer about what a good time I had but, not wanting to be the boring guy who goes on for ages about how great his holidays were, I’ll get to the point of this post.

During the Q&A after my presentation Bjoern asked a question about who decides what goes in the ‘Lean’ part of the intranet, what is stored in the ‘unseen’ part (see my FUMSI article) and how do you convince technical experts that the assessment is correct. Quite an important point! I had to think for a moment and replied something about how the intranet team, as information professionals, would have to understand content to a level deep enough to make a considered judgment. I’m not sure if Bjoern and the audience were satisfied with the answer but I knew that I wasn’t.

 I’ve had a good think about this question and it took me some time to realise that I had been in the position before of having to arbitrate online content with technical experts during my time in the automotive sector. So I asked myself how did we deal with it then?

 Management systems and technical content

 In the automotive sector maintaining your accreditations to ISO Quality, Technical and Environmental management system standards is incredibly important. Without them no automotive company will even consider using you as a supplier. By the time I left the automotive sector I was responsible for integrating all our Quality, Environmental and Health and Safety management systems into a single online entity. This required discovering and structuring masses of content around processes and procedures and some of this content was of a very technical nature.

The content had to be correct and structured to a high standard as every six months a very knowledgeable man with a clipboard from the British Standards Institute would appear and audit all our systems with a fine tooth comb to ensure that they were being suitably maintained. Very often these auditors brought along their own technical experts so that there was no hiding place if technical content was not up to scratch. These audits were considered to be of such importance that immediately after an audit was completed it was standard practice to meet with the Managing Director and other senior staff to discuss the auditor’s report. As you can see getting the technical content right was a priority if you wanted to remain employed!

 How did we adjudicate technical content?

 I was often faced with the situation of adjudicating what content added value within the management system and what didn’t. For me documenting the complete process in a logical, user friendly way meant sometimes telling people who were experts in their technical areas that certain content would be included and certain other content wouldn’t. So how did we convince them we were right?

Of course my answer at the Intranet Summit was partially right. In my role as Quality Manager I got to learn an enormous amount through documenting processes and procedures. In my vision of the ‘Lean Intranet’ intranet workers will also be involved in this process when levering knowledge from staff. No matter how technical the area it is possible to learn more than you might think. In my estimation the intranet team can learn enough to make a convincing case in most instances.

However ‘most’ is not ‘all’. What about when areas are so technical that the intranet team feel that they are not fully capable of making the case? As part of my approach to Quality management I tried to identify technical experts in each area of the company who were sympathetic to what we were trying to achieve. Luckily Quality has a high profile in the automotive sector and this did not prove too difficult. I could always go to them and discuss any problems around technical content and not only get an appraisal but get a feeling for the importance of the content from a technician’s point of view. In one company, where a technical area was very important, I actually persuaded the managing director to allow me to make one of these technical experts a member of the Quality team so that we had our own resource for dealing with difficult technical content and questions. So it is important to build bridges with technical experts and if necessary import their skills into the intranet team.

The last point was that it is sometimes necessary to remind yourself that you also are a technical expert. As a Quality manager, amongst other skills, I was an expert in documenting processes and procedures and ensuring we hung on to our accreditations. It was therefore usually accepted that there were two technical experts involved in the discussion and while they knew their stuff, they had to accept that I knew mine. As the accreditations were incredibly important to the company if I stated that we had to do something in order to ensure compliance there was usually very little dissent. However the situation for intranet workers is somewhat different as their work is often not seen as important and they have no big stick to wield as I did with accreditations. What can we do?

The way forward

I think that there is a way forward. While the intranet team need to engage with technical experts and learn as much as possible about what they do, they also need to educate technical experts in what the intranet team is trying to achieve. If they can be made aware of this, as well as the content strategy and the principles of user centred design (UCD), this might go a long way towards ensuring their co-operation and reducing disagreements in the future. It is also important to allow technical staff to have their say. It might not always affect the final decision but they will feel better knowing that they have made their views clear.

In the end, if the intranet is to be managed holistically and is not going to slip back into the bad old days of intranet zero, the decision of what goes where in the intranet must lie with the intranet team. However it is also the responsibility of the intranet team to reach out to technical staff and ensure that they are educated in and included in the process.

