There are three things I’ve learnt about success, and I’ve learnt a great many further things about each of them. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an article, designing a website, launching a cosmetic product or a global brand. These three points seem to come up time and time again in all ‘success musings‘. Do you muse?

Focus

Specifically know where your project is heading, and its objectives. Know exactly what actions you’re taking to reach your vision, and what actions you will take next. Concentrate on your goals, your vision, your objectives and focus your actions in a laser-like manner.

Alternative learnings remind you to diversify, to have many fingers in many pots and to have several audiences so that if one revenue stream or client base dries up, you have other markets to hold you up.

Go where your audience goes

Whoever you’re serving, go where they go, and make your service accessible. This might be philosophically, or it might be physically (hence the need for social network ‘outposts’ outside of your main website). Some projects can draw people in, but most need to take the mountain to the people. Any barrier (however insignificant to you) can stop an audience member engaging.

Alternative learnings remind you to funnel people’s behaviour so that they come to assume that “your way is the only way” – see Starbucks, eBay and Facebook.

Do the work

Work hard and fast. Get it done, get it our there, show it, talk about it, use it. Planning is important, but unless you’re carving in stone, getting the project into the hands of real people is more important than getting absolutely everything perfect. You will have a second edition if your audience can fall in love with the first edition.

Alternative learnings remind you to have a good plan, that covers most of the bases. You don’t have to plan for every risk, but you do have to have a concept for every eventuality. You have to plan for more than the life of the project, you have to plan for what happens after launch. A good plan might concentrate on quality, which might help you reduce the scope, which reminds you to focus.

My name is Wedge and you can find me at kilobox.net where I talk about good communications. This particular text is free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0

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Photo credit: Auntie P

I’m sharing these draft ideas with you. Not all of them will relate to your company, culture or intranet, but perhaps you can steal some of these ideas to convince your stakeholders to ‘open up’ the intranet a little.

I’m drafting this for business people who don’t use Twitter, and only care about Facebook because their children are on it. This ain’t news to the social media-heads out there!

Managing, sharing and creating new knowledge

We have no real Knowledge Management strategy, and people rely on difficult documentation and ad hoc tactical tools to share and find knowledge.

Because our intranet does not provide any collaborative tools, except Local Publishing (which no-one uses or understands) our intranet is merely a ‘broadcast’ tool, and does little to share knowledge – it merely announces ‘things’.

Our intranet can become a KM tool for everyone with access.

If our company knew what our company knows we’d double our effectiveness.

If our company knew what our company used to know we’d halve our inefficiencies.

Bill Quirke explains that knowledge resides in pockets within the Company’s informal network. Our communications infrastructure has never been designed to encourage sharing between pockets. We need to use internal communication and tools to create a sense of community and mutual interest to encourage sharing. It doesn’t have to be ‘one’ community; people can be members of several. Knowledge management and sharing do not happen automatically; time and space for conversations are needed, along with tools to cross time and location barriers. Networking lines are different from hierarchical lines, and always have been.

An aim for our intranet could be, not to create an encyclopædia of dead information (although that is part of what our intranet must provide) but to connect people to people, and people to solutions.

Therefore we should provide the technology to give people access to each other (and know why they might talk) and support a culture that gets, and keeps, people talking.

Profiles will allow people to explain and express their role, responsibilities, duties and interests and expertise.

Search engine will help people find people based on expertise, not just name.

Forums (Message Boards) would allow people to ask questions and get guidance from peers and from experts within hours or days. Teams could discuss the best way forward without having to rely on piecemeal emails (that often get missed and leave people out) or waiting for infrequent team meetings.

Forums would also be a great platform for larger engagement. Asking people for ‘Your Ideas’ or calling for information etc.

Comments and commenting on intranet stories would engage and help us learn from each other.

Moderation

There are several moderating systems; different moderation styles are appropriate for different purposes / audiences.

Comments and discussions could be moderated:

After the fact – Moderators (Administrators) could review comments / messages on an ad-hoc basis, using their best judgement and also responding to any concerns flagged up by other people. ‘Flagging’ could be done informally, or formally through a system.

Before the fact – Moderators would log in every day / every hour (as appropriate) and read through all submitted comments. Deleting, editing and then approving for online public display.

