May 15, 2017 at 11:03Clash of cultures. How is the intranet developing in Russia?
Western experience suggests that the development of intranets goes through socialization and further to the digital workplace. And which way do we go?
The world boom of social corporate applications came at the beginning of the tenth years and is gradually reaching the level of maturity. From the point of view of a person as a participant in communications, his communication field has expanded from a small circle of close colleagues to almost the entire organization and its partners.
Now news feeds are full of the term digital workplace - a new strategic vector of development. Movement to a digital workplace is an attempt to bring as close as possible to a person all the tools necessary for work: information, processes, communications, applications. Thus, new communication channels are added to a person’s communication field: digital applications, bots, widgets, filter results, queries, and other information that helps optimize an employee’s work (“smart things”). Conceptually, the development path of intranets can be represented as follows.
Fig. 1. Intranet Transformation
With a delay of several years, Russian companies and corporations have tried and continue to try to go this way - to socialization, an active exchange of ideas, open communications. But, frankly, I have not achieved much success in this direction yet. Does this mean that we are incorrectly applying "best Western practices"? No, but that means we are going our own way. What exactly it consists of, I will outline at the end, and now I will make the necessary excursion into the field of cultural differences.
We have already determined that the intranet portal is an online platformfor the work of an intra-corporate productive community. This is a necessary, but not the most necessary component of the community. The other two - people and tasks - as practice shows are more important. In the end, a community can live without an online platform. Therefore, it is most important to understand what tasks people set themselves and how they are used to communicating.
What is the difference between the Western culture of communication and ours? There is an answer to this question, it is concluded in the book “ Clash of cultures ” by Richard Lewis, who conducted a thorough analysis of many world cultures.
So among the whole variety there are three main types of crops - monoactive, polyactive and reactive.
The main value in a monoactive culture is the achievement of a result. Therefore, it is necessary to act efficiently and on schedule - it is one thing at a certain point in time, after which you should proceed to the next task. People belonging to this culture are calm and rational, systematically plan their future, draw up a schedule and carefully organize their activities. The level of trust in such a culture is approximately the same and quite high. Typical representatives of monoactive culture: USA, UK, Germany.
For representative reactiveThe main value of culture is harmony and “face preservation”. Representatives of this culture organize their activities depending on the circumstances and always fulfill their obligations. Therefore, decisions are made for a long time, but unanimously. There is a high level of mutual trust within the cultural cluster, and low in relation to all other representatives. Typical examples are Japan, China, and Korea.
In polyactiveculture, the main value is the relationship between people, not the achievement of results. People from polyactive cultures are sociable, talkative and do not make schedules. For a unit of time, a representative of such a culture can do several things at once, the main thing is that the relationship does not suffer. In such a culture, hierarchy is given great importance, which creates comfortable conditions for interaction and the proper construction of communication, and transparency is not a value. So we - the Russians (as well as Italians, Arabs and the peoples of Latin America) - are mainly carriers of a polyactive culture.
What is important in the context of this article is that in a polyactive culture a high level of trust in a narrow circle (family, close colleagues) and rather low in society in general. When I meet friends and comrades, I will pour out my whole soul, and I will “look at the rest” with the wolf (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Level of trust in monoactive and polyactive cultures.
For this reason, corporate social communications aimed at broadcast communications are not well received in our midst. We ourselves are not ready to write for everyone, and we consider writers to be upstarts. A good exception is retail chains, where most employees are sellers, and the role itself obliges them to be active and prominent.
And for the same reason, one of the most acute problems in corporate communications is the relationship between departments. The communications are built perfectly inside the units and everyone knows everyone, and between the departments there is complete misunderstanding.
Is it worth it to deal with this problem? If necessary, it’s worth it. And in this case, the intranet portal or corporate social network will become one of the supporting tools to help establish communication. The main tools will be the change management process.
But maybe it is worth using the strengths of our culture - the ability to trust in a narrow environment? In this case, the intranet portal, while not losing opportunities for mass communications, should be aimed at implementing tasks or processes for small teams. For example, work on a project, support service, questions and answers, various kinds of applications, small group meetings, personalized data from corporate applications, etc.
And most importantly, without focusing on socialization, likes and ratings. This will not take most employees out of their comfort zone. But those who need it will be able to use the tools of social communications.
Our experience says that such a direction is actively developing in Russian businesses. In the Western interpretation, this is called a digital workplace, and in the Russian interpretation I often hear the name of the employee’s personal account. Its task is to bring corporate applications, work communications and personal information within a click of a button. Thus, the employee continues to work with a narrow comfortable circle of close colleagues and familiar applications. And only then, as they become involved in broadcast online communications, employees can master the socialization tools. Thus we get such a green area of development of Russian intranets.