I always say that any new concept is doing really well if it gets it even 75% correct at the start. Constant questioning by your peers and allowing them to point out the soft spots and the grey areas that you have not considered will either improve or sink the concept.  Bjoern’s perceptive question has hopefully led to light being shone into another grey area that was lurking in a corner of the ‘Lean Intranet’ concept.

If you can think of any more please let me know.

In Part One I discussed the current state of intranets and other information management components that comprise what I call the Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS). I also graphically represented a generic overview of how these components are currently managed. In Part Two I discussed the holistic management of the EIS, how the EIS approach might work in practice and what benefits an organization using the approach might gain. 

In this third and final part I will try to show you what I think a robust EIS might look like and how IA and UX approaches have the potential to improve every component of the system. In this approach the intranet assumes its proper place and becomes the indispensable hub of the Enterprise-wide Information System.

What might a future EIS look like?

In the current state graphic you can see that the IA/UX area of influence (shaded blue) is shown as only being within the intranet (when it occurs at all that is) and is usually only applied to transactions, management systems and other explicit information held on the intranet.

In the graphic below, representing what I think an EIS might look like in the future, you can see that the blue shaded area covers everything, meaning that IA/UX approaches are being applied to all elements of the EIS. You can also see that the intranet has become the heart of the EIS and the common link between all information elements.

 Let’s have a look and see what this might mean in practice for each component of the system-

Intranet  The intranet should serve as a hub providing links to and information about all the component systems including interactions and governance. If a formal management system exists it may be documented as a set of procedures and guidelines maintained on the intranet. To be effective the intranet must be lean and the same personnel that administer the intranet should also administer all other information management components.

Internet  In my view internets and intranets should be like opposite sides of a coin. Different but still part of the same thing. IA and UX approaches should be applied in exactly the same way to both systems. I see no reason for instance why some organisations spend money on different software systems when so much of the content could be shared. Rather than view the internet and intranet as two systems they should be viewed and managed as a single information resource.  This will reduce duplication and remove the internet/intranet dislocation.

ERP systems These giant systems straddle many organizations and can ‘manage’ everything from inbound materials, finished goods, payroll, invoicing etc etc.  There is often a conception that no further information is needed as the systems ‘do everything’. In my experience nothing could be further from the truth. The interaction between these lumbering, complex systems and staff needs to be documented from high level process steps right down to each key stroke of data input. Often, after implementation of these systems, very little ‘how to’ documentation exists and a situation where staff train other staff can become the norm. This is very dangerous as ERP systems are basically just giant ‘black boxes’ where data is put in and, in reality, no-one (not even the techies who wrote the code sometimes) can really be absolutely sure that the output is 100% reliable. Every effort must be made therefore to ensure that a consistent process for data inputting is maintained and, of course, this information must be maintained in the intranet.   

Transactions such as applying for holidays, completing timesheets, viewing paychecks, sickness details etc. are a vital part of the intranet and are what I call ‘My Stuff’ (which may also be known as ‘My Links’, ‘My Pages’ and so on). These are the pages and forms that are of most interest to the majority of users for obvious reasons. People generally like having holidays and getting paid.

‘My Stuff’ should always be prominent on the home page and staff will thank you if you can place shortcuts so that they can easily access their stuff from whatever they are working with or wherever they are working from. IA and UX approaches will ensure that the findings of user research are incorporated in a final user friendly design. One important point – I have heard of intranet managers who purposefully structure ‘My Stuff’ links so that staff have to go through other pages to access them. This is designed to improve their statistics and is an approach to be avoided at all costs. All it does is place a barrier between the user and the content they need to access. In my opinion ‘My Stuff’ could stand as a mini-intranet by itself ensuring all of the personal interactive forms and information that staff need is in one place. Your statistics may suffer but your users will thanks you for it.

Collaborative systems already exist throughout your organisation. They are called meetings, corridor and water cooler discussions, phone calls, emails etc etc. Never lose sight of the fact that staff are collaborating all of the time. Collaboration is collaboration whether its a fancy wiki or a chance meeting in a corridor. The so called ‘intranet 2.0′ approaches should be wholly contained in the intranet but should be used very sparingly. IA and UX will inform as to when and how these approaches should be best used. As the graphic implies collaborative approaches should be considered as ways of accessing tacit knowledge and knowledge held in informal systems as well as accessing other explicit knowledge. Collaborative systems will only work, according to James Robertson, where there is a defined community and a common purpose. I absolutely agree. Before you kick off an ‘intranet 2.0′ initiative ask yourself ‘Why would staff use this?’. If you can’t give yourself a convincing answer don’t even try.

