Finding your passion
Jinfo Blog

By James Mullan

Abstract

If you're anything like me, you're likely to have lots of things you do outside of work that you're passionate about and you really enjoy doing. But what about whilst you're at work? It is good to consider what it is that you enjoy doing so much that you will evangelise. For me, it has to be managing an intranet.

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What are you passionate about? Perhaps you enjoy running, going to see a film, reading books or some other pastime. If you're anything like me, you're likely to have lots of things you do outside of work that you're passionate about and you really enjoy doing. But what about whilst you're at work?  It is good to consider what it is that you enjoy doing so much that you will evangelise.

For me, it has to be managing an intranet. Which is why, when I saw a post called "3 reasons to get passionate about your intranet", I was immediately interested in what the author would have to say. So what are the three reasons to become passionate about your intranet?

Firstly it helps create a strong internal network. Intranets are designed to be used by everybody within a business, which means that, if you pitch yourself as the intranet manager, then you're likely to be approached by individuals from across the business. Not only does this mean you'll get to talk to a lot of people, you'll also begin to understand what direction the company is heading in. There is also the opportunity to build a very strong personal brand. So if people know you work on the intranet they might approach you to help them with a project looking at an internal social network or an external website. Just because you manage an intranet doesn't mean that the skills you use and have acquired can't be applied to other areas of the business.

Secondly, managing an intranet means you gain knowledge of both the business and its processes. Essentially, this means that you have to understand the requirements of individual departments and teams. This can be hard to do, especially where those requirements might conflict with established intranet policies. It also means you're often asked to "get up to speed" with requirements in a very short space of time. But it does mean you have the opportunity to see much more of the activity within an organisation. For example if an organisation is moving into a different area of work or thinking about reorganising how it works, you need to understand how this will affect the intranet and the process by which individuals find content.

Finally, as an intranet manager, you're in a great position to form a perspective on what you believe is happening within our workplaces. We've certainly come a long way in the last 10 years in terms of how we make information available. The development of social intranets where people, rather than content, are the main priority is one example of how content creation and the way information is delivered have changed. So why is finding your passion important? For me being passionate about something means that when I talk about it this is obvious. The more passionate you are about something the more likely it is that someone else will think "well that intranet manager spoke about how great the intranet was so maybe I'll take a look at it". So if you haven't already ... isn't it time you found your passion?

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