At some time or other every intranet manager has to do a presention. All those stakeholders and vested parties demand it. If like me, you’re one of life’s introverts, you dread these moments, even perhaps avoiding them. In fact I wouldn’t be suprised if the number one reason some intranets do not have a senior stakeholder is due to the fear, and hence avoidance of having to present to said stakeholder.

I get email updates from an intranet group and recently they’ve added a jobs section. So I’ve been having a quick dip in to see what the jobs are like in the intranet world of today. This led me to do a little lunchtime research on intranet jobs on some of the web jobs sites such as Trovit and Monster. What I found was quite depressing.

Generally, intranet managers are also savvy about using web pages, searching through reams of information and making things work. Intranet managers also have a level of tolerance with complexity and frustration. Some staff in your organisation may also have these skills, but not all will. The aim is for the intranet to be as easy and quick to use for all.

In a nutshell the biggest mistake intranet managers can make is to use their personal web experience to drive intranet decisions.

Here are two common examples:

Intranet manager:
The home page is too boring, it needs a little freshening up.

Staff member:
Why do they keep moving things around? I could find it yesterday.

Intranet manager:
Our staff directory should be just like Facebook and let everyone create personal profiles and include a status on what they are working on.

Staff member:
I just want to find who to follow up in accounts.

[Read the full article by Catherine Grenfell]