Email There is an obvious area where IA approaches could be applied – email folder structures. In most cases email folders are structured and named by the user. Users aren’t all good at this so it leads in many cases to an unstructured mess. Providing a standard set of folders tailored to the organization and even department could help matters greatly. This is not to say that users shouldn’t be allowed to create their own folders, rather that the provision of a set of well thought out and and named folders should provide a ’spine’ to the folder structure that will help the user store and find emails in a more efficient manner.

For the organization email should be part of an overall communication strategy and IA/UX approaches can hugely inform that strategy through user research, a structured approach and the ability to define the optimum user journeys across all components of the system.  IA can help even when it comes to the actual email content.  Is the title relevant and informative? Is the email content clear? Is the layout helping or hindering communication? If even a little user research into which email layouts and styles users preferred was carried out, bolstered by some good IA understanding, communications by email might be greatly enhanced.

Internal communications The EIS approach allows this function to apply a truly holistic approach to managing communications. For instance if there is an important event that an organisation is anxious to ensure that all staff are made aware then a strategy involving posters, emails, intranet pages, intranet media, blogs and wikis can be instituted. IA and UX can help ensure that the message is consistent across all media and that the messages reinforce each other. The consideration should always be to reduce the number of communications to a minimum whilst ensuring that the message is still getting across to relevant staff.

External information Information from external sources is becoming more and more important in our information saturated world. No man, or organization, is an island. Ensuring that relevant external information is presented to staff and managers in a timely way can help ensure that staff achieve their full potential and that managers make more informed, evidence led decisions. External information must be creatively linked to internal information so that users can access information relevant to a particular activity whatever it’s source. External information may be classified as -

Sector – Information on best practice, benchmarking, case studies, standards from the organization’s industry or service sector. Keeping up with other organizations in your sector is an absolute must if an organization is to keep up with the competition

Stakeholder - This type of information is incredibly important as it includes legislation, health and safety, customer and supplier related information, local environmental information, national and international standards etc. Not taking care to ensure that relevant stakeholder information is available where and when required may at best injure your organization and at worst may lead to certain activities being deemed illegal!

 Surroundings – External information from the larger environment that can affect an organization. Examples of this include stock market, currency exchange rates, market trends, global and national politics and even the weather. Information related to surroundings can have a dramatic effect on organizations. A good example of this is the current global financial crisis. Certain organizations can be very sensitive to changes in the larger environment therefore they must ensure that robust information flows are constantly maintained so that timely and evidence led decisions can be made

Serendipidous - External information that may, on the face of it, not seem to be relevant but can either be adapted for a new setting or can be combined with internal information and knowledge to produce something new. Whereas, in the main, the other three types of external information will keep an organization abreast of competitors, serendipitous information will provide a competitive advantage by fuelling internal innovation through information synergy. Information synergy is when you combine two or more pieces of information so that the sum is much greater than it’s parts; sort of  2 +2 = 8. An organization must always be researching what is out there if they are to benefit from serendipitous information. This can only be done by someone who has a good overall knowledge of an organization and it’s internal information.

  As you can see I quite like alliteration.  

Informal systems and tacit knowledge are rarely considered or even acknowledged yet no organization would be able to function without them. Where possible informal systems must be formalized although this might need to be in a ‘light touch’ way which will still leave individual staff members some room for manoeuvre. Knowledge creation approaches should be used for both informal systems and tacit knowledge. They are really the same thing although on different levels. Tacit knowledge is what resides in an individual’s brain while informal systems can be described as tacit knowledge shared within a defined group. All knowledge is valuable. IA and UX can help organize knowledge once it becomes explicit but a fine balance has to be struck between how much needs to be made explicit, ensuring that important information is maintained within an organization, and how much is left tacit ensuring that staff have the room to customize some activities.

All approaches that can be used to make tacit knowledge explicit should be considered. These might include proceduralising activities, suggestion boxes (or eSugggestion boxes as I have now heard them called in intranets), team briefs feedback, continuous improvement activities, quality circles etc.

