Intranets can't just be about conversations

Reading Niall Cook's new book - "Enterprise 2.0" I'm struck by his early thoughts (Page 18) on social tools within the workplace. To quote the book:

The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted the downfall of traditional one-to-many marketing techniques in the age of the Internet. Perhaps less well-known are the insights into the changes that might take place in the workplace:

• Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.
• As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company - and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, or bottom lines.
• Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when conditions are right.
• Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
• Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
• A healthy intranet organises workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
• While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.
• When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

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Given the book's title Niall's perspective here is obvious. Intranets can be fantastic connectors for employees. I mean, let's break the word down: intra (inside) net (network). To use them solely as top down information dumping grounds, as inferred above, is a waste and a misuse.

I don't think he's saying there isn't but, of course, there is still plenty of room, and moreover plenty of need, for HR policies, organisational forms and so on. Multi-tiered use of intranets is a must. We need (and now expect) the cool stuff, but we also need the form to book a holiday while we're at it.

It's a good book so far. I'll post more as and when I get through it.