Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)

Cool Hand Luke and why I'm passionate about intranets

       

by Andrew Wright

Am I becoming grumpy?

I’ve written a couple of articles recently, based on data from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) intranet benchmark service, that paint a less than rosy picture about the progress of intranets over the last few years.

In the article Are intranets becoming more collaborative and accessible? I noted that based on intranet end user feedback, intranets didn’t appear to be any more interactive or accessible than they were 4 years ago.

Then in the article, Is the size of intranet teams growing?, I reported that, again based on the evidence, the size of intranet teams was not growing (this was in sharp contrast to the findings of the NNG 10 best intranets of 2013 report).

Finally, in a recent Intranetizen article, Intranet2015: The Experts View, I commented that I didn’t think the majority of intranets in 2015 would look much different from today’s intranets.

So if you have read these articles you might be thinking I’m like a grumpy old man when it comes to intranets. This is not the case - in fact far from it.

 

Intranet motivation

I've spent many hours over the last few years identifying what makes intranets successful, running the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) online benchmark service, interviewing intranet managers, writing articles, managing the LinkedIn intranet group, providing intranet consulting services…

Why?

After a lot of thinking and reading, I have decided that this passion for intranets comes from a sense of disappointment about the way many people spend most of their working lives (including myself at various points in time).

I often catch the train to work and it’s depressing to see the perennial look of gloom on the commuter faces each morning. Work is this huge chore that must be endured, Mondays are the worst day of the week, the weekend cannot come quickly enough and retirement is the holy grail that we all work towards.

There must be a better way. After all, almost a third of our waking lives is spent working. That's a lot of time being miserable.

And I think that’s where intranets can play a role - they have an immense and untapped potential to help people obtain a greater sense of meaning & control over their work lives. But before I go on about the benefits of intranets, it’s worth looking at some of the research about what affects our satisfaction with work.

 

The Sisyphusian condition

Research about the meaning of labor by best selling author Dan Ariely has shown that when the meaning of a task is reduced, people’s effectiveness and motivation is also significantly reduced.

There is even a name for it  - the Sisyphusian condition (named after Sisyphus, who was a king of Corinth and was punished by the Gods for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever).

So essentially, the research is saying that when people feel their work is not of value, they lose motivation.

In the workplace, the Sisyphusian condition can take many guises including:

• The dreaded ‘silo’ condition - where people in different departments fail to communicate and share information effectively, resulting in inefficiencies and duplication of work effort
• The ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ phenomenon - where pointless tasks are done repeatedly because 'that’s the way it’s always been done around here'
• Great ideas that never get implemented  - related to the TTWWADI phenomenon, someone comes up with a great time saver, a new way to win customers, a new process...  but it fails to gain any traction and never gets implemented across the organisation because systems aren't in place to support effective change
• The 100 page Word document - which takes a long time to write, looks impressive but nobody reads, is never updated and is pretty soon out-of-date
• Searching for information - research suggests that knowledge workers can spend up to 25% of their time aimlessly searching around for information (and when they do eventually find it, it’s either out-of-date or wrong)
• Unclear roles and responsibilities - closely related to ‘the silo condition', similar tasks are being done by different people without any apparent awareness that someone else is doing almost the same thing.

An example of the Sisyphusian condition can be found the 1967 classic Paul Newman movie, Cool Hand Luke. In this movie, Luke (Paul Newman) is in prison because of a minor traffic offence. In one of the scenes, the prison captain is trying to break the rebellious Luke's spirit.

He does this by getting him to dig a big hole in the ground. Then he gets him to fill in the hole with the dirt, take the dirt out again, and repeat the process... So despite being busy and working hard, Luke is making no progress.

After many hours, demoralised and exhausted, his spirit is broken and he collapses in the hole and begs God for mercy (see the ditch digging scene).

I think about this scene whenever I feel myself doing pointless tasks - ‘digging the ditch’ I call it.

 

 

What really motivates people?

