There are often situations where there is a difference of opinion between the central intranet team, and the decentralised authors, owners or stakeholders.

Depending on the team, there may be situations where they aren’t confident of tackling the issues, or winning over the decentralised groups.

To help build team confidence, and to win more of these arguments, there are three things all intranet teams should try to do:

1. understand staff needs and issues
2. put yourself in their shoes
3. build the team’s professional skills

Each of these is explored in the sections below.

Understand staff needs and issues

Discussions relating to intranet decisions should always be brought back to the real-world needs and issues of staff.

The intranet team should be one of the groups in the organisation best informed about staff practices. This understanding is built through ongoing time spent with actual staff, in operational environments, over time.

The earlier article Conducting intranet needs analysis outlines a range of techniques which can be used to conduct this research.

Information, examples and stories should be used throughout the discussions with the decentralised groups. These examples can help to demonstrate the importance of taking an action, or to illustrate how best to deliver a solution.

[CM Briefing 2008-07, read the full article]