Digital workplace – points to cover

The digital workplace from three complementary angles: management & stakeholders, people and “building blocks”

This diagram is work in progress with three of my clients who have asked me to help them evolve their “intranet+collaboration+social” online environments to a more coherent digital workplace. The slide has also evolved gradually thanks to input from workshops in Washington DC and Stockholm with  participants in organizations with different cultures, and a range of experience  from a few “well on the way” to most “just starting” the digital workplace journey.

I’ll be talking on my blog about these “building blocks” over the next few weeks, but wanted to already publish the slide, hopefully to get some feedback.

Start where you can. Avoid a linear approach.

One of the biggest questions people ask is “Where do we start?”. My answer is “You start where you can, the nearer the top the better, but not exclusively from the top.”

Many of the items on the chart can be done in parallel. Most of them take a fair bit of time. The one thing you do not want to do is to be linear in your approach. Ideally, you have a number of teams and people in different “pockets’” of the organization working on projects simultaneously that all help move the enterprise and the culture towards a collaborative digital workplace concept.

If you’re in a position to locate these projects and work with the project leaders to bring people together with a collaborative digital workplace vision and strategy, that’s great. But even if you can’t yet do that, there are plenty of positive actions you can carry out.

How about your experience?

What has your experience been? What is missing on the chart? What would you change?

Meet Jane at IntraTeam Event Copenhagen

At IntraTeam Event Copenhagen 2012 February 28-29 and March 1 Jane McConnell is hosting a two part preconference workshop about governance, social intranet and the digital workplace. Read the full description of the workshops here:

Intranet Governance Part 1: How to Define a Framework for a Social Digital Workplace

Intranet Governance Part 2: How to Get the Right Balance Between Structure and Flexibility in a Social Digital Workplace

Jane will also do a presentation on the conference: Digital Workplace Trends 2012: What Leaders are Doing Differently.