How to avoid mysterious golfing cart accidents

Last month, I wrote about how companies without intranets are adopting wiki platforms. This week, I met with a client who wants to replace their existing intranet with a wiki. There are many reasons to make that decision, but two stand out:

• To cut the publishing cycle from days or weeks to minutes or seconds thus ensuring that the content is more relevant
• To move from content nobody wants to read written in corporate speak to information about what is really going on written in a human voice

The importance to the client of human voice reminded me of The Cluetrain Manifesto where I dug up a quote that sums up the intranet discussion nicely:

"The intranet revolution is bottom-up. There's no going back. If a company doesn't recognize this, the top-down intranet it puts in can breed the type of cynicism that results in ugly bathroom graffiti and mysterious golfing cart accidents."

What the authors saw years ago is starting to happen (the intranet bit, not the golf cart accidents).

Tags: intranet wiki human voice The Cluetrain Manifesto golf cart accidents