Intranet leadership training

VicRoads Intranet mouse mat -
from Oyster Design

In a couple of days I'll be attending the CAUDIT Leadership Institute.

My background is in the intranet or online workspace, and one of the issues that I've seen coming through in the discussions I've had with other intranet and online workplace managers over the past five years or so is the need for professional development.

Increasingly there are opportunities for development within the Intranet / Online workplace domain e.g.

• StepTwo's AsiaPacific Intranets conference
• Intranet Leadership forum - also by StepTwo
• Intranet benchmarking forum - in Europe

But there are few opportunities that provide for the development of skills essential to effective intranets but not specific to them e.g.

• Project management
• Team work and oversight
• Managing your manager/organisation
• Career planning and development

These are the types of skills the CAUDIT Leadership Institute outline in the programme, during their yearly week long event.

In my experience it is  the ability of intranet / online workspace managers to marry a whole range of skills; technical, interpersonal and organisational that makes them successful. Within the IT realm this mixture tends to be fairly rare. As such I'm really looking forward to meeting the other attendees who only really have two things in common:

• Work in the Tertiary education sector.
• Are associated with IT within their organisations.

The blurb on the front of the CAUDIT Leadership Institute site says

The CAUDIT Leadership Institute is a dynamic, immersive program designed to enhance the leadership skills of Australian and New Zealand information technology and information resources managers in higher education. It is an outstanding opportunity to share information with peers and participate in hands-on learning experiences.

One thing I found somewhat difficult about attending was that though the blurb sounds great their isn't a lot to support that on their site. Normally I would expect the site to provide some fairly detailed information so that:

• I can decide if this course is right for me.
• I can convince my organisation to pay for me to attend AND spare me for the week not at work.

 In this case there isn't this level of detail. Looking back over the courses run in previous years there isn't much detail either. The one thing I did notice is that the programme topics and many of the presenters haven't changed much in the past few years. Which would tell me that they've got a successful combination.


So I asked my manager why he thought it was valuable for me to attend. His response was that we don't do enough of this type of development and that he had heard from several past participants how valuable it had been to them and their organisations.

When I heard this I realised why their wasn't a huge ammount of detail on the site. In New Zealand and Australia word of mouth is the most valuable marketing medium. This brings me back to the intranet / online workspace world. In any organisation it is your intranet's reputation that is a key factor in it's success, and much of that reputation related to word of mouth rather than communications or PR or giving staff mouse mats. Often good word of mouth directly relates to time spent with members of your organisation showing them the intranet and what it can do for them.

So if you're embarking on, or already into, your intranet / online workspace manager career make sure you:

• attend domain specific professional development events. Even if it is just having a coffee with someone who runs an intranet in your area.
• spend time thinking and working toward improving your other skills as well.

 Dorje

[Clarification - when the decision to attend the CAUDIT Leadership institute week was being made there was little information about each of the events each day available. As such this post is in that context. Since then the CAUDIT Leadership institute team have created a new website, which has outlines of each of the sessions that are very useful. Dorje]