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Intranet roadblocks (Perth, May 2006)

I've just finished running one of our Intranet Planning Day workshops in Perth, and right at the outset of the workshop I got the participants to brainstorm the roadblocks that were preventing them from delivering a great intranet.

This is the (unedited) list that they came up with:

• Lack of leadership
• No budget, resources
• Too big!
• Trying to please everybody
• What is it for?
• Unclear ownership
• Viewed as a one-off project
• People are happy with what they've got
• Change is resisted
• No methodology
• No buy-in
• Problems with the previous intranet
• Technology, not customer, focus
• Too many ideas that aren't used when implemented
• Authoring
• "Not being done for staff"
• Apathy

This is an excellent list, and I would make a few observations:

• This list is almost entirely to do with organisational and cultural issues, not technology, design or day-to-day management problems.
• The biggest issue is the lack of leadership, direction and buy-in.
• Practical issues (such as the design and structure of the intranet) are comparatively easy to solve, and are at least known problems.
• Intranet teams recognise very clearly the true nature of the challenges confronting them, even if they don't always deal with them directly (or at all).

Posted by jamesr on May 17, 2006 08:21 PM
Categories: Intranets