5 ‘absolutes’ to launching a successful intranet

In 2012, as director of internal communications for the software company Taleo, I was assigned to develop a SharePoint 2010 intranet in less than two months. I had no full-time staff and a limited budget but lots of hard-working employee volunteers we called the GrassRoots team.

Here are the five “absolutes” I learned:

1. Collaboration is everything. Ask for help, and be appreciative. I had an amazing rapport with my colleagues from IT, and we were a dynamite team. I could never have met my goals without them, or without the help of power users, GrassRoots members, and our SharePoint vendor.

2. You must have the support of your senior management and be allowed to be autonomous. Committees would have slowed us down and made decision-making highly difficult. We did not have time to present options or debate right or wrong—we had to move forward. We knew we could always make changes later. Indeed, the intranet must constantly evolve.