Self-moderated – because people must adhere to our code of conduct and our online comms policy, they are beholden to be accountable for what they say and do in the office, on site and online. Guidelines and an online Comms Policy would be created to support respect for self, others and our Company.

Self-moderation is an assumption, and works very well when combined with After the fact moderation.

Self-moderation is what we already have when we consider phone calls and emails. Self moderation will be the default concept within ‘private’ team sites on our intranet.

Before the fact moderation for comments may be necessary on high-level corporate news articles (like the BBC does).

After the fact moderation may be appropriate on non-front page non-corporate intranet articles.

Bill Quirke goes on to remind us that a person’s ability to internalize and act on information is directly linked to how they get to reflect on, question and clarify it.

Again, we’re reminded of the Chinese proverb:

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

- which has been oft used by professional communicators.

Online collaborative spaces and expression spaces (Forums, Comments) allow people to engage with a message, not simply passively read it.

We are constantly talking about ‘changing people’s behaviours’ and yet our actions (our comms) often only ‘create awareness’. A new collaborative intranet can truly affect people, rather than ‘tell’ people.

“The aim of internal communication should be to share the thinking, not to announce the conclusions.”

“Involving people early translates into a greater understanding of change and smoother implementation.”

Bill Quirke

“you will not have institutional learning until you have developed the ability to flock.”

Arie de Geus

Help! I’ve been talking about ‘user centred design’ for our intranet, but I now need to put it in writing, which means I need to specify the following:

Information will be published in the relevant, logical (to our people) section of our intranet, rather than within the Department section. While Departments will continue to own and publish the information they won’t place it in their Departmental website, but rather in the logical section where the information fits best, relating to similarly themed content, as laid out in the overarching Intranet Structure Map.

‘Department websites’ on our intranet will be reserved for obvious, natural team information such as how to ‘contact us’.

Example:

A web page (and associated PowerPoint process map) entitled: Amending Your Pension Payments.

The Pension Department will publish this page within the main, well known, “How do I” section, alongside other personnel and job management pages. It will not reside within the little ‘Pensions’ website, within the HR departmental intranet site.

Well? What do you think? Is this the right thing for me to insist upon? If so, have I written it in an understandable manner?

Please help; this is a real life situation for me, and my stakeholders haven’t any time to even consider what I’m talking about – the very concept of ‘where pages reside’ is too detailed for them – I need to lead on this.

Thank you

[Wedge]

Photo credit: Howard Gees

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My writing started in school, where I was fortunate enough to be allowed to take Media Studies and English Literature (teachers said it was ‘too specialised’ but allowed me when I demonstrated by commitment to writing). I continued at college, where I took further creative and literary courses (and mostly failed to take them seriously I’m sorry to report [family crises]). But it was only when I started doing some external comms that I truly reflected on the needs of the reader, and it was only working with awesome bosses that I began to learn about grammar!

So I’m a hands on writer now; I’ve honed my craft in real-life situations, and I’ve learned the rules and when to break them. I’m still learning of course, and I hope the bits I share with you are useful. Here are five more ideas to guide writers and communicators when the message really matters.

The first draft is powerful; the sixth, spineless – of course I use review cycles; of course news, articles, pages and documents need approving. But committees will hack into the tone and style when they don’t need to. Content and style are separate.

Words without meaning – have no place in our clear communications. Oh the comedy!

Enough is as good as a feast – the balance between clear concise communications and the need for context and understanding.

The difference between good writing and a good message – almost a manifesto! Several good ideas to free your writing, plus three lists to help you hone your message.

Who’s asking who when you write questions? – a personal vendetta of mine. Don’t change ‘voice’ in your articles.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

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As an Internal Communications geek, specialising in the intranet, I’ve been sharing ideas for many years now. Might I interest you in the following?

Your intranet is not a channel for you to vent on –
regardless of how few people took note of your article or attended your event…

Everything you know about intranets is wrong – well, maybe not what ‘you’ know, but you’ll recognise these communication fallacies I’m sure.

The future of internal communications – my word; I wrote a fair essay on what I don’t want for the future of comms, and I’m wondering what the real future of Comms 3.0 might be.

You can’t make people care – you can’t, but you can use communications to lead in to engagement activities. Check my six points for how you can do more than merely answer people’s needs and queries.