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives” says Daniel Pink author of the best-selling book, Drive.

He goes on to say that the three main factors that motivate people, once money is off the table, are a sense of purpose, autonomy and mastery.

A sense of purpose is where people feel that what they are doing is important. As Pink says “The most deeply motivated people - not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied - hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves."

Supporting this idea of purpose as a motivator is Jessica Livingstone. In her book about successful technology startups, Founders at Work she says “Successful startup founders typically get rich from the process, but the ones I interviewed weren’t in it just for the money. They had a lot of pride in craftsmanship. And they wanted to change the world.”

Autonomy is the freedom for people to work how, where and through whatever structures they choose. The traditional aim of management is ‘compliance’ but research has shown that real value comes when employees are ‘engaged’. And engagement comes from giving people greater autonomy over their working lives.

Mastery refers to the intrinsic motivation people have to be good at something. It’s why they spend countless hours learning musical instruments or a new language or practicing sports with little tangible reward. To obtain mastery, people need regular feedback.

See the video The surprising truth about what motivates us for more interesting insights from Dan Pink.

 

The most significant factor in workplace engagement

Research has shown that perhaps the single biggest factor that gives people the most benefit at work is the autonomy and flexibility to work from anywhere.

Wayne Clarke, the Managing Partner of Best Companies and an international expert on employee engagement, believes in a strong link between the ability to work flexibly and an engaged employee.  

“We did some specific work looking at the effect of flexible benefits on employee engagement. We looked at everything from health club memberships to profit-related pay to crèche schemes for kids. The only benefit we found that seemed to affect engagement scores was flexible working…”

More than 100 studies have confirmed the connection between employee engagement and performance, but the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study — 32,000 employees across 30 countries — makes the most powerful, bottom line case yet for the connection between how we feel at work and how we perform.

The research concludes that "organizations must create policies and practices that make it possible for employees to better manage their workload, live more balanced lives and exercise greater autonomy around how, when, and where they get their work done. Policies focused on flexibility and working remotely contribute to a more energized workplace".

 

So how can intranets help?

Looking at this research about what motivates people, some consistent themes appear - autonomy, meaning, flexibility, connectedness & mastery.

Intranets can significantly contribute towards addressing all of these themes, and in the process, become the business critical workplace that all intranet professionals dream about.

An intranet has the potential to support these goals in many ways including:

• Providing people with the access to the tools and information they need to do their jobs from anywhere at anytime, including off-site and mobile access
• Providing a mechanism that enables the collective skills and talents of the entire organisation to be harnessed  to identify and quickly implement good ideas and improvements across the organisation
• Forging stronger relationships between all parts of the organisation (and related third parties as well) to enable people to more deeply understand the informational requirements between roles and departments - ie. the contextual integration of business tasks
• Being the ‘glue’ that binds all the different organisational informational elements (eg. discussion forums, news, policies, web pages, procedures, forms, applications, reports, lists, collaboration sites) into a meaningful and accessible context
• Communicating a shared sense of purpose and meaning through stories
• Making it easier to find the information people need to do their jobs, using task based navigation and contextual integration
• Providing online training and feedback about work performance (at the organisational, team and individual levels)

 

Summary

While I still believe intranets haven’t made much progress over the last 5 to 10 years and still have a long way to go deliver the kind of benefits I’ve listed here, the day will eventually come when intranets will be the business critical workplace.

And I'm not alone in this belief. Two of the world's most respected organisations, Deloitte and the McKinsey Global Institute, have both published research reports recently that talk about the massive productivity gains that can be obtained through enterprise social technologies.

• McKinsey Report: Social technologies could raise productivity by 20-25% 
• The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies 

However, for these gains to happen, there needs to be a fundamental and radical shift from the perception of the intranet as an internal communications platform. Instead, it needs to be seen as an enabler of innovation, continuous improvement, task completion, connectedness and employee motivation.

