[Sigia-l] Intranet strategies and fundamental assumptions - to portal or not to portal?

[Boniface Lau]

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Lamantia, Joseph C.
>  
[...]
> 
> 3 - it is possible to establish centralized tools to support 
> points 1 + 2 in a tightly siloed 

"Tightly siloed" environment is not conducive for inter-silo sharing.
If, like everyone else, your company is already keeping all employees
very busy, it is going to be an extremely tough challenge to maintain
a steady flow of content contributions.


> and somewhat cranky cultural environment

A cranky culture tends to have low tolerance for things "not invented
here". Thus, even if you have lots of contents, getting those contents
used in another silo is going to be another very tough challenge.

Unless the company has something in place to effectively counter the
"tightly siloed and somewhat cranky cultural environment", there is a
very high likelihood that the portal will just sit there gathering
dust.


> We've not yet identified the incentive mechanisms which we hope will
> encourage participation; 

I would consider the incentives as the first order of business. After
the incentives had been identified, I would then look into the portal
design to make sure that it would support those incentives. Important
to let the business case (in this situation the "incentives") drives
the portal design, not the other way round.


> alternatives for this that we've discussed are:
> 
> For incentives:
> 
> 1. recognition and status awards as part of the employee community
> (soft stuff, but meaningful in an engineering culture which respects
> practical knowledge as an achievement
> 
> 2. connecting generation of high-quality content to staffing / hr
> protocols - like reviews, bonus requirements, etc.

The above incentives are add-ons. Sooner or later, business pressure
will push aside those add-on incentives.

A successful portal has incentives that tie to business survival. To
discover that kind of incentives, you need to know how the different
business units justify their existence.


Boniface