The greatest barrier to website success is politics. Technology, budget, skillset are all secondary barriers. The website is a political football.
Why is the website so political?
Well, most websites don’t grab the attention and focus of senior management. As such, the current state and evolution of the website is left to middle managers mostly in communications, IT and HR who have limited power and decision-making ability, and a limited budget. However, the website represents the entire organization, not just a department, business unit or silo. Therefore, communications, IT, HR and all the other business units and corporate departments are left to cooperate and collaborate on a single channel representing all.
This cooperation and collaboration is of course usually in the absence of little or no direction from senior management. So, the kids are left to themselves to play nicely. Uh-oh.
Of course all know by now that….
- Communications sees the world quite differently than IT
- IT views the website far differently than HR
- HR are not technologists and are focused people
- Business units have a laser like focus on their own markets and profit & loss
- Finance cares about the bottom-line which is not a driver of websites (except fore e-commerce sites)
- Etc., etc.
And so the predictable happens: conflict.
- Conflict over vision
- Conflict over ownership
- Conflict over application priority
- Conflict over content
- Etc., etc.
With predictable conflict, little consensus and no direction from senior management the website stalls. Often, it stalls for years.
An additional problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Read Why is the intranet so political?
© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media
