What 3 Questions You Should Ask at Every Intranet Meeting

This blog post has been written by our Information Architect and Co-Founder, Michael Christian. 

I recently had a meeting with a prospective customer who was discussing the idea of starting a new intranet project. The reality is that the organisation has an intranet as well as a wide range of SaaS (Software as a Service) apps in the cloud – used across all departments.

They feel that they don’t need another intranet software platform but at the same time they know there’s a problem and it needs to be solved.

This situation reminds me of a book I recently read by Warren Berger: A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. In a nutshell, there are 3 things you can ask yourself to gain some clarity.

Why…?

I have a 4-year-old daughter and she asks me ‘why’ on a daily basis, “Dad, why is the sky blue?”, “Why do I have to finish my meal”, “Why does it take a long time to wait?” Asking ‘why’ brings us to the fundamental reasons and some say if you keep asking why to the answer you currently have, you eventually end up with the real reasons. So we did this exercise….

Why do we need a new intranet?

• Because it is not easy to share information on our current intranet
• Because currently it looks ugly and uninspiring
• Because the content is outdated
• Because it’s hard to find information there
• Because it costs a fortune to maintain
• Because everybody hates it
• Because we need one place where everything can be linked

What if…?

The idea of asking this type of question is to tease our mind about what’s possible:

What if we have a new intranet?

• I don’t have to waste time to find the right information
• It would be fun and easy to share information
• It’s the hangout place where everyone is working together
• We can be more aware of what’s going on in the company
• I feel I am part of something
• I am new and I can find all I need to know from using office phone, wifi settings, etc. in one place

How to…?

‘How to’ brings us back to the real world and helps us to explore tactical ways in which things can be done.

How to launch a new intranet?

• Get some help and advice so we don’t make common mistakes
• Get some ideas from what everyone’s doing and choose the right one for us to match company culture
• Read our How to Plan and Launch intranet in 10 steps blog

In fact you can implement these 3 questions for every meeting and every problem you’re trying to solve, and we have this poster on our meeting room wall to remind us, feel free to download and share!