E-commerce Resources

Henry Ford brought combined the availability of developed power (electricity) with the scientific management principles pioneered by Frederick Taylor. Ford and his like made the 20th Century the American Century. The American worker became more productive than any other worker in the world.

"Set aside pure power for a moment, " Peter Huber and Mark Mills write in their book, The Bottomless Well. "What we really want is speed. And we crave speed because it saves time, the scarcest resource of all. We demand faster cars, trains, and planes, faster computers and Web connections. We even demand faster televisions: according to one study, the average home uses about 5 percent of its electricity powering the instant-on circuits in TVs and other appliances because when we want Letterman, we want him NOW.

If you were looking for "Letterman" on the average intranet would you be able to find him NOW? Probably not. Why not? Because the average intranet isn't managed. There might be quality people in the intranet team who want to manage but they have no power. At best, they are nominally in charge, but they have no real power or authority.

Finding people is the top task on most intranets and yet is greatly neglected by most organizations. Senior management neglect the intranet, partly because they don't use it. (They get their secretaries to find Letterman.) And intranet teams are measuring the wrong things, like traffic, hits and page views. Is more traffic a good thing? Why? Do you think the Toyota web team has been jumping for joy because of the recent traffic spike on its websites?

I've been working with intranets since 1997. I have observed behaviour and seen feedback from thousands of employees from all over the world. The number one complaint, by a huge margin, that employees have of their intranets is: "It's a WASTE OF TIME!"

Focus on service. Focus on your employees' time. Be relentless in seeking to save it. If you do you will create a great intranet. It's as simple and as difficult as that. Why is it so difficult? Because we humans care most about our own time. We find it extremely difficult to serve and focus on saving other people's time.

Great intranet teams have a culture of service. I once asked an employee what her definition of a perfect intranet was. Her reply? "A perfect intranet is a survivor's guide to a shitty week."

About the Author

Gerry McGovern, a content management author and consultant, has spoken, written and consulted extensively on writing for the web and web content management issues since 1994.