While internal communications can and will play a critical supporting role in each of these areas, it should not be the raison d'être for intranets.

Organisations that can reach this new way of working first will obtain a significant, if not insurmountable, advantage over their less adventurous competitors.

 

The road scene from Cool Hand Luke

There is another key scene in Cool Hand Luke. The prisoners are putting tar on a road. Luke is again working hard but this time he is making progress. The road is getting built. The other prisoners are motivated by Luke's energy, follow his lead and begin working faster as well. Pretty soon the road is finished, two hours ahead of schedule (see the road scene from Cool Hand Luke).

This is how organisations can be - facilitating real and meaningful progress through improvements - both small and large - everyone working together in the same direction towards a common goal.

 

You might also be interested in

• Are you interested in becoming part of a worldwide network of independent intranet consultants?
• Are intranets becoming more collaborative and accessible?

 

Photo credits
Grumpy old man: www.etsy.com
Sisyphusian: www.writethinking.co.uk 
Motivation: www.harboursidefitness.com.au
Cool Hand Luke: www.steroidtimes.com 

Are intranets becoming more collaborative and accessible?

       

by Andrew Wright

Despite the hype around the social intranet, mobile access and enterprise collaboration; according to the latest data from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC), intranets aren't any more collaborative, interactive or mobile than they were 3 or 4 years ago. 

The graphs below show:

• The average ratings for the WIC survey questions related to collaboration and access for the last four years (Note: data is based on the following number of organisations for each year: 2009 = 30, 2010 = 17, 2011 = 39, 2012 = 50, 2013 = 4).
• The average rating of the first 70 surveys (25-May-09 to 20-Sep-11) and the average rating of the 2nd 70 surveys (25-Sep-11 to 11-Feb-13) 

The graphs below show the average response to the question:
"How often do you use the intranet to:"
where the possible options and allocated points are: More than once a day = 4  |   2-3 times a week = 3  |   2-3 times a month = 2  |  Infrequently = 1  | Never = 0

As can be seen from the above graphs, the numbers indicate a pretty low level of intranet interaction within organisations, with most numbers landing between "Infrequently" and "Never" (with the exception of online forms).

 

The graphs below show the average response to the question:
"Rate the following statement about the performance of the intranet:"
where the possible options and points are: Agree = 2  |   Not sure = 1   |    Disagree = 0

Why is this case?
There is no clear reason why online communication, collaboration and interactivity hasn't gained the same traction within the enterprise as it has in the mainstream. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media tools are signing up members at rapid rates. We've all seen the graphs showing that if Facebook was a country it would be bigger than India, China and Indonesia combined.

Some possible theories for this lack of uptake include:

• Social tools are primarily 'social' - for sharing photos, playing games, gossiping, meeting people - work is work. Just because people spend hours on Facebook is no guarantee that they will be similarly engaged during work
• Senior Management is old school - many people feel a little guilty responding to discussion forums, posting questions, and 'chatting' via electronic channels. What will the boss think? Much better to organise a real meeting so that everyone can see I am working.
• Senior management don't set the example - nothing sends a more powerful message than senior staff not actively participating in this new world
• Business value not clear - many of the arguments supporting the increased use of social media type tools at work are a little ephemeral. Improving employee engagement, encouraging better communication and collaboration, share knowledge - the value of these is a little hard to prove. 
• Asking for help or wanting to collaborate can be seen as a sign of weakness in the workplace - 'why doesn't Bob know the answer to that question - he must be stupid!'
• People don't want to share their knowledge - 'knowledge is power' as the saying goes - some people do not want to give up this power!

A recent Deloitte report titled, Social software for business performance,  says that focussing on adoption metrics, rather than real performance improvements was also part of the problem. The report says, "Focussing on adoption as a success metric will likely lead to failure because it engenders resistance. A recent survey found that 64% of companies implementing social software faced resistance from management and 72% faced resistance from users. Many senior executives are skeptical that social software can improve performance and are concerned it will be a distraction and undermine traditional authority structures".

