From Social Intranet to Design Thinking

In my last blog I sketched a framework for the perfect social intranet solution. I belive that organizations that improve their internal online working culture by sharing knowledge and experiences with co-workers are going to be the winners in the future. Sharing information including experiences makes the organization culture more open.

An open organization culture is a great opportunity to increase effectiveness, but it's also an opportunity to change working culture more creative. The creativity is needed in renewing processess to find new innovative solutions in this continuously chancing world. The creative working culture is based on open leadership and positive thinking, both of which are starting points for collaboration. The positive thinking makes us happy and that is needed both in private and working life. We also need design thinking in creative working organizations. There are great examples within educators who have used design thinking to improve their school organizations. 


What is Design Thinking?

Firstly, design thinking is a mindset with the following features of working culture: 1) human-centered, 2) collaborative, 3) experimental and 4) optimistic. Design thinking mindset needs also a design process that puts design thinking into action. The design process has five phases: 1) discovery (I have a challenge. How do I approach it?), 2) interpretation (I learnt something. How do I interpret it?), 3) ideation (I see an opportunity. What do I create?), 4) experimentation (I have an idea. How do I build it?) and 5) evolution (I tried something new. How do I evolve it?).

Design thinking process sounds simple as a mindset and a process. Is there really anything new? I'm sure there aren't any new aspects for artists in different fields. But, I'm also quite sure, that there are many learning opportunities for the service sector (e.g. education, social and heath care, hotel, catering and tourism), that could find and develope new solutions to be more proactive organizations.

Towards the Perfect Social Intranet Solution

Recently I've thought a lot of Web 2.0 work (digipaper page 24). and  social intranet's opportunities  to improve collaborative work. In my last work related blog I started a discussion of the issue in our organisation. I've also started a discussion in LinkedIn's  SOME Teollisuudessa  group, where I've got a lot feedback considering  "a vision of the perfect intranet".  At the same time, there is going on  Charlene Li's survey on enterprises' social networking, I took part in that survey and noticed, that it helped me to sketch new ideas for the social intranet.  Our organization have  used Yammer as an "unofficial discussion platform" to improve online discussion, because the official intranet doesn't have online discussion rooms for collaborative sharing. Regarding to LinkedIn discussion group's ideas for perfect intranet, Charlene Li's survey and my own experiences using Yammer, I made a mind map as a big picture to understand features of the well-functioning social intranet.

A big picture for social intranet  

I desided to use Kipling's "six honest serving-men";
1) What,
2) Why,
3) When,
4) How,
5) Where and
6) Who to teach me all the aspects the perfect social intranet, that I should knew.





What includes to social intranet: 1) adaptive working environment, 2) widgets (i.g.orgnization's news, sales information,  R & D), 3) feeds (automatic and/or no-automatic) from  i.g. people, groups and projects, 4) collaborative calender with planning tools and to do lists, 5)  work process descriptions and work instructions on i.g. WIKI environment, 6) perminat and alternating collaborative document/project sharing tools, 7) video- and/or voice meetings, 8) instant messages, 9) chat, 10) group discussion opportinities and 11) work related solutions (i.g. CRM, ERP, SAP) related to discussion opportunities.

Why to use social intranet: 1) to support organization's strategic transformation to openness/transparency, 2) reduce unnecessary face to face meetings and internal emailing,3) improve collaboration between departments and/or teams, 4) faster decision making, 5) improving business processes, 6) best practices sharing, 7) streaming a business process (sales, marketing, research etc.), 8) finding experts or sharing expertise from around the organizations, 9) employees' engage, 10) make visible the hidden knowledge, routines and rituals of the organization, 11) greater connections between employees and executives/managers, 12) support strategic information in organization or envolving company culture, 13) greater connection and understanding of the strategic goals of the organization.


 When to use social intranet: 1)  continuous (24/7) opportunity to have asynchronously, real-time and non-real-time online work. 

How to use social intranet: 1) with close connection to personal dashboard -, extranet- and internet - solutions to achive well-functioning online-offline working culture. 

Where to use social intranet: 1) easily on cloud services or organisation's own servers, 2) it's IT- department's (not users) task to find the right solutions for their customers (users), BUT with a dialogic discussion with their customers.

Who use the social intranet: 1) employees and managers/executives use social intranet together, 2) organization should know, what is their workers social media's skills level, 3)  organisation should make a plan with schedule, how to increace participating working culture from passive intranet, email- working and face to face- meetings working culture to new open social intranet working culture.  

I've started to think the perfect intranet solution last year and as you can see I'm still struggling with the same issue. I'm more than happy, if this blog's readers will give feedback  to find out better social intranet solutions.


As a conclusion, here is Kipling's original  poem of the six honest serving men, that inpirised me to find a preliminary solutions towards the better social intranet working culture.


Kipling (1865-1936)
I KEEP six honest serving-men, (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When  And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five, For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views;
I know a person small.
She keeps ten million serving-men, Who get no rest at all!
She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes.
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!