Category: Emerging Case Studies
Intranet Trends to Watch For: Cultures and priorities vary, but there are some common issues for organizations as intranets continue to evolve. From Line56.
Shiv Singh hypothesizes about what’s next for the land of corporate intranets:
The trends identified below based on experiences with several large organizations will give you a hint of what’s coming and how to prepare for the next wave in your intranet’s evolution. Be careful, some of these trends may already be moving across your organization. Make sure that you’re ready for them.
Singh’s predictions include the following (for more detail about each, please see the full article):
# Intranets return to the domain of the departments
# The records management and the legal departments get involved
# All employees become intranet publishers
# The corporate telephone directory loses its luster
# The new killer app — the knowledge management tool
# Real time information delivery becomes a priority
# Information retrieval remains unsolved but there’s hope
# Employees demand a more aesthetic user experience
Based on recent conversations with clients, especially those who will implement Share Point in the coming months, these are right on. The only thing we’d add is that more and more of our clients are using their Intranet site to communicate what’s important to the organization by focusing it around their strategy. Ask yourself: How is our Intranet site supporting our organizations strategic communication objectives? Or even: What is our current site communicating that is in direct opposition to these objectives? The answers to both questions may include key metrics highlighted, reward and recognition systems, and even layout and headings.
MarketingProfs writes about Ten Companies That Missed Great Blog Opportunities. On the list: Newman’s Own, Teva, and DaimlerChrysler, which gets this critique from the profs:
Dan Barry reports in the New York Times that DaimlerChrysler has created what it called the “first ever” living window display when it challenged a family of three to live for five days in a 2004 Dodge Durango SUV parked in Times Square.
Just a silly PR stunt? Maybe. But it got a full column in About New York on the cover of the New York Times Metro section.
That’s no small feat, certainly. But they’ve missed a great opportunity for multimedia promotion. A blog of the family’s experience would have been interesting. Although streaming media from the site (or even a Web cam) would have been perfect for this stunt, there was not a word about it on the Dodge Durango site or the Chrysler site.
The Washington Post has a worth-reading account of Microsoft’s recent decision to restructure its employee benefits plan. It’s an interesting case study of the intersection of corporate policy, employee attitudes, internal communication, feedback, and personal publishing.
This article from Fast Company, A Little Help from Your Friends, provides some good background on how businesses use, or are thinking about using, social networking technology. (For more background on social networks, check out Alan’s previous post … and for more extensive background on social networking technology, check out Jeff’s previous post.)
So how does it work? These programs scan contacts in your address book, appointments in your calendar, and senders and receivers of your email, and then make maps of all the relationships they find among your contacts—and even go so far as to calculate the relationship “strength” based on the frequency with which you interact with the people in your network (we’ll get to that in a second).
bq. If it works for romance, why not commerce? A handful of companies have begun using Friendster-style social networking to help businesses and professionals find a perfect match. We’re not talking romantic partners here, mind you, but access to previously unreachable customer leads, investors, business partners, job candidates, and employers.
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One of our Associates, John Daly of UT-Austin, uses “amenity creep” … the continuing expansion of amenities hotels must offer guests to stay consistent with the competition … to illustrate how leaders can create unrealistic employee expectations by providing tangible ($) rather than intangible (”attaboy!”) rewards.
Today Silicon Valley Biz Ink offers an interesting reward and recognition case: The in-office DVD rental machine EarthLink is providing for employees. Trivial benefit and example of benefit creep, or as the press release says, “an excellent way to bring an element of fun to the workplace”?
In the wake of the highly critical Hutton report, BBC director general Greg Sykes has resigned. He made the right call…and his final email to all BBC staff sends an appropriate message. He takes responsibility, offers no excuses, and bids farewell in a way that is somewhat sentimental but not cloying.
This is the hardest e-mail I’ve ever written.
In a few minutes I’ll be announcing to the outside world that I’m leaving after four years as Director General. I don’t want to go and I’ll miss everyone here hugely.
However the management of the BBC was heavily criticised in the Hutton Report and as the Director General I am responsible for the management so it’s right I take responsibility for what happened.
I accept that the BBC made errors of judgement and I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that it will be hard to draw a line under this whole affair while I am still here. We need closure. We need closure to protect the future of the BBC, not for you or me but for the benefit of everyone out there. It might sound pompous but I believe the BBC really matters.
Click here to read the whole thing.
From Reuters:
U.S. companies are asking technology workers to help export a new product: their jobs.
As programing and other computer services move to low-cost locations in India and China, some workers are in the awkward position of training their replacements.
Software developer Mike Emmons was shocked two years ago when Siemens AG, the German telecom equipment giant, decided to replace him and his colleagues with lower-paid programmers from India.
According to Emmons, Siemens told about 20 workers in Lake Mary, Florida, that outsourcing was the wave of the future. The company gave them severance — provided they trained employees imported by Tata Consultancy Services of India to do their jobs.
Read the rest…
Does giving employees a half-day off during the holiday season for shopping or other errands count as a convincing decision that communicates the organization’s values? Or, given recent layoffs, does it communicate a lack of attention to organizational priorities?
And what message does a higher-up reversing the decision send?
Explore the case of the DHR Employee Shopping Day here at the Decatur Daily News.
In a follow-up to Jeff’s earlier post, here’s a link to Tufte’s website, where you may purchase The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, and his classic, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (which is required reading for all communication professionals).
While his essay is only available for purchase, you can read his analysis of a key Boeing slide here, which is a case study in its own right. Some other informative resources:
* Scott Steffens writes about Tufte’s essay here at his Contact Sheet weblog, and comments on Tufte’s and Jakob Nielsen’s contradictory advice on how to present information online.
* The New Yorker published an article by Ian Parker, titled Absolute PowerPoint, which is worth reading.
* Aaron Swartz posts a parody of Tufte’s essay … his argument presented as a PowerPoint outline … here (also on a weblog).
* We posted here the Gettysburg Address via PowerPoint.
* Last but not least, you may find our own guidance, CRA’s one-page Principles of PowerPoint, here.
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Charles Schwab co-CEO David Pottruck, interviewed in the current issue of Context Magazine, offers useful insights about internal communication.
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