 

What can be done about this situation?

While the above data may make for depressing reading for the enterprise social media evangelists out there, it can also represent a great opportunity for organisations willing to commit to enterprise 2.0 to get a head start on their competitors. There is compelling evidence that shows an interactive, collaborative organisation can be significantly more productive than those that follow the traditional 'command and control' model.

For example, recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute says that 'by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers - high skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals - by 20-25 percent." The report goes on to say that "Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises."

Also the Deloitte research - how to translate social business into bottom line results - says that: "Social software has potential to address operational 'pain points' and significantly enhance business performance in the short term and transform it in the long term. Companies that embrace this opportunity will have a distinct advantage over their competitors; skeptics will likely finish last".

In addition, research from the WIC has shown that if your intranet is more interactive, staff consider it more valuable. 

A recent CMS Wire article - Collaboration Isn't Working: What We Have Here is a Chasm - also talks about how collaboration is failing to gain traction in the workplace and discusses a possible approach for improving this situation.

A recent presentation by Toby Ward discusses the State of the Social Intranet. It shows that social media and mobile access both rank poorly within organisations but social media tools are also widely available within organisations. So it would seem that it's organisational culture and adoption that is the barrier. The presentation then goes on to provide some tips for putting together a business case to support the social intranet.

 

In many cases, the use of these technologies require a 'leap of faith'. Those organisations that believe in the possibilities of a different collaboration model and have real commitment from their leaders will gain a significant head start over their competitors.

 

How interactive is your intranet - and what you can do to improve it?

If you are interested in finding out exactly how interactive your intranet is in comparison with over 120 other organisations, why not participate in the WIC? The WIC is a free online benchmark survey that asks your end users what they think about your intranet and then allows you to benchmark this information against other participating organisations. So why not register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC).

 

You may also want to read:

• If employees spend more time on the intranet, does this mean it's more valuable?
• Delivering an interactive intranet: case study from #1 ranked interactive intranet: nSynergy 
• Is the size of intranet teams growing?

Is the size of intranet teams growing?

       

By Andrew Wright

NNG released their annual top 10 intranet awards earlier this year. One of the main findings about the 10 winning entries is that 'although organization size has been decreasing, the average intranet team size is increasing—this year to an impressive all-time Design Annual high of 27 people working on the intranet". 

The report goes on to say that "Intranet teams equal 0.14% of the organizations’ entire employee pool (i,.e., 1.4 intranet staff members per thousand employees). This is double the previous high of 0.07% last year."

 

According to the WIC, the size of intranet teams is stable

To provide some comparative data, I compiled the following information about intranet team size based on the 454 organisations who have registered for the free online web based intranet benchmarking service, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC).

The data from these registrations shows that intranet team size has remained steady over the last 4 years and that the ratio of intranet team members per 1000 staff is most likely around 0.2  to 0.3 (1 staff member per 4,000 - 5,000 employees). 

As can be seen from the following chart that shows the average number of intranet team members per 1000 employees over the last four years, there has been little change in this percentage.

The above data is based on the following number of organisations who have registered for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) since 2009:

• 2009 - 106
• 2010 - 73
• 2011 - 127
• 2012 - 148
• Total = 454

 

Notes on how data was compiled

The initial data is obtained when potential WIC participants answer the following two questions as part of the WIC registration process:

• Size of organisation (nbr of staff) - where the options are: 
  • 0-100
  • 101-1000
  • 1001-10,000
  • 10,001-50,000
  • Over 50,000
• Size of intranet team 
  • 0-3
  • 4-10
  • Over 10

 

Because the questions require respondents to choose a selection from a range (rather than providing a specific number), it is necessary to make an assumption to calculate the number of intranet resources per 1000 staff. For example, if 0-3 is selected as the size of the intranet team, this could mean that there are 0 or 3 intranet team members OR somewhere in between. To determine the ratio of intranet team members to staff, an actual number needs to be chosen. 