Explicit knowledge  Not all explicit knowledge generated by an organization is contained within the intranet or other information management components. This type of information can exist in silos in departments and very often form localized procedures. This can be very dangerous as this type of information, being local, can often be out of step with or even totally contradict information held elsewhere in the EIS. It is often managed in a haphazard manner meaning that there is always a greater probability that such information may be outdated and obsolete.

Part of an EIS worker’s role (I call them information/knowledge specialists or INKS) will be to constantly be on the look out for such information. Where relevant it can be brought into the EIS and IA and UX approaches will inform how this might be best done.  It may well be that some such information may be relevant and well managed in which case it might be left as is. However INKS need to be aware of its existence so that it can be audited to ensure that it is kept up to date.  

Management systems  For some organizations formal management systems can be incredibly important as it is often a customer requirement that an organization is accredited to certain national or international standards. This can pose a challenge in organizing management system related information that only IA/UX can address. I have written more about this for a FUMSI article. Even informal management systems can generate a huge amount of content which must be organized so that that it is findable and assessed for value.

Paper systems  This may seem incredible to some but these type of systems still exist in many organizations. However in certain situations, whether due to the type of workplace, resources or personal choice, paper based systems may be the most practical choice and guess what? They very often work fine, in which case they are often best left alone. However IA and UX approaches can be applied to and can improve all types of information systems not just electronic ones. Also where such systems are in operation, information about where and how they are being used must be included in the intranet so that a holistic view of all information components can be maintained.

So there you have it. I think that the Enterprise-wide Information System is probably some time away but I think it may provide a target that we should all be aiming for. So how do we move from where we are now to an EIS approach? Simple – one step at a time – use kaizen and you will get there eventually.

This post has also been a plea to people managing and working in intranets and internal communications to get their act together and stop being the poor relations of the internet world. The Lean Intranet approach, of which EIS is a part, states that we must start a journey towards the goal of an integrated, well managed information system in which the intranet/information workers of the future will be talented professionals operating in their own discipline and developing their own best practices and information solutions for the workplace.

I think it’s about time we got started!

(Thanks to atomicity for the great Flickr CC photo)

In Part 1 of this post I’ve tried to define a generic Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS) and reflect what is happening currently in many organization’s EIS. I’ve tried to show that the approach to considering information and knowledge transfers is at best fragmented and at worst not done at all. In this second post I’m going to describe the benefits of the EIS approach, how it might relate to IT and knowledge in the enterprise and also to look at the differences in working and managing the EIS as compared to current arrangements.

Major improvements in how organizational information is managed can, in my opinion, be gained simply through how we think about and perceive the system as a whole. Drawing a boundary around the intranet and other information management system components and managing them as stand alone systems will only perpetuate information silos on a grand scale. Organizations who think of and manage these separate components in a holistic way will reap many benefits but they must be prepared to change the way they do things.

Benefits of the EIS approach

Using the perspective offered by the EIS approach it now becomes possible to start thinking positively about how these separate components might better work together. This should benefit an organization in several ways -

• Duplication can be avoided
• All information channels and methods of communication can be considered and the best selected for particular activities
• Resource can be pooled and allocated where it will do the most good
• The message across all systems can be consistent and strategies to reinforce important communications across all system components will become possible
• Feedback can be aggregated across all systems
• Consideration of tacit knowledge and knowledge creation activities form an integral part of the EIS approach. This will contribute to innovation and continual improvement in the enterprise as well as insuring that valuable knowledge is retained within an organisation
• A holistic strategy for all communications and information can be enacted

  What about IT?

Traditionally many intranet workers have been IT oriented. IT skills were deemed to be important while the writing, formatting and managment of content was left totally up to the content owners.  All there is in an intranet is content and all users want to do is connect with it. Giving content a lower priority than the infrastructure that contains it is patently crazy. Its like someone buying wine based solely on how pretty the bottles are.

In my opinion the IT infrastructure is not that important. A set of Word documents on a shared server that contains good high value content, creatively linked will always be far more effective than the fanciest CMS with all the bells and whistles containing low value content. However I agree that IT need to be consulted and even be part of the team. However they should never be in a position where they can substantially influence the EIS strategy.

Working in the EIS

I have been writing recently about the Lean Intranet concept of which the EIS approach is a part. I have tried to draw a parallel between the Ford mass production paradigm and the ‘lean manufacturing’ concept invented at Toyota. In mass production the staff skillbase was very narrow and tasks were rigidly standardised leading to boredom and lack of motivation. In ‘lean manufacturing’ staff  had to become more flexible and multi-skilled in order to deal with the constantly changing workload. This also made the work more varied and interesting.