Fig. 3. The development of intranets in Russia
In our opinion, such a development strategy lies much closer to our culture, as well as concepts such as efficiency and productivity. And business leaders love them.
The world boom of social corporate applications came at the beginning of the tenth years and is gradually reaching the level of maturity. From the point of view of a person as a participant in communications, his communication field has expanded from a small circle of close colleagues to almost the entire organization and its partners.
Now news feeds are full of the term digital workplace - a new strategic vector of development. Movement to a digital workplace is an attempt to bring as close as possible to a person all the tools necessary for work: information, processes, communications, applications. Thus, new communication channels are added to a person’s communication field: digital applications, bots, widgets, filter results, queries, and other information that helps optimize an employee’s work (“smart things”). Conceptually, the development path of intranets can be represented as follows.
Fig. 1. Intranet Transformation
With a delay of several years, Russian companies and corporations have tried and continue to try to go this way - to socialization, an active exchange of ideas, open communications. But, frankly, I have not achieved much success in this direction yet. Does this mean that we are incorrectly applying "best Western practices"? No, but that means we are going our own way. What exactly it consists of, I will outline at the end, and now I will make the necessary excursion into the field of cultural differences.
We have already determined that the intranet portal is an online platformfor the work of an intra-corporate productive community. This is a necessary, but not the most necessary component of the community. The other two - people and tasks - as practice shows are more important. In the end, a community can live without an online platform. Therefore, it is most important to understand what tasks people set themselves and how they are used to communicating.
What is the difference between the Western culture of communication and ours? There is an answer to this question, it is concluded in the book “ Clash of cultures ” by Richard Lewis, who conducted a thorough analysis of many world cultures.
So among the whole variety there are three main types of crops - monoactive, polyactive and reactive.
The main value in a monoactive culture is the achievement of a result. Therefore, it is necessary to act efficiently and on schedule - it is one thing at a certain point in time, after which you should proceed to the next task. People belonging to this culture are calm and rational, systematically plan their future, draw up a schedule and carefully organize their activities. The level of trust in such a culture is approximately the same and quite high. Typical representatives of monoactive culture: USA, UK, Germany.
For representative reactiveThe main value of culture is harmony and “face preservation”. Representatives of this culture organize their activities depending on the circumstances and always fulfill their obligations. Therefore, decisions are made for a long time, but unanimously. There is a high level of mutual trust within the cultural cluster, and low in relation to all other representatives. Typical examples are Japan, China, and Korea.
In polyactiveculture, the main value is the relationship between people, not the achievement of results. People from polyactive cultures are sociable, talkative and do not make schedules. For a unit of time, a representative of such a culture can do several things at once, the main thing is that the relationship does not suffer. In such a culture, hierarchy is given great importance, which creates comfortable conditions for interaction and the proper construction of communication, and transparency is not a value. So we - the Russians (as well as Italians, Arabs and the peoples of Latin America) - are mainly carriers of a polyactive culture.
What is important in the context of this article is that in a polyactive culture a high level of trust in a narrow circle (family, close colleagues) and rather low in society in general. When I meet friends and comrades, I will pour out my whole soul, and I will “look at the rest” with the wolf (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Level of trust in monoactive and polyactive cultures.
For this reason, corporate social communications aimed at broadcast communications are not well received in our midst. We ourselves are not ready to write for everyone, and we consider writers to be upstarts. A good exception is retail chains, where most employees are sellers, and the role itself obliges them to be active and prominent.
And for the same reason, one of the most acute problems in corporate communications is the relationship between departments. The communications are built perfectly inside the units and everyone knows everyone, and between the departments there is complete misunderstanding.
Is it worth it to deal with this problem? If necessary, it’s worth it. And in this case, the intranet portal or corporate social network will become one of the supporting tools to help establish communication. The main tools will be the change management process.
But maybe it is worth using the strengths of our culture - the ability to trust in a narrow environment? In this case, the intranet portal, while not losing opportunities for mass communications, should be aimed at implementing tasks or processes for small teams. For example, work on a project, support service, questions and answers, various kinds of applications, small group meetings, personalized data from corporate applications, etc.
And most importantly, without focusing on socialization, likes and ratings. This will not take most employees out of their comfort zone. But those who need it will be able to use the tools of social communications.
Our experience says that such a direction is actively developing in Russian businesses. In the Western interpretation, this is called a digital workplace, and in the Russian interpretation I often hear the name of the employee’s personal account. Its task is to bring corporate applications, work communications and personal information within a click of a button. Thus, the employee continues to work with a narrow comfortable circle of close colleagues and familiar applications. And only then, as they become involved in broadcast online communications, employees can master the socialization tools. Thus we get such a green area of development of Russian intranets.
Fig. 3. The development of intranets in Russia
In our opinion, such a development strategy lies much closer to our culture, as well as concepts such as efficiency and productivity. And business leaders love them.