Catherine Grenfell presented the second session of the day, about the Intranet Leadership Forum. Catherine is from Step Two Designs in Australia, and is in New Zealand on her first visit.

“Catherine comes to Step Two Designs with a background of managing highly-successful intranet teams and IT projects in the corporate sector. She is the manager and full-time facilitator of the Intranet Leadership Forum, as well as a senior member of the consulting team. “

The Intranet Leadership Forum is a group of people who get together to share their expertise and learn about making intranets more effective. Paid membership in the Forum includes:
– Quarterly meetings
– Access to reports
– Member only web sites
– A pledge of confidentiality

Today
We’re going to do an “information session” as per what we’d do in a seminar. I’m going to show examples of intranets from companies around the world. Some examples are from members, and others are from applicants to the Intranet Innovation Awards.

Intranets shown include (I’m respecting confidentiality, hence I’ve made this more generic):

• An entertainment organization … The transition from 2004 to 2007. Through a number of revisions, one of the key drivens was making pictures smaller (they were too dominant, the navigation bar was too difficult to see). The current Intranet has lots of sections, and the front page is personalizable. They have found that people are scared of the “edit” button … they think they will break things. The CEO has a commitment to respond to questions from across the organization — and he’ll respond every day. This has been very good for the Intranet. It still has a busy look, but will be subject to further testing.
• A government department … From a long list of links, to something with more areas and main points. The Intranet manager got slammed for the navigation structure — because they’d done very little negotiation. The Intranet manager picked herself up, and ran a number of virtual focus groups over the next 6 weeks (she used a blog to gather feedback — she outlined what she thought, and then asked for feedback and comments. This resulted in a new, user-centered navigation. The intranet manager is a legend!
• A car maker … Some major financial issues plus cultural problems a couple of years back. Created a new leadership focus, that was embedded in the Intranet. A “Leadership University” was added, with resources for becoming a better leader, plus resources to help leaders work with teams better. The approach worked because there was a compelling reason for change, and the leadership of the organization drove it.
• A property advice firm … Created a blog (although didn’t call it that) to replace a lot of email traffic. People were able to go and read the information there, rather than filling up email inboxes.
• A local council … Wanted feedback on a strategy, so used a blog to post the strategy and ask for feedback.
• A government department … Created a mashup to show people’s office locations on a map.
• An insurance firm … They interviewed a lot of people about how to recognize a fraudulent claim, and then built an expert system that flags things automatically if they appear fraudulent. This was something the people really wanted, and it drove a lot of traffic to the Intranet.
• A global software development firm … Created a meeting planner to tell people when people in different offices are awake or asleep. The intranet manager gets the time zone information from another site, rather than maintaining it internally.
• An architectural firm … 700 people, with 11 offices around the world. Developed a couple of ways to encourage collaboration — both formal community needs (with practice area communities), and informal communication.
• On staff directories … People want to find people by role (key search approach). Staff directories that link multiple systems together … eg, integrating presence into the staff directory … are good ideas. Another organization puts in color-coding on phone numbers in the directory, telling staff what phone numbers they can give out to callers vs. not, and in what situations (eg, general vs. emergency). But watch out for color-blind people.

Key Takeaways
– Gain extensive knowledge of how your users work and perform their duties BEFORE making decisions about usability and navigation structure.
– Things that work for one organization won’t necessarily work for everyone.
– Don’t underestimate the value of good branding and ongoing Intranet promotion.
– Providing a link to submit news on the front page keeps the home page fresh.

Any Stand Out Ideas?
Feedback from the audience:
– “I liked the synonyms tools”
– “Ask the CEO is a great link”

Conclusion
We’re all on a journey. It’s about sharing within a group, and learning how to improve over time.