In the current paradigm, intranet staff and content owners are not  always suitably trained and very often do not have the necessary talent to do an adequate  job. Unfortunately, in some organizations, staff have even been consigned to the intranet after seemingly failing in other areas. It says a lot about how many senior managers view their intranets. Commenting on the 2009 Global Intranets Report Toby Ward of Prescient stated that only 14% of respondents considered their intranets to be ‘business critical’. The current attitude in many organizations that intranets and other internal information systems are of a low priority needs to change. However with many senior managers generally having a very low opinion of intranets due to past failures I think changing attitudes will be an uphill struggle but it is one we must engage in.

In the EIS workers managing information will have to be talented, multi-skilled, professional and motivated individuals if the approach is to work effectively. I have called these workers Information/Knowledge Specialists (INKS). These INKS will be responsible for managing and facilitating all information and knowledge activities and although they will be spread throughout an organization they will need to be centrally managed. They will not be IT technical experts but will be there to ensure that the message from the organization to its staff is getting across and that the information needs of all staff are being met. I absolutely agreed with James Robertson, speaking at the BBC last year, when he stated that the intranet workers of the future would need to be ‘people’ people rather than technical experts.

Knowledge in the enterprise

 ’Knowledge’ as a term used in the enterprise has been seriously damaged by IT functions hijacking the term ‘knowledge management’. Knowledge comes in two types according to Nonaka – ‘tacit’, the knowledge that exists only inside someone’s head and ‘explicit’, knowledge that has been documented in some way. However all the ’knowledge management’ people I’ve come across in the past few years were all IT types interested only in the infrastructure and not in ‘knowledge’ of either type.

I use Nonaka’s term ‘knowledge creation’ for the act of making knowledge explicit or, in other words, into information. Creating explicit information from the knowledge inside your users’ heads will greatly aid innovation in ensuring that new ideas are made widely available and in retaining important operational knowledge within the enterprise. It is also very important when considering continuous improvement. After all if you haven’t written it down how can you improve it?

In my vision of the EIS it will be vital that the same people, that is the INKS, be made responsible for managing all knowledge creation activities as well as internal and external information. All relevant information, whatever its source, can benefit an organization but it will benefit an organization more if information and knowledge in the enterprise is managed holistically. I really believe that an ‘information synergy’ can be attained by combining information from some or all sources and that this synergy can be far greater than the sum of its parts.

Managing the EIS

In order to ensure a consistent, holistic approach INKS must be centrally managed. This does not mean that that a rigid, one size fits all management style needs to be adopted. In my view INKS should be embedded in teams and act like an in-house consultant except that they will have the authority to say what does and what doesn’t appear in the EIS. If INKS are periodically rotated an organization will end up with a multi-skilled team that can support each other when required.

Managers of INKS Teams must always remind themselves that they are managing a customer service and that the customer always comes first. Suitable metrics such as time taken to answer enquiries, users’ perceptions of the services offered, penetration of communications and benchmarking beween systems within the EIS and with other EIS. This will contribute in ensuring that decisons made regarding knowledge and information management are rational and evidence based.

 A new discipline?

Although I see the INKS approach as largely being a subset of IA/UX approaches I strongly feel that the approach has the potential to become a discipline in it’s own right. In my view the internet and the enterprise probably have more that is different than they have in common and in the EIS approach INKS should be free to develop their own strategies, communities and shared best practice. Such best practice must be different to internet approaches as INKS must work in the long term within an enterprise framework with other disciplines such as Quality, Operations, Marketing, Projects , Finance etc and indeed must encompass and understand the knowledge and information from these other disciplines. INKS will become the generalists within an organization, the people who know, and their cross-discipline and cross-departmental perspective will make them indispensable in ensuring that an organization keeps it’s cutting edge. 

In Part 3 I’ll describe a new enterprise information/knowledge model and how IA and UX activities can contribute in improving every component of the EIS.

  (Thanks to atomicity for the great CC Flickr photo)

The second part of a three part series of articles on the Lean Intranet, where I discuss how a robust Intranet 1.0 might be achieved, is now available on the FUMSI website.

If you have any comments I’d be grateful if you could post them here.