The Intranet Maturity Framework wiki / Insights

Table of Contents

from Intranet Managers

Keep it simple: Treat your intranet like Google. Don’t make it any more complicated than it needs to be. Employees are busy people who don’t use the intranet for entertainment. Give them exactly what they need to do their jobs. Do not distract them from their core business tasks; you’ll lose your funding in a flash.
Get executive sponsorship: Intranets only succeed if they have executive sponsorship. Don’t try to redesign your intranet if you don’t have support from the highest levels in your company. Keep in mind that it is not enough to get executive support from your own boss. Your executive needs to convince his peers of the value; otherwise you’ll hit roadblocks as soon as you do something that has an impact on another department’s intranet.
Don’t over-complicate the governance: Intranets need strong governance models to succeed, but they don’t need complicated ones. If your governance model is burdened by too many layers, you’ll get mired in bureaucracy. Your end users will be lost in the layers of management. Start simple; you can always extend governance when you see the need.
Continuously validate with users: Intranets are expensive to build, and if you build wrong, you’ll lose goodwill and credibility. Don’t design in a vacuum, and take the extra time to validate your designs. Shop them around with as many users as you can. Show them to every senior manager you can reach. Even publish them on your old intranet and invite feedback from employees across the company. You’ll save time and money in the long run.
Manage change through communication: Recognize that changing an intranet can be a difficult process, both for existing intranet publishers and employees. Communicate frequently and sincerely about your intranet redesigns. Do a lot of handholding to mitigate the pain. Your employees may not be ready for the best practices that you’re planning to introduce and your intranet designers may be fearful that they’re going to lose their jobs.
The intranet is not a silver bullet: Intranets are essentially support tools. If page views do not quadruple after a redesign, don’t lose faith. The applications that are linked from the intranet may be to blame, not the intranet itself. In some cases, there may be business processes that shouldn’t be on the intranet at all. Just because the intranet exists, it doesn’t mean you should try to move everything to it.
Always consider channel integration: Just as messages to customers are kept consistent across different channels, the intranet should support communications distributed to employees via email, company television, voicemail or print. Excessive duplication is not the answer, but continuing the message from email or an offline medium to the intranet will create a natural direct channel fulfillment model.