Executive support is crucial to successful development and evolution of an organisation’s intranet. However in many organisations executive support is limited. Many executives do not even use the intranet, but ask others to find information for them.

This article focuses on ways to educate the executive about the intranet, in a planned and focused way. These approaches may include:

• showcasing other intranets
• demonstrating staff feedback
• understanding what executives need
• reviewing existing strategy
• prototyping business solutions

Executive staff are focussed on business goals such as increased customer satisfaction, safety targets or opening into new geographical markets. The intranet has a role to play in enabling staff to achieve these goals. One of the key opportunities for the intranet team is to create an intranet that actively supports the goals of the organisation.

Intranet teams are in a unique position to assist the executive in new and useful ways. The intranet is the one application that goes across the entire organisation and is constantly evolving with the business.

Educating the executive leads to an improved working relationship between the executive and the intranet team. By building trust, credibility and a shared understanding of intranet best practice and staff needs, intranet teams and executive teams can work together to build an intranet that is really useful to the organisation.

[April KM Column by Catherine Grenfell, read the full article]