Do employees really need intranets?
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Join For FreeDo employees really need intranets? I really think this is a valid
question to ask, and to answer it I will tell you a story about
something completely different.
There once was a company that produced wheel chairs. It had designed a
line of wheel chairs that were so good that they come to dominate the
market for years. Then suddenly, when there seemed to be no company that
could make better wheel chairs for a competitive price, out of nowhere
came a new company that introduced a product that ended the glory days
of the wheel chair company. And guess what? The new product wasn’t even a
wheel chair. In fact, the new competitor had created a new category of
products that served the needs of physically disabled people better than
the traditional wheel chair could.
The wheel chair company suddenly found itself on a slippery slope with
dropping revenue and profit, as the market for wheel chairs seemed to
implode. Their new product launches didn’t really appeal to their
customers, many of whom had now switched from a traditional wheel chair
to the new type of product.
In a last desperate attempt to survive as a company, the wheel chair
company made an attempt to enter the new product category. It was a
brave attempt, but it turned out to be too late and their products
didn’t really add any value compared to the other copies that now
flooded the market. The company had been really good at designing and
producing wheel chairs, but the new product required a completely
different skillset, way of thinking and extensive collaboration with
other companies.
So, when looking back – where did it all go wrong? Well, at some point
the company must have confused the solution – the wheel chair – with the
need they were trying to serve with their products. They had failed to
understand the real need of physically disabled people. They didn’t
really need a wheel chair; what they needed was to move as freely in
society as possible, and for them the wheel chair was just a solution to
their needs. The new company, originally coming from another industry,
understood the real needs of the consumers and came up with a better
solution at an affordable price.
This story is of course entirely fictional, but if you started to think
about Apple (and perhaps Nokia) when reading this, I’m not surprised.
Apple is an example of a company that excels at understanding the real
needs of customers and coming up with innovations that help them
establish market-leading products. Instead of thinking differently, like
Apple, the majority of their competitors simply aim to copy Apple’s
success by copying their products, adding features and improving
technical specifications. They too, like the wheel chair company,
confuse the product with the need.
So, what does this fictional story have to do with intranets? It has everything to do with intranets!
Employees don't need intranets!
The most important question isn’t whether or not employees need
intranets, but rather what problem or need an intranet is intended to
solve, and for whom? Is it the same as it was in the beginning when the
first intranets were introduced, or has it changed? Is the intranet a
solution that solves these needs in a good way, or are there perhaps
better solutions around?
What organizations need to understand is that an intranet is a solution
to one or several business problems or business needs. During the last
ten years, the traditional view of what an intranet is became an
institution, something that seemed to have the right to exist on its
own. On the way, it got disconnected from the business problems it
originally was supposed to solve. Or rather, the original business
problem or challenge that intranets are used to address has changed. The
main business problem that organizations are trying to solve with their
intranets is no longer primarily about distributing centrally produced
corporate information to employees; they are using their intranets also
to support the tasks employees are performing on a daily basis,
including highly complex and collaborative tasks which requires a great
deal of participation, dialog, immediacy and flexibility.
So, do employees really need intranets? The answer is a distinct “No”.
What employees need is solutions that help them to be productive and
engaged in their daily work, helping them to achieve their goals and the
purpose and objectives they share with everyone else working in the
same enterprise.
The good old technology-centric silo-building days are over
We are clearly in a day and age when we cannot simply work in silos; be
it organizational teams, processes or business functions. We need to
work together, and we need to remove all barriers or unnecessary
friction that cripple our ability to work to together. This also means
that we need to think outside the box when it comes to our supporting IT
systems. We have to recognize that they have all been built to serve
specific needs in those silos, and that integration and the possibility
to access and sharing of information across systems is often an
afterthought and not one of the fundamental design principles. A way to
think outside the box is to become people-focused; understanding the
people, their tasks and the typical situations they find themselves in -
and designing the systems to support those. In that quest we cannot be
limited by tradition or clinging on to solutions that used to work; we
need to understand the real needs and continuously improve on our ways
of working by defining and designing innovative services and solutions.
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