Enterprise 2.0 Roll-up: Do Away with Your Intranet Manager and Forget E2.0 Entirely

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Aug 26, 2010

The enterprise took a few hits this week. In addition to failing to deliver value, it might just not be for you. Period.

Maybe Enterprise 2.0 Just Isn’t for You

Stay calm, this isn't as serious as it sounds. Scott Ryser, co-founder and CEO of Yakabod, simply urges you to make sure your readiness is at the right level before you dive in.

"There’s no foolproof yardstick for measuring readiness," he said. "Attitudes, behavior and corporate culture offer some reliable clues, though, and over the years we’ve learned what to look for. If red flags pop up during our early conversations with prospects, we suggest they take a step back rather than invest prematurely in an initiative that may not succeed."

And, while you can't measure readiness, Ryser does offer a few red flags to watch for:

There are no consequences for failing
Nobody's responsible
The compensation structure doesn't support collaboration
You're launching E2.0 because everyone else is

If any of these sound like familiar situations, you might want to read more.

The Importance of Context: Why Enterprise 2.0 Still Fails to Deliver Value

In this piece, Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of MindTouch, claims "we still haven’t witnessed a glut of measurably successful Enterprise 2.0 deployments."

And get this! According to Fulkerson, the problem stems from focusing too heavily on collaboration.

"Enterprise 2.0 adoption is being driven by the need to accelerate how we collaborate, by reducing the friction between our systems, applications and human assets," he said. "But most vendors have focused almost entirely on improving human to human collaboration with short term fixes, by merely adding more application silos — silos that entirely lack context for the end-user, the business and the stated goals of a given deployment."

Intrigued? Check it out.

Is it Time to Say Farewell to the Intranet Manager?

The long and short of this one is: If intranets are changing, so should the intranet manager.

Intranets have been a hot topic as of late. As less of a distribution website and more of a business tool, the need to re-evaluate how capable the intranet manager is of offering the required support has arisen.

"…the role of the Intranet Manager…should grow into an executive management position as the interaction become much more about managing enterprise information than it does managing authors and publishing deadlines," we pointed out this week.

However, others say the changes and shifts have lead to a non-need.

"The role as intranet manager is probably going to fade away as the 'online workplace' is becoming more commonplace." said one commenter in Jane McConnell's report "Intranet Trends for 2010". Another said,"It will hopefully progressively disappear as intranet responsibilities become more and more integrated into 'business as usual'."