KM Singapore 2012

Janus Boye lives in Denmark and works mostly on “fixing large, global, complex and often failed intranet projects.”At the 2012 KM  Singapore conference Janus presented a new perspective on intranets, where “sharing is caring.”

Sharing is caring – a new intranet perspective from Janus Boye

After his talk, we caught up with him to record the short video interview below. In the video, Janus explains why ‘sharing is caring’. According to Janus, this notion fits well with the idea of openness and transparency that organizations are striving for – and it is possible to use the intranet much more than in the past to ‘live’ those values by sharing more and effectively using the intranet to support top tasks that staff has to perform. As a consequence, staff will care much more about the intranet. In this sense, for Janus staff will go to the intranet and make use of it if it will help them in get their work done – so to say, if it will support the different smaller or bigger work processed they need to get done on a daily basis.


Nevertheless, top tasks are not the only things to address to have an intranet which is used by staff. Indeed, there should also be space for users engagement, for building connections, foster loyalties and sharing good stories. Communications and HR staff should keep this in mind.

Maish Nichani is principal at PebbleRoad, a user experience consultancy specializing in intranets, websites and apps. In his keynote speech in the first day of the KM Singapore 2011 event he offered his perspective on why many intranet projects are often not successful as organisations would expect.

In his views, we often put much effort in the vision and design of intranet systems but we often underestimate that the real challenge is taking these systems from products to success. In particular, according to Maish four key issues need to be addressed: mindset, leadership, governance and adoption. These are what Maish considers the ‘bottom part’ of the iceberg as there is normally little attention which is given to these issues. Adopting specific tactics can help in overcoming these barriers and successfully move not only from design to products but from products to success.