Pat’s Point of View

Over recent weeks I’ve been in Adelaide (see my photos) consulting with a large government agency regarding their intranet. It occurred to me that this work, as well as a lot of IA and user experience consulting, is much like being Super Nanny; much of your effort is directed towards changing the attitude of the ‘head of the family’.

Within any organisation that has an intranet there is usually someone who has control (although lack of ownership of it is often a major hurdle in delivering a successful intranet). This may be the IT department, or a dedicated intranet team. Combined with senior management these people are like the parents, with staff as the children.

Most of the time Super Nanny (Jo Frost, to be more precise) is involved, the parents are running around like mad idiots, screaming at the children trying to get them to behave. They’re so caught up in the day-to-day madness of it all, they don’t even know where to begin. The children just won’t do what they’re suppose to! But what you see time and time again is that it’s the parents that need work—the attitude and behaviour adjustment.

Super Nanny has to point out what’s going wrong, often to the discomfort and embarrassment of the parents. She needs to explain that it’s not the kids fault, it’s your fault. You can’t make the kids do what you want (especially whilst quite often acting contrary to your own rules…but that’s a whole other story). You need to work out what the problem is and find ways to solve it.

Do you see the parallels? Staff aren’t misbehaving when they don’t use the intranet. They’re not “breaking the rules” because they are disrespectful or out of control. Often the systems that have been put in place are simply not meeting their needs. Not only are intranets and procedures difficult for staff to use, often they’re completely irrelevant. Is it any wonder they don’t play nicely?

That’s why ‘needs analysis’ is the most crucial task in (re)designing an intranet. When consultants perform intranet needs analysis we aim to understand how staff work, then look at how the intranet is helping, hindering or simply not involved. Then we show this to those strategising, designing and administering the intranet (and related systems) so they too understand exactly what’s going on. This is the “Oh…that’s really what they do?” moment. Like videoing the parents before Super Nanny arrives, this holds a mirror up to themselves as much as anything else and usually illustrates the stark contrast between the reality of work life for staff and the vision acquired by implementers and management.

Many of the key techniques Super Nanny uses take the parents on a journey; from their current perspective through to one of understanding how things actually are and the effects on family life. Unless they tread that path they will not change and things will continue as they were, if not worse. Often the process might be given a name (such as the ‘naughty corner’) but these are age-old techniques which in the back of their minds the parents probably already know. Repackaging it as something new can cut-through like nothing else. Perhaps doing this reduces the dent on their pride? eg this new technique is the answer, so it wasn’t really my fault that I couldn’t solve it before.

Compared to this, the kids are a breeze. Once their environment and the expectations of the ‘powers that be’ are adjusted, they start behaving. They’re just happy that mum and dad are happy. And they’re happy that someone is taking some notice of them (the analogy in the intranet world is that staff are often happy that someone listens to them rather than just prescribing solutions on them without asking what they need).

Now, I’m not a parent (yet) nor am I an intranet manager, so I’m not saying either job is easy. They both require strong people skills and an ability to think outside your own box; what about me might not be right for this family/company? It’s also about being brave enough to admit the brutal truth and then go about making the necessary changes.

And with any luck, like most families Super Nanny visits, organisations wishing to improve their intranet will come out of the process with a renewed relationship with their colleagues and enthusiasm for continued progress. Preferably without the tears.

ps: A great deal of restraint was needed to not use the phrase “unceptable” in this post. Oops, there it is.

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