To compensate for this wide range of possibilities, I used the following table to calculate the most likely scenario, as well as the best and worst case scenarios. From this we can say that the real ratio lies somwhere in between.

	Best Case	Most likely	Worst case
	Number of employees
0-100	20	50	100
101-1000	100	500	1000
1001-10,000	1000	5000	10000
10,001-50,000	10000	30000	50000
50,000+	50000	80000	150000
	Number of intranet team members
0-3	3	1.5	0
4-10	10	7	4
Over 10	30	15	11

 

Best case scenario for intranet team size

The following chart assumes that intranet teams are at the maximum value (eg. for a team size selection of 4-10, assumes 10 intranet team members) and that organisation size is at the minimum value (eg. for an organisation size of between 1001-10,000, assumes 1000 people in the organisation). 

 

Worst case scenario for intranet team size

The following chart assumes that intranet teams are at the minimum value (eg. for a team size selection of 0-3, assumes 0 intranet team members) and that organisation size is at the maximum value (eg. for an organisation size of between 10,001-50,000, assumes 50,000 people in the organisation)

As can be seen from the above two charts, there is a wide range of possibile ratios! This is not surprising given that respondents choose from a range of options. However, what is not affected by the different assumptions, is the degree of change in the size of the intranet team for each year. This will remain consistent, regardless of the numbers used to calculate the ratio.

As can be seen, the change in the ratio for each year for the best, worst and most likely scenarios, is of the same proportion. 

This ratio indicates that size of your average intranet team is not increasing.

 

Assumptions and comments about data accuracy

The above data may be influenced by how people interpret the definition of 'Intranet Team'.

For example, some people might include contractors and part timers as part of the intranet team, while other people may consider the intranet team to be just full time staff. 

It is up to the person who registers as to how they define the term 'Intranet Team' so there is the possibility of a variation in responses to this question. 

Also it is interesting to note that from the 454 registrations, only 33 have more than 10 people as part of the intranet team - approximately 7%. This is in sharp contrast to the findings of the NNG report where the average intranet team size of the 10 award winning intranets is 27.

A possible reason for this difference may be the definition of 'Intranet Team' used by NNG. The NNG summary doesn't go into detail about what 'working in the intranet' means exactly - but it could include part time content contributers, IT staff and internal communication staff as well as dedicated intranet resources.

Another consideration is that the intranets listed in the NNG report are all award winning intranets - so they are not your average intranet. Perhaps this is an indication that there is a relationship between the number of intranet resources and quality of the intranet.

 

Source data

To view the source data used for the above calculations, view the WIC Registrations Source Data Google spreadsheet.

 

Related articles

The organic intranet

The organic intranet

       

by Andrew Wright

I read a good quote on Twitter last week posted by Pauli Kongas (@pkongas). He said "Intranets are not built - they are grown. More like plants, not like buildings".

I like this quote because it gave me the answer to something that has been nagging at me since I read the NNG annual 10 best intranets report article earlier this month.

In this report, one of the conclusions is that "Great intranets require years to create". The report goes on to say that "Since 2001 , we’ve tracked the length of time it takes to create a great intranet from inception to launch. On average, the process lasts for 42 months—or about 3.5 years . This year, the average was 27 months, or about 2.3 years to create the winning designs."

Something about this conclusion didn't seem quite right to me (and was also slightly depressing!).

There was a discussion on LinkedIn about whether 3.5 years to create a great intranet was right. Maybe the answer was here? Some people felt that great intranets can be developed more quickly than that, others questioned exactly what was meant by a great intranet, while a few more people felt that user adoption and change management was the time consuming part and could possibly justify this lengthy time frame.