How to provide your company policies – different Document Control Systems use / demand different processes for publication, but the intranet is often the default distribution system, so how best can you provide high-level documents?

I mentioned my five best intranet design ideas earlier, if you’d like to check ‘em out.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

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Photo credit: dailypic

I’ve been writing about Internal Communications for many years now, and have focussed on intranet best practices quite a bit in recent years. Here are five good ideas for designing and improving your current intranet:

Seven easy intranet
improvements to make this month – with no financial outlay and just some common sense, you can improve your intranet pages now and forever more.

The disappearance of front page news –
how do your readers find your intranet news stories? – ‘news archives’ are usually a poorly designed ‘black hole’ where stories go to die. How can we improve the archive’s usability?

The font size in your communications – Microsoft Word, emails and the intranet all have different default font sizes, and different font measurement scales.

Grab your reader by the eye balls – people ‘see’ the page before they read it. The secret is to have good layout with multiple locations for the eye to rest on and a flair with images.

One for external websites – Are you chasing PageRank and SEO? – Five things you can do to raise your external / customer facing website’s profile.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

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Photo credit: clarksworth

Before we start, don’t talk to me about altruism; I’ve done my social psychology homework. Today, my perspective is from within a massive office.

Sorry about the title. I don’t know any ‘office idiots’ and I absolutely agree that ‘ignorance’ (of a system, of a process) is not a crime, but merely a ‘learning need’. ‘Ignorance’ is not an insult judgement word, it is a describer. I am ignorant of court etiquette, no biggie!

That said, I want to ask the big philosophical question of:

“Why should you share your expertise with an unknown office person who you don’t have a relationship with and never will? Especially when their role or expertise can never benefit you or your role.”

Bill Quirke (Internal Communications consultant) has said that when it comes to Knowledge Management a person has to “care before they share”.

My question above leads to further thoughts. Why do unknown people seek you out in particular? Is your reputation so jolly good, or is your role so arcane and esoteric there literally is no one else to ask?

Why not have a relationship with them? Relationships don’t have immediate pay-offs in the literal sense, but they add value and connectivity in abundance.

How do we know their role or expertise will never benefit us? If they’re office strangers to us, we don’t know what they know! They may have a personal passion for Excel, they might know everything about Gannt charts! Maybe they know everyone else who you might like to know; maybe they have personal power and influence that you don’t. You’ll never know how they might make your life more pleasant and easier if you don’t give them a chance to work with you.

But, in this age of the Internet, the intranet, repositories of ‘How To Guides’ and process maps, why are these people asking you instead of making the effort to better themselves and learn something? Learning takes place when things are applied (experimentation theory of learning).

The answer to “Why should you share?” might be that you’re part of a community, with shared aims. You might not know Julie from Accounts, and it may be highly unlikely that you’ll ever call on her help with one of your Customer Focussed Projects, but if your company has a goal, and you’re all working towards it in your own departments, then you’re in a community are you not?

Hmm, that feels a bit weak I admit. Bill Quirke says we have to care, and while we may all claim to care about the company goals, they don’t drive us each hour of each day do they – they’re strategic, not tactical. Tactical working means getting your work done so that your boss and clients are helped, and think your work and your role and you yourself are brilliant.

Is that mercenary of me to say it out loud?

Consider the old adage that “we’re a team”, and that “we share success as a team”. Bull. Teams don’t get promoted (in the UK, few people do either). Teams don’t get pay rises together. Teams don’t get to apply for better roles. An individual who wants to progress has to progress on their own merits (job interview) based on their successful projects and programmes. Along with the usual ‘works well in a team’ off-hand mention.

Before I start experimenting by telling unknown office people “I’m sure you can find that stuff on the intranet or Google” please let me know your answer to the big question.

[Wedge]

Photo credit: WonderFerret

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You must have heard of TinyURL.com, bit.ly, ow.ly, goo.gl, droplr.com and other such ‘web address shortening services’ and you may well be using them without fuss or thought in your emails and tweets.

But do you use them when you’re at work with colleagues or do they cause confusion with non-techy people?

Did you know you can use your fave shortening service with intranet URLs? Oh yes. And here’s why you would want to.

