Cultivate - 1: To improve and prepare. 2: To grow or tend. 3: To foster. 4: To form and refine, as by education. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Information farming is the cultivation of ideas.
The web creates fertile soil for exploring ideas, motivations, and actions...
Welcome to the Shelley Taylor & Associates OpEd page, the home of intelligent discussion, frank opinions, and lively editorials on subjects ranging from intellectual capital to global financial markets. Please feel free to submit your thoughts for publication to cultivators@infofarm.com
Editorial
Who is minding the shop?
Business leaders would be justifiably shocked to learn that a corporate CFO lacked an understanding of basic accounting principles. Yet the fact that executives charged with operationalizing corporate strategy don't understand the Internet - or even their own corporate web sites - creates little stir. Perhaps this is so because business leaders continue to underestimate the power and possibilities of the web.
What accounts for the inability of those in the board room to understand both the web's importance and its technology? Our recent study of corporate web sites was motivated by a desire to understand how such sites reflect, translate, inform and communicate corporate culture and strategy. We were interested in learning about this powerful medium and its effectiveness as a business tool. What we found is - if somewhat disturbing - not really surprising. Most corporate web sites fail to provide key audiences with what they want. Further, many don't take advantage of what audiences might want if given an opportunity.
Is this because key executives don't know the wants and needs of their audiences? Or because they haven't learned how to translate their knowledge into a new medium? Is it because corporate strategy isn't clearly understood by those responsible for communicating with corporate audiences? Or is it a much more fundamental problem, one involving the lack of strategic cohesion which plagues most companies?
THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES
Over the last ten years companies have experienced increasing conflicts and pressures on organizational structure: decentralization and centralization, specialization and generalization, mass marketing and customization, autocracy and consensus - the list is endless. Management consultants discuss and debate these issues ad nauseum. The reasons for the conflicts and resulting corporate chaos, however, are less important than the opportunities presented by the web for improving corporate health. But before exploring the (missed) opportunities, it's important to look at the relationship between web sites and organizational structure.
Web sites mirror and amplify organizational integrity. In fact, they render the executive corridor naked to a site visitor. Any corporate dysfunction is broadcast to any and all who visit a site. Sites with no recruitment page are telling the world that they don't place a high value on gaining access to the best brain power. Sites without post-sale service and support indicate their lack of emphasis on existing customers.
A web site is like a wheel. The spokes are the functional departments (sales and marketing, finance, human resources, etc.) which connect to and are held together by the central hub (the executive committee, the CEO). Sometimes sites reflect the lack of cross-functional integration necessary to create effective sites - or, for that matter, effective companies. In other cases, web site real estate reflects the power base in an organization: most of the site is devoted to sales, while little emphasis is given to recruitment. Many clearly demonstrate an understanding of a single audience, evidenced by a breadth of content for a particular user group. As with the wheel and its ability to move forward, a site is only as effective as its underlying organizational integrity.
Few companies effectively translate their business objectives into a multi-stakeholder communications strategy for their web sites, one designed to fully take advantage of the web's intended use. Those that do achieve this goal demonstrate a high degree of strategic cohesion; they appear to have a centrally-driven, cross-functional approach to web design. Those that don't achieve this goal give evidence of strategic dissonance and run the risk of losing out to peers and competitors.
CHICKEN OR EGG
The important question seems to be not whether web sites function effectively, but rather whether companies function effectively. An unintentional benefit of the Internet is the opportunity it presents for corporate healing. The process of creating (or recreating) an effective web site can lead to a more effective company - just as the process of creating a more functional company will lead to a more effective web site.
Companies with unclear business strategies and objectives will find the process of developing site navigation and content extremely challenging. The process will require departments to communicate with each other - finance with human resources, marketing and sales with purchasing - in order to create a seamless whole. Companies engaged in the challenges of breaking down organizational boundaries, flattening and downsizing, will find that the mechanisms facilitating greater corporate performance are the same as those that create a powerful web site.
So this web saga is a case of chicken and egg. The challenges created by the Internet contain embryonic solutions to these very problems.
Enter the debate!
What are your opinions on this subject? How do these issues affect your business?
We welcome your thoughts and look forward to hearing from you at cultivators@infofarm.com
The preceding editorial was written by Shelley Taylor
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