 

The organic intranet is an intranet that grows and evolves

I posted a comment to the discussion where I mentioned that the #1 ranked Worldwide Intranet Challenge intranet - Weston Solutions only took 12 months to develop their award winning intranet. However, I have since looked at the case study again and realised that in fact the Weston Solutions intranet had existed since the late 1990's. So in fact from 'inception to launch' - which is how the NNG report defines the time frame - it has really taken around 15 years to build a great intranet (not the 12 month SharePoint upgrade project that is the topic of the case study). 

But what is interesting is that the Weston Solution's intranet greatness wasn't a linear path where it gradually went from inception, to good and then to great. It was more of a sine wave.

They did in fact already have a great, award winning intranet in the early 2000's. However, over time the intranet was neglected, technology moved on, end user expectations changed and the quality of the intranet declined until they launched a project to re-build the intranet in 2011. 

 

The answer!

I then realised what had been nagging me about the NNG article - the implicit notion of the intranet as a big 'project'.

A project where there is a start date, a launch date, some activities in between, a time frame for achieving an end result and then the intranet is 'finished'. Done! 

Intranets are not like this - they are organic, like the Weston Solutions intranet. They ebb and flow. Intranets are more like children or plants than buildings or projects. They need plenty of attention and maintenance. Without this constant attention, the quality of an intranet can decline pretty quickly - just as the Weston Solutions intranet did in the mid 2000s.

So putting a time frame to create a great intranet is like saying it takes 3.5 years to raise a great kid. While it does obviously take time to develop a child's character, time is not something that is usually a major consideration.

As Chris Wright comments in his recent CMS Wire article - 3 Steps to a Great SharePoint Intranet - "Don't ever finish your SharePoint intranet project. If you disband the project team once your Intranet is built, your project will ultimately fail. If you ever even consider an Intranet finished, you might have well not have bothered in the first place."

 

The long wow

Luke Mepham also makes the  point in his excellent article, Big Bang Theory for Intranets, that a big bang approach to delivering intranets is not advisable. He says "A long period without any improvement means the perception of the intranet is poor and getting worse. Every week that passes people become more disillusioned."

He goes on to say that "It seems that a big part of the problem with big bang is that the size of the change is too high, and the frequency too low. The obvious alternative is small frequent change. An approach known as ‘the long wow’ is about implementing changes more regularly. This approach is popular with many highly successful and admired brands. Nike+, Google and Apple are all renowned for their regular,incremental upgrades or feature releases."

 

Eric Ries and the Lean Startup movement

Eric Ries, author of the best selling book - The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses - and now leader of the Lean Startup global movement, is also an advocate of the 'long wow'. I have written before about intranet lessons that can be learnt from successful web startups and I believe many of the ideas in Eric's book can be also applied to intranets.

In his book, Ries argues that many startups (and this also applies to intranet owners) waste time and energy implementing ideas and features that people don't want (for intranets, this could be content that never gets read or online discussion forums that no-one uses). And that there is a better - leaner- approach to decide what should be implemented and what should be discarded.

Three of the basic principles of the Lean Startup are below:

• Minimum viable product (MVP) - what is the maximum amount of validated feedback you can obtain from your customers (staff) with the least amount of effort.
• Continuous deployment - updates and changes should be continuously implemented - the long wow. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn - many successful websites continuously implement new features. This approach would bring many benefits to intranets.
• Split testing - offer different versions of a feature or product to staff at the same time to determine which one is most effective.

You can read about other techniques at The Lean Startup Movement web page.

 

Conclusion

The important thing to emphasise when delivering successful intranets is not a pre-occupation with a long-term project mentality. Instead, it is more important is to focus on ensuring effective systems and processes are in place so that the right features are being continuously & quickly implemented and that your intranet is evolving & improving to meet your changing user needs.

 

You may also like to read:

• 7 Intranet Lessons to be Learned From Successful Web Startups
• Could this be the world's most effective intranet
• Big bang theory for intranets

 

 

 

Which intranet related skills and technologies are the most popular?

by Andrew Wright

LinkedIn have recently added a new skills feature (still in beta). This feature allows you to add skills to your LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn connections can then endorse these skills.