Emailing a colleague a link to a specific page on your intranet shouldn’t be a problem, but what about when you want to promote an intranet page or section in print? If you have posters, newsletters, magazines, desk-drops, and letters home, you may need to help them find a specific area of your intranet. They might have the latest staff magazine in their hands, and want to know more while sat in front of their computers.

In your print material, you could:

a) Just state the URL in full. I mean, hey, your intranet might use beautiful human-readable URLs like this:

http://intranet.yourcompany.net/people/pensions/increase-in-pensions-for-all

But often, due to incredibly poor decision making on the part of the implementation designers, intranet web addresses look more like this:

http://intra.gdw5/Home%20page%20articles/2010/new/our%20people/Home%20page/news/gdwTemplate0012_new_page_45692367580.stm

The first address, well, it might just be possible that people will take the time to type in all those words and slashes. The second address? They’re life would have to be at risk to make them type all that rubbish into their address bar!

b) Use a ‘bread crumb’ style nudge to help people navigate to the right section, like this:

For more information, please visit our intranet and go to:
Our People > Pensions > Increase in Pensions for All

That ain’t so bad is it? But what if the page you wish people to visit has been dumped by an enthusiastic but amateur publisher deep deep down into the bowels of your intranet? Image an bread crumb like this:

Human Resources > Human Resources home > Learning & Development > Training and Tools for Managing People > Self-help Tool Kit for Managing People > Developing your Team

While it’s almost navigable, it takes up too much space in a magazine. Print media cares about word count. A lot.

3) Use your fave address shortener.

Go to the intranet web page you want to talk about, copy the web address from the address bar of your browser, and now head over to your fave shortening service.

Paste your address in, and the shortening service will make it very small. Copy the new short address, and test it by pasting it into your browser’s address bar. It should take you to the page you wanted.

If your intranet asks you to log on, then log on, and it should then take you to the page you wanted :)

If your intranet asks you to log on, and then dumps you on the front page, then you have a problem. You may have to paste the short address in again, and maybe this time your intranet will believe you have access rights, and give you the correct page.

If your intranet does ask your users to log on a lot, you may have to let them know in your magazine. Something like:

Please make sure you’re already logged into our intranet before using the address below.

P.S. Your intranet is not accessible at anytime to the shortening service. The service merely assigns a short address to the long address you’ve given it.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments; there may well be tech restrictions in different companies.

[Wedge]

Photo credit: Dawn Endico

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The Interwebs loves infographics; funny Venn diagrams and pie charts have entire web communities devoted to their production. Internal Communications can make good use of graphics to explain and display numerical data, and I’m not saying you should take a screen shot of a bar graph you made in Excel. No, in 2010, graphics need to be pretty. Sorry, but style does matter, and the substance benefits from good styling.

Create graphics by hand, using Photoshop, Fireworks. Serif or your favourite image creation software. You’ll want to create coloured circles and squares; it’s not too much of a challenge so give it a go.

Before you start though, check out 11 Ways to Visualise Changes Over Time – which shows you what lines, circles and squares can do for you and your communications.

I’ve used some simple graphics, see:

• The difference between a website and a real organisation
• Where does all my time go?
• Jakob announces the best intranets
• Facebook no longer does what it did

[Wedge]

Antagonistic line managers who hate people, distrust the business and have their own strategy at odds with the company’s have to be the major blocker on communication.

People can’t thrive on ‘broadcast’ comms from above all the time; they want face-to-face communications and time to express themselves and give feedback. People want to be involved with the direction of the company, and full understanding of business change and the whole strategy can only happen when a person is involved – and that means two-way comms. Conversations, as we used to call them.

C. Hopton, Bain & Co in 1994 found that:

Better communication creates better employee satisfaction.

Better communication improves perception of line manager.

Higher satisfaction reduces staff turnover.

High retention of staff creates higher customer satisfaction.

Higher customer retention equals higher profitability.

It’s that second item I want to focus on!

The cool thing about great communications is that they make line managers look good even if that manager is only passing stuff on. If they ‘pass stuff on’ with aplomb and confidence in the business, their people will rate them as a ‘good communicator’ and therefore a better manager.

If you’re a manager and want to be seen as an awesome leader, get friendly with your local Internal Communications Specialist – you may well get news early, and you can ask for help in crafting your own messages and delivering corporate messages with meaning.

[Wedge]

Photo credit: Paul-W

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