Reaching hand

The catch 22 of developing an intranet strategy

It’s long been written that managers do not care about the intranet. Teams who attended our January strategy workshop told us that getting any management support was still very difficult.

Mostly, managers think the intranet is just another piece of technology. It’s a ‘thing’ which we ‘bought’ and it ‘works’ or is ‘broken’. If it’s broken then it needs attention from IT people, but please “don’t ask me to care about it when I have one million other things to attend to”. The very word ‘intranet’ may, in fact, be toxic if you want to get leaders engaged and supporting your work.

Managers who are interested in digital transformation care about strategy not technology. They care about an engaged workforce; improved response to customer questions; and reduced costs — as outcomes of good strategy.

If you want senior support and you believe your intranet really is part of digital transformation, then your challenge is to shoehorn yourself into meetings and projects that address these issues (instead of just being on the receiving end of a string of requests that flow out of them). Battering on these doors ain’t easy and before you start you need to have a plan – a strategy of your own – which directs your effort where you are likely to be successful and prepares you for the battles ahead.

So this is the catch: Managers do not care about the intranet because it is not seen as strategic; to make it strategic you need a recognised strategy but you can’t spend time on making a strategy because managers might tell you the intranet doesn’t need one — it just needs to ‘work’.

If you want to escape from this catch 22 get yourself and your team to our strategy workshop and attract the management attention you want (and avoid being just a ‘thing’ administrator).

Formulating your intranet strategy - workshop

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