It also enables LinkedIn in to track which skills are the most popular.

I thought it might be interesting to use this feature to track how widespread the various intranet related skills and technologies are in the workplace.

The table below lists intranet related skills and technologies, the relative growth of these skills, the number of people who have listed these skills and the most popular LinkedIn group for each skill. 

Popular intranet related skills	Growth	Size ('000)	Biggest LI Group	# mbrs	% mbrs
* Social Media	38%	2,400	Social Media Marketing	510,212	21.3%
** Change Management	1%	1,900	Organizational Change Practitioners	33,448	1.8%
Organisational Development	1%	496	Organization Development Network, OD Network, ODN	24,342	4.9%
Portals	-2%	348	The Enterprise Architecture Network	86,610	24.9%
Corporate Communications	-1%	346	Corporate Communications Executive Network	24,011	6.9%
Internal Communications	-2%	313	Corporate Communication	37,974	12.1%
Intranet	-10%	308	Worldwide Intranet Challenge	11,612	3.8%
Employee Engagement	4%	254	Employee Communications and Engagement	16,230	6.4%
Content Management	0%	177	Content Management Professionals	23,947	13.5%
Web 2.0	-7%	140	Web 2.0	30,239	21.6%
Knowledge Management	-3%	134	Knowledge Management	7,042	5.3%
Business Process Design	0%	111	Business Process Improvement	48,324	43.5%
Web Content Management	2%	70	Web Content Management Systems	6,521	9.3%
Collaboration Tools	0%	7	Enterprise 2.0 Group	4,483	64.0%
Enterprise 2.0	1%	4	Enterprise 2.0 Group	4,483	112.1%
Intranet Strategy	-9%	4	Intranet Professionals	4,966	124.2%
Digital Workplace	n/a		Digital Workplace Forum	46
Technology	Growth	Size ('000)	Biggest LI Group	# mbrs	% mbrs
SharePoint	5%	376	SharePoint Users Group	43,018	11.4%
Joomla	11%	107	Official Joomla! Users Group	11,364	10.6%
Websphere	-8%	90	IBM WebSphere Enthusiasts	15,377	17.1%
Drupal	19%	81	Drupal	26,165	32.3%
Lotus	-11%	33	Lotus Professionals	12,887	39.1%
SAP Portal	-7%	16	SAP Netweaver Portal Consultants	2,450	15.3%
Confluence	8%	10	Confluence Users	1,500	15.0%
Liferay	20%	9	Liferay Developer Group	4,597	51.1%
Vignette	-15%	6	Vignette Expert	1,202	20.0%
Sitecore	20%	6	Sitecore	3,892	64.9%
Plone	-10%	2	Plone	1,187	59.4%
Yammer	36%	1.7	Yammer Fans	930	54.7%

* Social Media is the 47th most popular skill overall
** Change Management is the 92nd overall popular skill

Comments

I found it interesting that 308,000 people have identified 'Intranet' as a skill and yet only a small percentage of these belong to an intranet related LinkedIn Group (in comparison to other skills). This is even stranger given that 376,000 people have listed Sharepoint as a skill - roughly the same number as intranets more or less - and yet there are seven SharePoint groups with at least 10,000 members, with the largest group having 43,000 members.

Why is this the case? Perhaps the power of Microsoft marketing? Or perhaps intranets just aren't as interesting as SharePoint.... any ideas?

It's also surprising that the term Digital Workplace is not yet categorised as a skill by LinkedIn. This is a term that has been getting some airplay recently in an effort to broaden the scope of the services that an intranet can deliver. In fact, an intranet is usually described as a sub-category of the Digital Workplace.

Perhaps the fact that it is not yet listed as a skill indicates that there is a bit of work to do yet before the term Digital Workplace becomes mainstream.

You might also be interested in:

• Poll results: what technologies do companies use to develop their intranets?
• What alternatives are there to Sharepoint for an intranet?