The revolution inside: December 06, 1999 issue of New Thinking

December 06, 1999 New Thinking:
The revolution inside

Website content management

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December 06, 1999

The revolution inside

By Gerry McGovern

A strange and interesting thing is happening within many of the larger organizations throughout the world. A counter organization is developing outside of senior management’s direct control.

In fact, many senior managers are not even aware of what is happening. This ‘organisation’ is developing within the environments we call intranets, extranets and Internet websites.

Staff, not through any particular desire to overthrow the old order, are embracing these mediums. The enthusiastic ones have been working steadily away developing sub-organization structures there, that in many cases other staff have started using on a daily bases to find information and interact, instead of using the ‘official’ channels to carry out these functions.

What is an organization? An organization is an organized or cohesive group of people working together to achieve commonly agreed goals and objectives. The basic objectives of most commercial organizations are to create a product or service that customers will buy, thus creating profit.

The opposite of an organization is a chaos or a lone, isolated individual. The better organized an organization is the more likely it to achieve its objectives.

In the industrial age, much of the function of many organizations was around organizing equipment in a factory setting that people worked on. However, in a digital age setting, certainly the high growth and profit-driven organizations are focused on two major functions.

Firstly, organizing information that will make their staff more effective information workers. Secondly, organizing interactive environments whereby staff can merge their knowledge to achieve objectives.

Now, traditionally, interaction was about being in physical offices or meeting rooms. But today it involves everything from chatting online, using email and discussion groups, to tele and video conferencing.

The problem for many organizations today is that a lot of its information and interactive activities are evolving in an ad-hoc basis. Time and time again I talk to executives worried that they are losing effective control over the process.

Intranets sprout up, each department or division following its own way of doing things. This wouldn’t be too bad if the department itself had a cohesive plan. Unfortunately, what you often find are increasingly chaotic environments, developed with no overall plan or infrastructure, where the more information you place on the intranet the more useless it becomes.

This lack of cohesive organizational structure is finding its way out onto the Internet as well. Many organizations have now multiple websites, with no common navigation or classification structure agreed. For the staff it is frustrating and for the customer, confusing. Long-term, nobody wins.

I am not espousing here control for control’s sake. The most empowered organization is the one which has commonly agreed structures and procedures that allow people to do their jobs in the most effective way possible. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of people do not like chaos and an environment where they are expected to build their own structures.

The first phase of the Internet was a very necessary explosion of activity and energy. Birth is always an unpredictable, exciting and emotional affair. But the Internet is now growing up very quickly and those organizations that want to grow up with it must re-organize themselves around the Internet.

That means paying a hell of a lot more attention to the fundamental building blocks of structure, classification and interactive processes that go to creating organized intranets, extranets and Internet websites.

Gerry McGovern

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"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

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The British Association of Communicators in Business

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European Association of Directory Publishers

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Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of people do not like chaos and an environment where they are expected to build their own structures.